Metalworking is a broad term that covers working with metals in order to create various metal objects, parts, assemblies or structures - from ships, bridges, parts of various vehicles, machines and engines, to the delicate watch parts or jewelry. Metalworking is a complex process which requires mastery of numerous skills at the same time, knowledge of various machinery working and undersatnding and use of the technological processes.

Metalworking originated very long time ago. No one certainly knows where or when metalworking began, but archaeologists assume that metalworking preceded emergence of the first civilizations. It is assumed that the first metal that people worked was gold. It is also known that copper has been used since 7000 BC. Metalworking played an important role in history, because degree of some civilization development throughout the history directly depended upon the development of their metalworking. Large number of wars has been won only because the weapons of one nation were more advantageous than the weapons of another nation, and the quality of weapons depended directly on the metalworking knowledge that those nations possessed. That is the case even today, because it is obvious that the richest nations in the world are actually those who have the most advanced metal industry. In the modern world most people do not pay attention, or do not even realize the importance of metalworking in the civilization development in the last few hundred years. Today there are a huge number of the nonproductive occupations (such as merchants, lawyers, media employees, politicians, etc.), so in this environment, metalworking has become, so to speak, a second-rate profession. Such entertainers as actors or singers usually have much higher incomes than the mechanical engineers. Entertainers do nothing but improve our mood, and yet they are better paid than someone who designs very responsible items, and whose error can cause a serious accident. This does not mean that nowadays metalworking jobs are not important – quite the opposite – they are perfected and fully integrated into the overall functioning of the society. The products made thanks to the metalworking have become integrated as the indispensable parts of our daily lives, so we can focus on the other aspects of life. But, try to imagine just for a moment a life without the product made based on the metalworking – travels would last for days or months, because there would be no plains, cars, trains, bridges; there would be no electricity and all those things that require transmitted electricity to function. How about if you live without having a knife, scissors or a razor? There would be no machine for weaving cloth, plastic molding, no irons, stoves, washing machines, boilers, heaters, medical instruments... No nails, or screws, combine harvesters… The world would not even remotely look like today! Only if we try to count all the metal objects we use daily, we can realize how metalworking shapes our present lives and our civilization.

Craftsmanship in metalworking represents the combination of knowledge of the tool usage and the skills for the handworking. There is no book from which you could learn all the tricks of the craft, or all the skills of one experienced craftsman. Simply, these things you will have to learn through the work, by learning about machines and tools, through numerous exercises and mistakes, and correcting those same mistakes. Discovering the way to correct some mistake and then preventing it is the best way to acquire some skills of an expert. On the other hand, the metalworking books can offer you some relevant sources of knowledge for mastering the basic principles of work, as well as to expand the skills, techniques and procedures. Although the printed information can not replace the personal experience, it provides a huge source of information on tools, processes and methods, and you will learn it from the books more efficiently than from any other source.

Metalworking books covers the processes, machine tools, and operations of a large number of technologies used to produce metal parts, assemblies and constructions. There are numerous processes in the metalworking, but they are usually categorized as cutting (milling, drilling, grinding, broaching, turning...), forming (casting, forging, sheet metal forming) and joining process (welding, soldering, brazing...).

You can borrow metalworking books from the library, buy it in the bookstore, or you can purchase it online. There are many good books that will certainly save your time as well as money. But today there is another source of many free metalworking books – the old scanned books with expired copyright, and these books can be downloaded from the internet. There are high-quality metalworking books, from which you can read numerous articles on metalworking techniques. In this category of our website we have gathered a large number of free or public domain metalworking books and we classified them into the thematic categories:

As it can be seen from this classification, this category of our website cover almost all fields of metalworking, and we are sure that in this metalworking books you will find necessary knowledge to implement it in your work. This metalworking book collection is intended for the beginners, craftsmen, engineers, students and all the others interested in the field of metalworking. Also the various artists involved in creating artworks out of metal will find necessary knowledge in these metalworking books.

Metalworking is a very broad field, and anyone involved in designing projects or manufacture often requires information that can be found only in mechanical engineering handbooks. Among these books you will find a large number of old mechanical engineering handbooks, which have been an unavoidable daily assistance of practically all engineers, tool engineers, machine designers, craftsmen and skilled mechanics in machine shops for years.

A large number of charts, calculations, diagrams and illustrations found in all these books have use-value to this day. You will have to take into consideration, that the principles and practices described in these books date back some hundreds of years ago, so it is up to you to decide, whether it will be useful for you. They are practice-proven, so in the absence of modern principles, they can be very useful. Some parts of these old metalworking books will offer you only the insight into the history of the metalworking development, so you would not have to discover by yourself why some of the techniques are outdated. In other parts of the books you will learn the rules, techniques and procedures that represent the basis of metalworking and have been acknowledged through the years, as the best methods of work in the metalworking. If you approach to these books with an open mind, you will find many interesting facts and useful information that explain development of the present level of knowledge in this field.

If you are satisfied with our collection of free metalworking books, please send us a link, if you come across an interesting book during web surfing. Doing so, you will help others, and the others will help you, because the next time you visit this page, you will probably find a large number of new metalworking books in our categories.

All of these links will allow you to read books online. Or you can directly download each book in the pdf or djvu format. You need to download viewers to open these files. You can download the adobe reader for the pdf format, and the Djview program for the djvu format.

