Alan Evans

Neatly done, just as I thought I had put you on the spot! And yet another cryptic comment! What is it about iron oxide that brings this out in blacksmiths I wonder? Anthony Caro once said "There are only five important things to learn about sculpture. The first is scale, the second is scale, the third is......" but I think he maay have meant a different sort of scale :)

How? Please expand. Personally I do not see it as a problem per se. It is just another option in the vocabulary of form and texture to be used as appropriate for the piece. But please do expand on the 'two years' to take care of it, I am intrigued.

One can't do much about the generation of scale, apart from taking short heats (not long slow soaks) in a carburizing or reducing atmosphere as stated above. You can minimize the visual and textural effects though which I guess is what you are asking. The oxide is harder than the metal at orange heat but powders away at black heat. You can refine your final surface texture by working the metal slightly cooler than you would when changing the section.

Considering it is 75% white spirit it is ridiculously expensive. That is why I make up my own! I make it with 80/90% white spirit to make it brushable. You can buy a sackful of microcrystalline and the poylthene wax for a few pounds.

I somehow managed to do a double post on the other thread just now, odd ain't it. I discovered that you can go back and edit it by deleting the bulk of the words which means it takes up less space on the page but you cannot delete the post

When I re-read you earlier post I realised how you probably meant it. I picked you up on it because of my own agenda...stressing that there should be fewer not more rules! I think if you are doing restoration work you owe it to the original artist to get into his head, hands, tools and processes and do as faithful a copy as possible. I then extrapolate that to honour the way he worked by designing and making things for our time using the tools, materials and processes at my disposal. Well at least attempting to. Alan

I recognise myself in everything you say above. I know exactly how you feel, the fear of plagiarism, versus the desire to emulate! But I also note that when you weren't worrying about it in the first post quoted above; you generously allowed someone else to be inspired by your piece and also openly admitted to having been inspired by the work of another! Give yourself the same credit! It has all been done before, (most of it by Gaudi!) We will inevitably be copying somebody whatever we do, so we may as well copy the work that we like! There are a couple of things I have verbalised to myself over the years about this. One can think of forms we use as vocabulary, just words, it is how you put them together and the story they tell that makes your work a poem or a thriller or a rant! Nobody expects Shakespeare to have invented all the words he used, maybe he struck lucky and did find a few that needed inventing! There is another analogy with that of a virtuoso musician playing a classical piece, they are playing the same notes on the score; but the interpretation, the feel they give it, sets it apart. I think if you really like something that someone else has done then it is really important to try and identify why that is; what elements or combination of elements are in the piece that you admire. Using the forms as vocabulary idea I try and identify how the story is being told. Rather than make a slavish copy I then try and distill that essence and use it to tell a different story! My starting point nowadays is with the site and the way people use it to give me a lead-in to the sort of character the piece needs. Then I try and find shapes and spaces and processes that describe and support that spirit. Alan

Thank you for posting that Francis, I have just watched it. Similar-ish but it wasn't the film I was thinking of so I shall have to do a You Tube search for that one. What do you think of Nature by Numbers animation? Alan

Okay :( yet another few hours digging out stuff, sigh, maybe tomorrow... :) There you go! That varied pitch of the shell looks to me like a fine precedent for the lower scrolls on Michael's grille! There is no should about it Beth, you will see in my other follow up posts here that my whole relationship with scrolls and indeed ironwork is that there should not be any restrictive design rules. We should just follow our hearts! If you reread my initial query in the other thread you will see that I observed and remarked upon what Michael had done and asked why. I made no judgement. See my response to Franks' image above, there is all the justification any body could need if it was needed (which it ain't)! I am not quite sure about the weight scenario you posit. I think the context of the arrangement will determine the actual amount of metal to space ratio required. The same effect of weight at the base could be achieved with 100mm bars and 100mm spaces or 10mm bars and 100mm spaces just maybe less pronounced. At Danger Dillon's request I will sort out some images to help illustrate...I hope he wasn't joking. Thank you for your kind words re "Spring Piece" it is the best one of three variations on a life-cycle theme I did from some 60mm square. I fancy it scaled up to be forged from 600mm square....maybe ask Michael if I can borrow his new steam hammer! Yes, he is good fun isn't he! I tend to do what he does, design and make the thing then just measure it to see how close to 1:1.618 it is! I am sure I remember the Disney film he refers to. The sequence in my mind is the invention of axle lubrication on a chariot which then promptly runs over Pythagoras and when he picks himself up he sees his flattened shape in the sand and it is in the form of a right angle triangle with a square coming off each side! Ah Ric your marvellous table is a perfect example of the sort of scrolls I think we should be exploring, very elemental! Very barbaric! Well don't get me wrong. I was writing about my studies of the shapes, and certainly not in order to encourage people to make them. It is just useful to be informed! I design/create intuitively just like you. The mathematics doesn't rule the heart! Although I did teach myself to use CAD and 3D modelling programmes so that I could construct some of the projects on the computer, I still create either direct under the hammer or with charcoal/pencil doing perspective sketches. As I have already said I will try and put some images together tomorrow.

