Metal Finishing Guide Book -- How to Get It?

Usually available on eBay;

sometimes on
AbeBooks or Amazon

(affil links)
free pdf is currently available from academia.edu

A. I believe that the guidebook is considered a special edition of the magazine, so I would say that a subscription is the way to purchase it. But you may want to get in touch with someone from Metal Finishing.

A. The $95 (or whatever) will pay for itself in no time.

Besides that, Metal Finishing and the rest ("Plating & Surface Finishing", "Products Finishing", et. al.) are almost as good a way to keep up on the industry's developments as this Web page!

You're only saying that because it's true. -pullizzi

A. You can buy just the guidebook from the publisher. If they have any at the time. I think the cost is about $25 so I agree with the other responses that a subscription is a better value. I had to do it when someone "borrowed" my copy of the latest handbook.

A. Hi, all. The Guidebook is an annual publication, and the larger on-line used bookstores have copies of the Metal Finishing Guidebook (follow the link) from various years. Sometimes there is an article in an older edition that is absent from the latest edition. Not to mention that old editions all have an index but many newer issues don't :-)

(Take a hint, Elsevier: a reference book without an index is simply ridiculous). On top of that, the Table of Contents of the 2005 issue leaves out many articles and has wrong page numbers on others -- what are we supposed to do with no TOC and no Index, look through every page every time? :-)

One final thing that bears mentioning is that older issues tended to have formulas and operating conditions, and newer issues have increasingly migrated towards proprietaries, so some newer articles are often more pap than substance. All in all, I would go for a 2002 or earlier edition since they have an index, a proper table of contents, and articles with more real data in them. Good luck.

Regards,

A. Hi David. It was www.metalfinishing.com but you're right that you can't get it, the guidebook was on line for a short time but is no longer. Do yourself a favor and get a used copy at this page: Metal Finishing Guidebook. The web is volatile, on-line reference books can be a maddening frustration, and life is much too short to waste it trying to save your company $10 or $15.

A. Hi Donald. We appended your inquiry to this thread because the Metal Finishing Guidebook is indeed "the standard". Good luck.

Regards,

A. You could certainly try your library first; but if you want your own copy, you can get it with a subscription to Metal Finishing magazine, or buy a copy from a used book store.

A. Hi Juan. Yes, the Metal Finishing Guidebook covers these subjects. It comes as part of a subscription to Metal Finishing magazine, and it can be delivered to Mexico. If you don't want to wait until January for the next edition, you can get copies of old issues from the used book stores.

Regards,

A. Hi Jeremiah. Although there may be some powder coatings that are only suitable for interior use because they are of low quality, or are not designed to be UV resistant, or because the substrate was not properly pretreated, powder coating can be a pretty robust finish for exterior use. There are dozens of good metal finishing "primers", and some of the best are listed on our "must-have" list, but we appended your inquiry to this thread because I think the Metal Finishing Guidebook is the single best one for your purposes.

Readers: some of the info has changed over the years, so let me summarize the situation as of this month -- Elsevier closed down Metal Finishing magazine and its Guidebook in December 2013, so the Guidebook no longer exists except in the form of used copies. They can usually be obtained from Amazon and other used book dealers, and the link we offered above still works.

Shortly before Elsevier shut down Metal Finishing they made available [Ed. update Nov. 2020: an online version, link now removed]. That link obviously will not work forever, but is still working this month, [update Nov. 2020: link is now broken and removed] so download a soft copy while you're waiting for your used copy to arrive. Good luck.

Regards,

Hi -
I'm confused. The Jan 2016 note states "The MFG is still available on line..." but the Aug 2014 entry was amended to say that Elsevier's is no longer available. Does the 2016 note mean it's available elsewhere? Or does it need amending as well?

October 2020

A. Hi Mel. Apologies for the confusion! The short answer is that the 2013/2014 edition of The Metal Finishing Guidebook was the last because Elsevier closed Metal Finishing magazine in 2013, but second-hand copies are available from used book stores, and an online copy of the 2012/2013 edition is available (for now) at
https://www.academia.edu/36741165/Metal_Finishing_Handbook_2012.

----

The longer story:
The Guidebook was an "annual" publication of about 100 chapters with maybe 4 or 5 old chapters rolled off and replaced by new ones each year. So, issues from close-together years are very similar, but the 1955 edition might not have even a single chapter in common with the 2013/2014 edition.

The availability of the online version has been a roller coaster ride:
You may remember a time in the late nineties when magazines were seemingly all moving to the Internet. The Metal Finishing Guidebook was available on-line for a year or so during this period but then -- perhaps because of complaints from advertisers -- internet access was removed. Later, internet access became available again but only to subscribers. Later still it was made available on-line to everyone again.
Then Metal Finishing magazine closed, but the Guidebook remained available on-line for many years, perhaps because the people who put it on-line forgot about it or left Elsevier. Fairly recently an unpaid bill, or whatever, finally meant it went offline for good. But after not being online for a while someone who had a copy of it made it available on academia.edu. Even still, who knows if this is in compliance with copyright law and whether Elsevier is aware or whether they even care? Our advice is to download it right now from academia.edu -- don't plan on it being available next time :-)

Luck & Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

Usually available on eBay;

sometimes on
AbeBooks or Amazon

(affil links)
free pdf is currently available from academia.edu

Q. I downloaded 2012 edition from Academia. But how to get other editions?