The Skills of a Blacksmith: v.1: Mastering the Fundamentals of Blacksmithing Hardcover – March 24, 2007

This is an excellent book! Aspery's writing is accessible, engaging, and well-organized; his illustrations are effective; his information and advice are reliable (things work out exactly how he says they will); and he presents some great projects.I'm tempted to do a point-by-point comparison with Whitaker's "Blacksmith's Cookbook," which I bought for its mathematical formulas but have otherwise not liked very much. I'll just say that Aspery's book is better organized, more up to date, has better projects (and more of them), and more-detailed explanations of specific blacksmithing techniques.

I am a novice blacksmith, but Mark Aspery is an excellent teacher and this book covers the fundamentals of blacksmithing quite well.He begins with safety and then moves into the fundamental tools - anvil and anvil stand, vice stand, hammer styles - and how to use them properly. He emphasizes the importance of square-octagon-round tapering. Throughout he uses humor and interesting examples which stick with you through the learning process.Following the above introduction he moves into tools and how to craft them - various chisels, punches and drifts. Several of these are specialized tools that are to be used for the later projects in the book. At the end of the tool section he discusses the basics of heat treatment.The latter two-thirds of the book are all projects from Wizard Bottle Opener to various tongs and a simple knife blank. Some of the projects are more tools, including scrolling tongs and some bottom tools and a few more tongs.I'm very happy with this purchase so far. The book is abundantly illustrated with black & white photographs as well as a few drawings and graphs. After purchasing the book, I was lucky enough to attend a conference at which Mr. Aspery was giving a demonstration. His teaching ability there was as well-balanced as withing his writing. He is able to educate both novice and advanced blacksmiths simultaneously without making novices feel that they are being talked over while giving more advanced students additional insight into skills they already have.

Mark Aspery is a master at both blacksmithing as well as teaching. Mark's 3 book series "The Skills Of A Blacksmith" begins with this 1st Volume which covers the fundamental skills. It includes many very useful areas such as creating your own tools such as punches, chisels, tongs, etc. Blacksmithing itself is an incredible hobby, including the fact that you use the art of blacksmithing to manufacture the tools of blacksmithing (how cool is that?). An introduction to leafing and other artistic areas is hinted at, but the real meat of those areas is contained in the 2nds and 3rd volumes. The B&W photography (by Mark) is truly outstanding. Not only does he present incredibly clean and crisp images with perfect contrast and definition for immediate understanding of what is happening, he even has a section describing his photography set up, lighting, and tricks such as painting the anvil grey so that you can recreate everything for yourself. If you have any interest in learning the art and craft of Blacksmithing, you will not be disappointed with the purchase of this 1st Volume of Mark's 3-book series. It is one of the prized books in my library, and I fully plan on purchasing the remaining two volumes once I've completed the projects in the first book.

It’s a great book. Step by step methodology and breakdown of technique.However, the books actual delivery was bad. My book was left in the rain (packaged). The rain soaked through and damaged my book. Not the fault of the seller but of the deliverer who couldn’t be bothered to walk another 5 steps in the rain to put the package on my porch (under rain cover).

If you're like me, a late-coming hobby blacksmith looking for any advantage, by now you've seen or own just about every other blacksmithing book around except this one. Don't wait any longer, don't buy any other books until you have this one! The sections on heat treating and making your own bottom tools are the best i've seen. I have already too many other titles to list here including some out of print treasures to compare it to. This is a big, heavy book.It's thick with pictures and clear directions you've been looking for all this time.Because its more like a textbook than any of the others it doesn't "read" like many of those trying to cover it all in one volume. I did read the whole thing through and i did enjoy it but now it's my "how-to", idea, and primary practice reference.Mark signed and dated this one, nice touch I was not expecting as i did not specify in the order process.

The only blacksmithing I do, other than the therapeutic effects of beating on a hot piece of metal for fun, is the occasional bit of metalwork for around the house (pothooks, shelf brackets, and the like). Professionally, I work in the metal business, and am pretty well educated in the fields of chemistry, engineering, metallurgy, manufacturing, etc. I spend a LOT of time with machinists, welders, and the like. This book seems to be a good book for an intermediate blacksmith/metalworker. It's not quite basic enough for a beginner than doesn't know what they need or what to do with it, but the metallurgy isn't quite so deep that you need a degree to understand it. It's well written, but with enough left out that you need a little bench-time (or anvil-time) to really get it. If a person was just starting out, they may want to start with a very basic book. After getting a little work done, this would be an excellent addition to the ol' library.