Fun at work

[wroughtn_harv]

By now you think I probably spend all my time at the puter. You figured wrong, er, not correctly maybe.

But I do have fun, more fun than the average bear I guaroantee.

This is Iris and me moving a little table around. Check out her back wheels. You've heard "light in the britches?"

BTW the table weighs a tad over eight hundred pounds and when it's out at the end of the backhoe attachment......

But I'm hammer toning some steel. That means hitting it severely, repeatedly, and often with the steel cold. So the heavier the table the better it all works.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

In the old days about the time when a trio of guys came by on camels talking about astrology I found an antique wagon wheel roller.

It was at an auction to get rid of the stuff accumulated over the hundred year lifespan of a blacksmith shop.

There were only two of us there that knew what it was thank gawd. He wanted it. I wanted it. After we'd both decided that money wasn't the criteria necessary to define ownership we ended up finding who had the hardest head. He lost.

It's manual which most folks don't like. But if you look at the web site and see the dome, well I did it with that machine. The wagon wheels on that overhead, that machine and elbow grease dancing the night away.

The good thing about manual machines is they can give you goose bumps even on a hot day watching something common and everyday transform itself into something uncommon and really wonderful right there before your eyes.

Yeah, I know, I'm the second luckiest guy in the whole world. The luckiest just died giggling.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

A different angle of the dangle

 

[wroughtn_harv]

This is the big project at hand. I'm building a set of iron doors for a seven thousand square foot home. Yeah, I know seven thousand square feet, but they do have a kid.

This is part of the door frame. The exterior is gonna be stucco. this edge you're seeing is going to be the arch over the top. It's all hammertoned and the stucco is gonna come right up to this edge. I'm cutting in flowers and assorted other stuff you can see at my work in progress album.

That's right flowers countersunk right into the jam. Craziest thing you ever saw.

Well not really. I'm working on getting to do the craziest thing you ever saw.

A developer called me wanting to have a unique sign for his new subdivision. As we stood there looking at his picture and him being nervous as one of my chickens on harvesting chicken day. The mess bothers some folks. That's okay. Neatness scares me so we're even.

I guess the look on my face let him know what his architect had drawn up was nothing new or interesting. So he left me with instructions to think about it and that he was open for suggestions.

We talked this morning. I think we're gonna dance. He was a little tentative until I fibbed a bit and told him I'd talked to graphic design artist bud and he'd thought I'd out done myself.

I had talked to a bud. He is very graphic, he can be designing, and he really is an artist. And he thinks I've stretched a bit on this one.

Oh well put on your imagination. Bolt it down tight.

Think of seeing a galvanized metal wall with a ripply kind of top edge. The wall is twelve feet long, five feet high, and white limestone columns at each end not to regularly shaped.

The letters are cut out of copper plate. They are set out from the galvanized wall. In an irregular pattern behind the letters and sorta along the outline of the irregular shape of the top of the wall yours truly had taken a grinder and here and there removed the galvanized finish to let the rust out to run wild.

I'll muriatic acid the whole shebang before I take it out to install it. That way the letters will start to green up, the rust stains will (stain). And it will be the only one this side of town cause I've never seen one like it before. And like some folks the more it's in the weather the better it'll look.

Keep your fingers crossed for me. It would be fun and different. That's the criteria for me.

 

[Harv]

Dang, Harv! I wish we were neighbors.

Other than the name confusion, I bet together we could entertain ourselves silly, and maybe re-invent the wheel while we're at it. /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

I'm loving the heck out of your pictures, your narration and your web site. Your livlihood is very much the way I'd like to imagine my retirement. Obviously you make stuff for yourself as much as for your clients. Maybe you should go into the tractor attachment business and become a paid advertiser here on TBN.

I love the look, feel and strength of wrought iron, and it looks like you're a master at the craft.

Like I said -- I wish we were neighbors.

 

[StoneHeartFarm]

Hmmm, /w3tcompact/icons/hmm.gif

7,000 square feet. Arched steel doors at the front.

This wouldn't happen to be underground, would it?

