A good general primary source introduction that's commonly available would be Joseph Moxon's Mechanick Exercises. It is a description of all the major crafts and what was involved in them, intended as a guide for parents who were considering where to apprentice their son. I see that there's one volume online, but it's devoted only to printing- so don't be mislead into thinking it's the only one. Craft production survived into the 19th c., and so you might also be interested in John Fuller's The Art of Coppersmithing . Most all of the techniques he carefully describes are from the previous century- and you will notice in the introduction a very melancholy Dickensian memory of being put to work in a coppershop as a small boy when there were plenty of unemployed men available.