[TheForge] Bronze clad gate

Thu Jun 13 20:50:01 2002

Thanks.  I can see the "attractive nuance" as my insurance agent wife puts it.

The Bronze plate that you used, is it bronze or brass.  I ask because I have
found plenty of brass available but bronze has been difficult for me ot
locate.  Thanks again.

Larry

Cameron Stoker wrote:

> 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
>                                       [email protected]
>                                       http://www.stokerforge.com
>
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