Practical Jewellery Repair

by James Hickling

Overview

In Practical Jewellery Repair, the author provides detailed information, based on his wide experience, about the methods and techniques of the professional repairer and restorer of jewellery. Starting where it all begins—in the workshop—he demonstrates that a wide range of repair work can be done with even a modest set-up. The basic techniques of soldering, casting, wire-drawing, polishing, sawing, and filing are covered and illustrated. There is valuable advice on the usual types of repair to bracelets, lockets, watchcases, and brooches, including the making of joints and pins, safety catches, dent removal, respringing, and polishing. Some of the more unusual jobs that may be met by the repairer, and how they should be tackled, are treated in a useful question answer form.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780719800825
Publisher:	Hale, Robert Limited
Publication date:	11/30/1998
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

James E. Hickling was born in Nottingham, and was educated at Trent Bridge School. He learned his basic craft skills by doing simple repairs in his farther's workshop in his spare time for pocket money. On leaving school he became a telephone engineer, but at the age of 21 he became a full-time jewellery repairer in the family business, setting up his own workshop two years later. In 1965 he emigrated to Australia with his family, where he worked for a manufacturer of jewellery and, later, for an instrument maker, where he learned to operate an engraving machine, a press and a lathe. Three years later he went to New Zealand, where he again worked for a jewellery manufacturer and then a repairing workshop. When that firm went out of business he bought most of their equipment and set up on his own. The equipment included a fly press and a Victorian drop hammer, with hundreds of hand-made dies. But, he recalls, when he needed to make a few of his own he could not find a book explaining how to do so. Eventually he learnt by trial and error. He returned to this county in 1976, settled in Cornwall and formed his own jewellery manufacturing and repairing workshop.