[TheForge] Bronze clad gate

Sat Jun 15 00:15:01 2002

Follow the link in my signature - it's on stokerforge.com.  I have a 
couple more photos when the gate was finally installed I need to post this 
weekend.

On Friday, June 14, 2002, at 08:40 AM, lama wrote:

> sorry that I missed the first part of this thread.
> do you have pictures posted anywhere?
> would love to do a piece for our newsletter
> http://lametalsmiths.org/news/
> thanks,
> dave m
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Cameron Stoker" <[email protected]>
> To: <[email protected]>
> Sent: Thursday, June 13, 2002 1:14 PM
> Subject: Re: [TheForge] Bronze clad gate
>
>
>>
>> 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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>
>
                                      Cameron Stoker
                                      [email protected]
                                      http://www.stokerforge.com