> I've got a customer that wants a fireplace crane for an 1840's
> German colony house that she is restoring. Making the crane itself
> is no problem, but I'm unsure about period correct mounting
> hardware.
Well, as it happens, I live in an 1860s farmhouse built (I've been
told) by a Slauenwhite (original Ger. Schlagintweit) family in a
community most of whose original settlers were German. Our fireplace
was clearly a cooking fireplace -- wear in the soft brick hearth
plainly shows it.
Admittedly, the first Schlagintweit came here in the 1750s. By the
1860s, local Germanic traditions had been somewhat diluted by commerce
with Halifax and Boston. On the other hand, as recently as the early
1970s, there were a few elderly people in isolated rural places who
spoke German and little or no English.
So in our fireplace, there are two bars, about 3/8" x 1-3/4", mortared
into the brickwork with holes in them. The lower one is about 18"
above the hearth. The upper one is just even with the lintel.
(Obviously, I don't know how deeply they're set in the brickwork.)
We don't have the original crane. (There's a yarn attached to that, as
well as a whole jug-of-cider's-worth of yarns about the house) but it
obviously was made such that the upper pintle was pushed up through the
upper eye until the lower pintle could be dropped into the lower eye.
Some kind of collar or stop to keep it from dropping down too far,
upper pintle long enough that it didn't pop out when the lower one was
dropped in.
FWIW,
- Mike
--
Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~.
/V\
mspencer at tallships.ca /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^