ornamental4766

As a matter of fact, its the gate thats in my IFI picture that you see to the left of my post/reply with the blue sky in the picture.

Hi Jim. I saw your penny scroll design and it looks great and the handrails in the picture is a beautiful job, great work. :rolleyes: A couple of years ago i did a very large driveway gate for a customer with scrolls in it that were 2 1/2' wide and 4' long and those were the biggest scrolls i'd ever made and the gate is a double gate that is 8' high and 16' wide total width and i put several penny scrolls in it, so yeah, penny scrolls are attractive.

Hi my name is Robert young and im a Blacksmith in Hopewell va and i own the ornamental iron company Ornamental Designs, inc. When i go to buy my steel the price for me here is .60 per pound which is still high because it don't take much for it to add up to a big bill.

Hi guys, i've been doing wrought iron work for years with all kinds of scrolls, twistts and etc and when i measure a space for a scroll to fit in i usually take a piece of stiff wire and wrap it around a scroll jig of the size scroll i want to use and then do the same thing on the other end and then straighten the wire out and measure the length of the wire to determine the length of flat bar needed for that size scroll. My question is this, what is the best way to measure a space for the length of flat bar needed to do a scroll for that space end to end, in other words, lets say i have a space 19" tall and i need to put a scroll in that space thats going to stretch the entire 19" space, whats the best way to determine how much flat bar i need to do a scroll thats going to fill up that 19" tall space. I really would appreciate any help because i've been doing it the hard way for so long that its starting to get on my nerves. Thanks guys.

Jm, very nice knives you did a beautiful job. I've been planning on making a couple of my own but i just haven't had time to because im a Blacksmith doing ornamental iron work in gates, fences, handrails, furniture and custom work. i do it the old traditional Blacksmith methods using a coal forge. I do this for a living so most of my time is for other people in order to pay the bills.

Yes it was very happy laughter because you are extremely correct about the government, irs and the state. They don't want to do crap for us but yet they want their money and if we don't give it to them we get pennilized for it 10 times over, more than what we supposed to have paid. Its like them going into our wallets without asking and taking one of our credit cards and going somewhere and running up charges on it and giving us the bill and demanding us to pay for the charges they ran up and then give us our credit card back.Then we get shot in the head if we don't. NOT FAIR by any means.

Fe-wood that is so funny what you said about the government stealing all of our money and etc. that im still laughing my butt off over here. Good one. Robert

Hi Aral, don't feel bad because i've built all kinds of forges until i finally used my creativity to come up with one that is the best i have ever built. I had fire box problems too so what i did, and this works BEAUTIFULLY, i measured what size fire box i wanted to build. Then, i went to my steel supplier and got some 1/8" thick steel plate and welded the box together and on the bottom i drilled a set of holes in a circle pattern and i drilled 3 of these in a row on the bottom. Next, i got some 2 1/2" steel pipe fittings and welded those on the bottom over the hole for the air supply. But anyway, i lined the fire box with full fire brick. I attached the fire brick with steel masonry drive in anchors. To my surprise its working great. Good luck. Keep your iron hot & hammer high. Robert

i've been welding for 20 something years and i can tell you for sure that with the sizes of metal you described you have to use a 5/32 6013 rod. I use a crap load of 6013 rods of all different sizes in my fabrication of wrought iron gates, fences, handrailings, furniture and a lot of other items. The size of the welding rod you use is going to depend on the thickness of the metal you're welding. Keep your iron hot and your hammer high.

Markh, i'vebeen an electrician for 30 years untin i had to leave the trade due to a car accident in 1990. It's quite simple. You should have 3 wires on your motor. white-black and green. The white is neutral, the black is common which is the hot side and the green is the ground. All you do is connect the white wire of your motor to the white wire of your power supply, connect the black wire to the black wire of your power supply and last the green wire of the motor goes to the bare wire of your power supply because that is your ground. BE SURE TO PUT WIRE NUTS ON ALL OF THE CONNECTIONS. Good luck. Keep your iron hot and your hammer high. Robert

new guy, i've been a working with metal for 35 years and a blacksmith for 19. I have a leaf blower on my forge that is plastic. What i did to make it work so it won't melt is i made a sheet metal connector that is just simply a straight sheet metal tube that fits around the outside of the leaf blower's air exit port and the other end of the sheet metal tube fits around the outside of the air supply pipe on my forge. Don't make the tube too long just about 4 or 5 inches long and just put sheet metal screws in it to fasten the tube to the leaf blower and air supply pipe. Keep your iron hot and hammer high.

Hi guys, i've been doing ornamental iron work for some number of years like gates, fences handrailings furniture and custom work as well. All these years i've tried to make scroll jigs but they ALWAYS turn out looking like scrap junk. I've just been bending the scrolls around different sizes of pipe and whatever else i can find that has the same radius i need. Can anybody tell me the best, most effective way to make a scroll jig or where i can buy them already made because it would make my job a lot easier because im doing ornamental iron work full time business now and i depend on it to put food on the table and pay the bills. I really would appreciate any suggestions. Thanx. Keep your iron hot and your hammers high guys.

i knew a blacksmith down in Charleston SC. that did most of the wrought iron gates, fences, handrailings etc. down there. His name is Philip Simmons. He has been a blacksmith journeyman for about 55 years. What he would do is take a piece of stiff wire thats easily bendable and he would draw a "to full scale" size of the scrolls that he wanted to make on his shop floor with soap stone then he would take a piece of the wire and bend it around the drawing on the floor he made with the soap stone and cut off the access then he would straighten out the wire and that would give him the length of stock he needs to do a scroll etc. But here is what i did to save myself a lot of time and frustration. Call the company KING ARCHETECTURAL METALS Baltimore Md. and get a catalog of there different ornamental pieces. All they do is make ornamental pieces for these ornamental shops to just weld them together. My suggestion is this: look through the catalog and pick out a scroll or etc. and get 2 of them that is the size of scroll you want to make. Then cut the rest of the scroll off that you don't need and grind down the flare on the ends until it is the same width as the rest of the piece and weld one on top of the other then weld the scroll pieces on a 1/4" thick steel plate leaving about 8" extra plate all the way around. KEEP YOUR IRON HOT AND HAMMER HIGH.