[TheForge] Re: File Making, sniffing up wrought iron

[Peter Hirst]

Y'know, I was thinking about this just the other day as I was working on an 
order for some lamps (the ones with the cast iron balls).  Aside from the 
balls,(which the customer doesn't want on half the order)  my material cost 
(mostly 1018 CR) is 4 percent  of my price.  And these things are not 
particularly labor intensive.  because of the minimum forging and detail in 
these things, it would not be particularly technically advantageous to use 
anything but the what I am using. ( I could even use all 1010 / A36 HR  and 
save another 1 percent ) But with any more scrolling and leaf work, forge 
weldng,  etc I can see a big difference being made by using pure iron or WI. 
I imagne it could even reduce labor time significantly.  With all the 
additional labor charge, -- say double the price -- a material that costs 5 
times as much as 1018 only increases my material cost to 10 percent of my 
price. So if I can  get only 10 percent more by marketing my work as pure 
iron or real wrought iron -- which would NOT be a hard sell in these 
parts -- I am actually ahead on the cost of the superior material.  Can 
anyone think of another craft where top quality materials represent less 
than 10 percent of  price?  So yeah, for the next order I take, where the 
extra quality will show, I am definitely in the iron market.

I would be interested in knowing how other smiths'  economics --or math --  
compare to mine.

Keziah

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David E. Smucker" <davesmucker at hotmail.com>
To: "Sponsored by ABANA" <theforge at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2008 9:49 PM
Subject: Re: [TheForge] Re: File Making, sniffing up wrought iron


> If there was a market it would be made.  We all (blacksmiths) like working 
> with things like pure iron and wrought iron -- but we don't want to pay 
> for it.  Pure Iron is the perfict example.  Everyone seems to bitch about 
> A36, but most were not ready to pay 5 or 6 times the cost of A36 for Pure 
> Iron. We get what we pay for.
>
> Stainless steel, gets paid for because of life cycle cost.  For many 
> industrial uses it really pays.  In a number of applications we could do 
> the numbers and it said that if mild steel lasted 7 years it was a better 
> deal than stainless -- but it was really hard to put a price on downtime 
> for replacement of the mild steel -- in the end we went with stainless 
> which we guessed had a service live of at least 20 years -- still working 
> fine and that has been 19 years now.
>
> Dave
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Andrew Vida" <osan at netlabs.net>
> To: "Sponsored by ABANA" <theforge at mailman.qth.net>
> Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2008 9:09 PM
> Subject: Re: [TheForge] Re: File Making, sniffing up wrought iron
>
>
>> From my perspective it is a shame that nobody is making it anymore.  It 
>> has some very good qualities and I would imagine it would be a lot less 
>> costly than stainless.  I guess some of the troublesome working 
>> characteristics made it unworthy of further consideration.
>>
>> ries wrote:
>>> As I understand it, this type of pipe was the last product made of real 
>>> wrought iron, and was made at least into the early 70's.
>>> I have heard the last mill making it was in Sweden.
>>> It had certain chemical plant uses that kept in production until various 
>>> alloys of stainless and newer metals finally did it in in the mid 70's.
>>>
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