He we go, Pandora's box and a can of worms spring to mind! I would like to state that one of the reasons I have never used scrolls in my work was that when I started out in the seventies the only form of ironwork in this country was based on the 18. Century vocabulary of collars, scrolls, acanthus and water leafs. At best it was faithful reproduction but the great majority of it was poor pastiche of this wonderful style. I felt it a waste of an incredibly versatile material that to be making something for the 20. century and only referring to 200 year old forms was awful. In no other art form was this true. Our houses, motor cars, clothes, diet, attitudes, sculpture, painting, indeed life had all moved on over that period, why not forged work? The controlling guilds and associations of the fifties, sixties and seventies and their teachers and masters of the craft honoured the vocabulary and process of the 18. century masters but I felt they did not honour their creativity. The revered Tijou for instance was only able to produce his work by exploring the properties of the cutting edge products from the rolling mill; straight bars and flat sheets. These same dyed-in-the-wool masters bizarrely linked morality to traditional process. Anything other was blacksmithing heresy! Our joyous exploration of non traditional forms (which arguably owed more to industrial forgings than the 18. century idiom) and use of “cutting edge technologies” (mainly arc welding, power hammers and gas profiling) were frowned upon; not "proper" as it was not "real" or "good" blacksmithing. The fact that the 18. Century vocabulary was developed as a direct response to the properties of the charcoal-reduced and wrought iron of the time mattered not a jot. No celebration of the properties of mild or stainless steel was to be permitted or considered! So my studies of the scroll were done more in the spirit of "know your enemy!" It was because they had become formalised and were attributed with moral value... right or wrong... that I avoided them. The paragraph below came from a paper I gave at a craft critical writing symposium at the University of East Anglia in 1997, it was in the section of my talk summarising the revolutionary development of artist blacksmithing in the previous decades “The more interesting women’s show at Collection in Ledbury recently took our revolution and turned it over again; we had rebelled against the classic elegant scroll work of the eighteenth century style which was still being reproduced ad nauseum in 1980; but here every piece in the show included the scroll or spiral in one form or another, although none were of the refinement of proportion and finish of the 18C. These artists had none of our hang ups and were doing wonderfully crude and barbaric scrolls of such humour and power. 15 years ago they would have been thought of as merely incompetent smiths. Our little rebellion had enabled them to explore the expressive quality of one of the most powerful and basic forms known to man....something which I feel is still denied to me.” Talk about hangups eh! Alan P.S. You may notice that I did not mention the development through the design flowering of metalwork from the Arts and Crafts movement, Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Charles Rennie Macintosh. To the 18.Century fixated Blacksmithing Establishment in the seventies these were mere aberations and thus to be ignored. P.P.S Just thought of another one that might be better for the first line “cat amongst the pigeons”

I am pounding out a response to the responses but while I do, I encourage you to have a look at the film linked below. It will give a better experience of the notions of the golden section than the caliper above which I think is a bit of fun but of limited use. I just use a calculator...It is easy to remember the ratio of 1:1.618 and when you understand that the reason it is golden and elegant is that it is the same ratio as 0.618:1 that it also comes out of the Fibonacci number series is double joy! Danger Dillon had it right in the other thread when he said:- "I tend to just work on a composition until I am happy or it is suitable to live with. This work went through many changes a evolution that was shown in the design sketches. I am not rooted in historical reference and tend to go with my gut and what feels right, intuition." Spoken like a true artist! I thoroughly agree that that is what we should be doing. We should not be getting hung up on academic exercises...(I know I know I started it!) I think it much more important to ask yourself "why" questions. But if you must know "how" to set out a spiral using those calipers do a google image search on [golden spiral] , the first image I get shows a spiral plotted on a series of golden rectangles as measured in the caliper video. For a much better understanding look at the movie and wonder. Of course there is a bit of a fudge in it. The nautilus shell is similar but does not actually conform to the golden spiral, it is just another lovely spiral all of its own! Nature by Numbers http://www.etereaestudios.com/docs_html/nbyn_htm/movie_index.htm My connection / computer was too slow for the vimeo version but the You Tube one played fine. The web site has a really well explained background section in Spanish and English. http://www.etereaestudios.com/index.html Alan

