[TheForge] Bronze clad gate

[Cameron Stoker]

Sorry I haven't been getting my theforge feed for a few days - I posted 
using my business account and somehow the mailer changed my subscription 
address.

Thanks for the kind words on the gate - the open water on their site meant 
that they were going to hold all of the property perimeter wall to meet 
swimming pool railing codes, i.e. no horizontal elements could be used 
because they could be climbed by children enticed buy the open water. I 
tried to argue that kids could climb anything, vertical or not, but it 
didn't fly. We tried to get a variance, but they said the only way to 
allow the scroll design to be done in a continuous manner would be to 
cover the whole thing in wire mesh - yuck! Hence the idea of repouse-ing 
(is that a word?) the design and splitting it up. The human visual system 
is pretty amazing at how much it can 'fill in' the scroll work pattern.

For those who are curious, here is a bit more description of the forging 
steps on the gate:

The gate took most of the summer last year - it has the bronzework on both 
front and back. I think it weighed about 2500lbs (700lbs of bronze) when 
complete.
The top and bottom rails were really the parts that 'ate my lunch' . They 
were 22' long 3/4" plate tapering from 2.5" to 5.5" in the center back to 
2.5". It is hard to see in these photographs, but there are two plates top 
and bottom and they sandwich the 3/8" steel verticals which the bronze is 
attached to. I built a straight-line torch cutting guide and cut the 
tapers out of 10' sections of 3/4x8", then cut those in half and forged 
the heavy chamfers and curve into them with ny hydraulic press (built for 
this gate project). The 3/8" verticals all have the edges upset and 
chamfered (this was the easy part - done cold in the press).
Aside from the center quarterfoil, the bronze is all 1/8" plate, with the 
design about 1" proud of the main sheet.  I did a lot of the roughing out 
of the design in - you guessed- the press. I made some mating dies out of 
3/4 plate and polished them up carefully and then taking small bites could 
just run the sheet through, following the design I painted on. The tips of 
the scrolls were done by forming steel mandrels of the appropriate size 
and pressing them into the back of the sheet over a lead block. The 
greatest amount of hand work on the bronze was stretching the insides of 
the curves to get the strips to straighten out again.




On Tuesday, June 11, 2002, at 02:38 PM, Larry wrote:

> Nice gate.  Could someone explain to me what having water on a site and
> having horizontal elements in a gate of even fence have to do with one
> another?  Thanks,
>
> Larry
>
>
>
                                      Cameron Stoker
                                      cameron@stokerforge.com
                                      http://www.stokerforge.com