SHF

 

[wroughtn_harv]

I'm sure we'd have some fun. I do like to make things. As for retirement, well I can't see it. So many ideas, so little time.

I don't in any way want to defame the honorable trade of blacksmithing by being associated with them. That'd be like saying I'm a carpenter because I have a saw or two.

I like working iron. But I love wood and rocks too. And I'm sick enough to take wood carving classes cause I'd like to cut rock and mold steel.

You know things work in funny peculiar more than funny ha ha kinds of way most days.

First a bud called me wanting to unload a bunch of surplus counter top granite. I accomodated him. Then I mentioned that it would be neat to figure out how they did that neat stuff carving the granite. A bud pointed out it was done with a sand blaster. I had a sand blaster.

A little checking here and there and I found I could deface this granite big time. One thing let to another and I eventually came up with this picture. Another bud framed it.

It really is simple. You just blast away all the polish that is in the way of the picture. I can do a lot of black and white photos. It isn't easy but it is fun.

The kick in the shorts is you're working from the inside out. So you're spending all this time and effort and you're never really sure it's gonna be right until it's done. Then you're as surprised as anyone when it comes out okay

 

[wroughtn_harv]

No, it's not underground.

The customer is building his latest greatest dream home. We've been involved for a long time. Actually I have very few new customers. It seems just about the time I get done with a job another old customer has come up with a new project.

Imagine if you will walking up under a portico to the front door. The doors are iron three feet wide and eight feet tall and weighing somewhere in the neighborhood of three hundred pounds apiece.

The doors are rectangular with the arch being over the doors.

The doors upper corners will have <A target="_blank" HREF=http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/wroughtnharv/vwp?.dir=/work+in+progress&.src=ph&.dnm=MVC-004F---1.jpg&.view=t&.done=http%3a//photos.yahoo.com/bc/wroughtnharv/lst%3f%26.dir=/work%2bin%2bprogress%26.src=ph%26.view=t>this</A> pattern both sides. The inlaid flowers will be in all four corners of the doors and in the door jam itself.

You see I didn't want to have the traditional appearing metal doors you see everywhere. The worked metal with the patterned grill. It's sorta like cut glass in the doors. The patterns are different yet still the same.

I'm not saying that is bad. It's good or it wouldn't be so popular. I just want different. This customer like all my customers is crazy as a bed bug in this one little corner of their mind where they want me to play.

I can't explain it. I'm not sure I would turn someone like me loose with such amounts of money and with no apparent direction. But they do and I'm thankfull.

But back to the doors. I didn't want to have rectanglar shapes with grills. So I decided to come up with something I'd never seen before that I recall. The use of post caps, yup, post caps, machine forged flowers, and steel balls put together in an unusual way gave me a look that went from steel to what you might see in wood. I like that, the being different.

Placing the flowers inlaid in the door frame was the first step. Then while trying like a wild man to circumvent having to have a patterned grill I saw a sixteenth century door grill. They'd put a picture sorta in the middle of the grill to break it up. It was like thinking hard and stumbling into a stationary object and bloodying your nose.

I had the answer on how to bring something to the plate that was truly different.

If you imagine looking down at the lower part of the door envision two smaller versions of the upper corner's pattern. They have to be smaller because coming up off the bottom of the door frame is a vase. Just imagine the worked iron being ink and the vase has an ornate design as it comes up shaping out to almost touch the sides of the frame.

Out of the top of the vase will come a boquet made like the flowers in the door frame with leaves and stems.

This will be in both doors mirroring the pattern. That will be the only work in the opening, no filagree to fill space, enough is enough is enough.

The window overhead will have a version of the vase that will be shorter and wider to fit that opening. There will be the same flowers etc but arranged different enough to fit the opening but still close enough in pattern to match that in the doors.

What is fun is figuring how to make it all work. I've made all kinds of gates. But doors, now they're another bird in the flock.

Did I mention the glass? I get to etch it too. It'd be only right don't you think?

 

[wasabi]

Bodacious, Honorable Loquacious One!!

 

[StoneHeartFarm]

Harv

How long does it take to make something like that?

SHF