This has come about because I was asked to expand on a brief description of scrolls and growth lines in another thread in the 'critique my work' section. It is slightly less brief but still just scratches the surface. I am on a bit of a hiding for nothing trying to describe elements of my design philosophy here so I stress the “my understanding” bit! I have never used the traditional scroll form in my work, but studied them and made many of them on 18. century restoration jobs when I assisted Alan Knight in the seventies. The spiral is one of the earliest forms used by man. Examples are found inscribed in 4000 year old Stone Age tombs in Ireland and 40,000 year old rock petroglyphs in Australia. It is said to symbolise the reproductive organs in the form of the Earth Mother and is often found on “goddess” figures. The Australians interpret the form as symbolising running water. Both fundamental concepts. These were often “clock spring” spirals neither the incised lines nor the spaces between them varied in width. Similar spirals to those which we associate with the 18. century European ironwork style can be found in nature in the arrangement of pine cones, artichokes, whirlpools, galaxies and snail/ nautilus shells and etc. A logarythmic spiral can be drawn based on the Fibonacci series numbers which resolve into the golden section (1to 0.618) can also be used as the basis. The classic 18. century scroll depends, like many sculptural forms, on the spaces between the shapes as much, if not more than the shapes themselves. In this instance the space is progressively opening away from the centre. The progression is key. I think it easiest to describe this in terms of a taper.The progression of a tapered bar shares many of the same characteristics. We are all aware that the eye will follow the line of a taper towards its tip, we can see and sense the movement. Tapers come in four main types:- 1, Convex or cigar shaped where there is little movement to start with and then it speeds up to the tip, these can look either dumpy or strong, depending on their context 2, Straight where the progression is regular and the movement therefore constant 3, Concave or hollow where the movement starts fast but then slows up towards the tip, these can look either elegant or weak depending on their context. 4. Irregular where there may be a parallel section in the middle or just one too many hammer blows at one point which interrupts the movement and disturbs the eye! They all have their place and contribute to the whole by complimenting or contrasting with the other elements of the piece. The spiral space described by a scroll in the classical 18. century work is a number 2, a constant taper. The growth line I refer to is that of the same movement along an element or in a piece which has greater mass at the base and is lighter and finer at the top; think relative weight of trunk, branches and twigs of a tree. This may be described by a taper or a series of section changes where the mass is constantly diminishing. It can be very minimalist; a square or rectangular section bar that has chamfers run along half of it will generate this apparent movement. If a number of these bars are placed beside one another as verticals (in a grille for instance) with the chamfered section at the top, the amount of light passing through the grille is increased in the chamfered area making the bottom section appear heavier and more dense. I almost always use this ‘massing at the base’ in my work. In the case of gate panels the weight gathers in the bottom hinged corner, so that towards the latch side and the top it is lighter both visually and physically. In gates this has the real advantage of less strain on the hinges and less inertia to overcome to open them, as well as any subjective aesthetic merit. I think I will stop here otherwise I will go on all night. Alan

Ah that would explain it. The legs are splaying out and then springing back. If it slides out the back one and drags in the front one it would move a bit like one of those pressed steel hobby horses from a few decades ago!

Sorry to the OP to be easing off topic now but @Thomas what is a Bader? My part built new shop does not have three phase power so I am toying with the idea of either a big generator run on cooking oil or direct driving the hammers with a donkey engine and shafting. A friend over here has a Goliath (Little Giant type) hammer which he runs from a stationary engine, the interesting extra is having speed control. He has it in the shed next door and just the shaft comes through, just in case you were about to mention the motor noise!

