Metal Casting for Beginners: Step By Step Guide That Will Help You Get Started with Metal Casting, Even If You Are a Complete Beginner

Good book lots of information

Livre écrit par un robot, peu d'intérêt technique car il ne décrit que des généralités de la grande industrie sans utilité pratique et sans rapport avec le titre

Good item, very informative

You'll have to forgive me for a small rant. I'm a retired university professor, so I can't help myself, but the writing in this book is terrible. Completely turned me off. If that sort of thing doesn't bother you, it's still not a good book. Here's why: I have a lot of experience with metal casting, helping students with projects in my ancient technology class. I was looking for a book that I could recommend to students, and this definitely is one. While being well organized, the book has problems from the start. It provides a hazy overview of casting technology, tools, supplies, materials, and safety. It follows with a review of casting terminology that is highly problematic. Many terms are defined (if somewhat vaguely), but many are circularly defined (that is, one term is used to define another term, etc.). There also are a lot of terms used throughout the book that should be but are not defined. The book goes on to outline the casting process, but at an incredibly elementary level. At this point it seemed that knowledge I had gained over decades or working with students was quickly slipping away. Yes, I felt that I was getting stupider by the page. It then goes on to review various casting methods, focusing heavily on industrial techniques that are far beyond the hobbyist's purview. I appreciate the effort to be thorough, but the heavy use of undefined jargon makes this section a pain. Finally, the part that I was really interested in, "How to Cast Metal at Home, A Step-by-Step Guide" was nearly incoherent. It isn't clear until part way through the chapter that his step-by-step example would be sand casting. He never really explained how the casting sand should be prepared (probably of the most important parts of sand casting after preparing the pattern). Explanations were vague, the three illustrations in the section useless (nearly all of the very few illustrations in the book were irrelevant and poorly captioned), and the undefined jargon impenetrable. I definitely lost a few IQ points here. The book concludes with a lengthy catalogue of casting defects that left me wondering "what the hell?" If you want to learn how to cast metal, this book will not help you. If you want a somewhat incoherent overview of casting, it does OK. I don't like writing negative reviews, so I will say that I believe that Mr. Price, the author has a lot of experience in casting and has broad experiential knowledge of the process but isn't so good as a writer in general or a writer of how to books in particular. I admire his attempt to share his knowledge but would make the following suggestions for future attempts: This appears to be a self-published book, and the lack of editorial review is apparent. As I often tell my students, "Have someone else go over your work, they can find errors that you can't (because you wrote it)." Use relevant, numbered, and well captioned illustrations. For this sort of thing, line drawings are actually more helpful than photographs. Finally, consider including a glossary where all terms are concisely defined.

Good information I learned a few things