A method is introduced by which transmission or conversion coefficients can readily be calculated for surface‐wave action at crustal discontinuities which can be idealized as wedge‐shaped obstacles. The method, an iteration procedure, is illustrated by an application to Rayleigh‐wave propagation on elastic wedges with free boundaries. It is shown that the leading term of the iteration procedure yields an expression for the transmission coefficient which matches the experimental data for a range of wedge angles which includes the crustal wedges commonly found in seismic practice. Numerical data are presented which illustrate the transmission coefficient’s variation in terms of Poisson’s ratio and the wedge angle.