Never stupid to ask questions... Your description of the speed the red forms sounds unusual. Is it definitely appearing while you watch it out of the black oxide surface, or is it just there when the metal has cooled down? If its the latter it sounds more like a form of soot or other contamination than rust. If you heat a piece of galvanised or zinc plated steel to red heat, the zinc burns off and can leave a white powdery residue. Is there any lacquer or rust prevention coating on this steel? does the colour continue to appear after the second or subsequent heats? If you are sure it is rust (scrape a bit off onto a board and see if it will be picked up by a magnet) you may have discovered a new process we can all benefit from for patination! We will just have to reproduce the exact circumstances. The smith I worked with, Alan Knight used to spit on the anvil to make the scale pop off. The other time he would do it was with an evil grin, a wink to me, and a welding heat when he was fed up with whoever was hanging around bending his ear, a shower of sparks at crotch height seemed to be quite off putting to some people...can't think why!

Luddite...Though I can see why the attraction would pall!

Intriguing. What have you seen that you did not like? I found that the single acting 12 ton press was much the same as the fly press in action and just used all my fly press tooling under that. So that was bending straightening, punching, bowl making, basically anything I wanted fast blows/squeezes for. The double acting ( 30 ton down 15 ton up) Ward Forsyth mainly does the punching and drifting, 20mm up to 120mm so far... The 100 ton horizontal Finlay does all the big heavy stuff The advantage over the flypress (apart from using the power company energy rather than mine!) is that both hands are free for tool and workpiece manipulation like with a foot operated hammer.

I have a couple of fly presses, a 4 and an 8 and my experience mirrors that of WeCo...the fly presses gather dust since I spent £300 on a 12 tonne HiTon single acting (spring return) C frame hydraulic press. The no. 8 had cost me £350 a few years before... Unless you have specific use that only the fly press could do, you may consider cutting out an historic stage of the development of our craft and learn by others experience! Go straight to hydraulics! A wise man learns by his mistakes...but a lucky man learns by the mistakes of others!

Blimey! Can't imagine that, is it a particularly light anvil and stand? Mine has never moved in use. It is on a cast stand which is raised up on 3'' blocks of wood and just sits on the concrete. I suppose my shop is not over large for the size of projects I have taken on, so I have always had to reckon on a flexible space and I second the idea of being able to move the anvil. No matter how big the shop it is always going to be in the wrong place when you come to straighten out that 6 metre length or swing the new assembled sculpture around. Even the 100 ton press is permanently sitting on rollers and two out three power hammers can be moved, the 3CWT hammer is the only one bolted down but that has a separate anvil, every thing else is on rubber buffers which need minimal sideways location. You may also consider not bolting it down but just having a couple of drop in pegs which would solve your side shifting. I have a seldom used bar bender which I position in the same place and drop a couple of bits of 16mm round into holes drilled in the concrete.

The sieve for removing the drop ins could be just a smaller tub with a hole in it...may take a bit of time to drain... bigger holes quicker to drain but fewer drop-ins rescued...but wait I can see a perfect bit of mesh in the background of your picture....one dark night...

I got fed up waiting for the download too :) so I haven't seen the blemish but don't be too hasty to repair small gouges. Sometimes they can be just what you need to stop a piece of round rolling about when you need to touch it with a file or centre pop. I often use a groove across the top of one of my vices as a mini swage e.g. when I am forging down copper tube for gas furnace jets.

Looking at your photos there have you ever had a problem with tripping over the edge of the matting? Looks just where I would stub my toe! Would a foot block sized piece of the matting superglued onto the foot block still act as a cushion and not create trip hazard /burning smells when you cut off a hot bit?

When you say beaten up what's the problem specifically? I have just come back from the BABA AGM where i seemed to spend most of the time wandering around the forge area trying to find a radius on the edge of an anvil like the one on mine at home in order to achieve a particular form! I hate new anvils with no soft edges, I have all sorts of different radii on the edges of mine, choose the one you need. If you want a sharp edge lay a block on the anvil or make up a square edged hardy tool. Mine anvil has a gentle hollow in the middle of the face which is just perfect for straightening and bending. Get to know the anvil's "faults" and celebrate them! So my vote is leave well alone, maybe grind a radius where you have a chip. If you must weld I have always repaired my anvils and power hammer pallets with 312 dissimilar metal rods, stick or TIG.

Yes it was a good bash. Good to see both old familiar and new faces