I have a particular interest in medieval decorative and domestic ironwork. Over the years I have acquired a number of samples, such as elborate strap hinges for lids of chests, lockplates, and have tried to replicate examples of these. I can get the shape and thickness about right on the anvil and with file, but the problem is always the finish and final appearance of the surface metal.

Genuine medieval ironwork did not have that artificial appearance that was popularised some years ago using a ball pein hammer to emphasize the idea that this work was hand-made. On the genuine article marks of the hammer were few, and edges have a softened appearance - but not hammered. The surface often has irregular pittings that look like faults in the metal itself, and where there has been rusting, the pitting is very varied and sometimes deep.

Does anyone have experience of trying to reproduce this appearance ? I have tried starting with mild steel and with wrought iron, but the surface always ends up looking either too even textured or too contrived. Do I really need to begin work with deeply rusted stock? Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Pentrene

Why do you need it to look 500 years old? When it was made it did not have rust and pitting etc. The smiths probably tried to give it a nice smooth surface to show their proficiency. Yours too will gain that look after many, many years. If you have to have that pitted look I mitch see if there is a way to etch some sort if pitted look.

Deeply rusted, pitted steel is one good way to get that deeply rusted pitted look.

Edited June 21, 200916 yr by arftist
spelling

Interior work was often filed/ground smooth and shiny. As there is today, there has always been a huge variation in the quality and finish of ironwork. German and northern European work often has the edges stop-chamfered with a file and the faces left as forged. Welcome to the site; where are you by the way?

One idea: George Dixon talks about how they did their textured finish in the Samuel Yellin shop, but I can't remember where I saw the reference. Either in the "Artist Blacksmith Quarterly", or "The Hammer's Ring" or one of the books on Yellin.

Another more likely idea. They were using WI of dubious consistancy, and would have probably had to forgeweld up to the size and length of stock neccessary. You will get a lot of "character" showing through after 5 or 6 hundred years, especially on WI that has been welded up from several different sources ;-) Thomas Powers has a great strap hinge that is welded up out of atleast 4 pieces in ~10", did Scott ever get that back to you? Maybe Thomas has a few suggestions???

In my coal forge fire scale does a great job of creating pitting and the general rustic look on iron surfaces. I'd suggest that you limit your file use severely, avoid forging into the darker red or black heats, make minimal use of your wire brush, heat to a nice yellow before you start hammering. This will get you a long way toward the aged appearance you seek. If you can start with salvaged iron that may happen to be a bit rusty and/or pitted to begin with, that will help too. Utilizing salvaged wrought iron would be a nice touch. I have found that farm sales are a good place to buy it cheaply... just yesterday I was outbid (at $67.50) for a pile of around two ton of such iron that I would guess is around 20 to 30 percent WI. They had two old machines that they could not give away which were almost certainly framed with some WI... a guy with a car hauling trailer could have bought them for $5.00 each and winched them both up on one load! I am not sure what they were but they were VERY old and tractor sized machines.

I didn't realise that you wanted to create 'fakes' rather than 'reproductions'. The only way to reproduce rust is by accelerating the corrosion. MS will not show the same pattern as WI. Forged-in rust pits will look rough but won't look like aged original work. With pieces like latches and hinges that have moving parts the pattern of wear is also important and difficult to reproduce convincingly.

The best way to make something look 500 years old is to leave it for 500 years apart from that we have to blend in repairs to old work so as not to look like they have been repaired the last job was 5 large church windows from 1717 all the iron section at that time was hand drawn and so varied in size along its length this is were you must start and then continue with the same tools and techniques that were used at the time the originals were made this takes a long time to build up the skills to make it look convincing,just keep trying it will come right in the end.

Often the medieval smith went to great lenghts to protect the iron, from surviving accounts we know the following techniques were used....
Tinning - on hinges, lock plates, nails etc.
Blacking - heating the metal and rubbing over with wool cloth of bunches of feathers to give a black finish.
Gilding - if you want to go seriously up market.
Painting - probably more for decorative purposes than presevation.
white metal - such as armour etc that is highly groung and polished.
And finally for exterior ironwork heating the metal then rubbing over with pitch - this gives a glossy black finish which if used on hinges and then fastened in place with tinned nails gives a really flashy appearence.
Basically the medieval smith put as much care into metal treatment as we do today - all the pitting / rust etc is the result of hundered years of wear and neglect.

Thanks everyone for your advice. I think there may be some clues in what you say. I'll look for WI in farm implements, rely more on firescale and so on. I think you are right in some of the original metal not being of the best quality, so there are pits etc even in new work. I haven't tried etching so any experience there might be useful.
The reason I am being fussy is that I am sometimes faced with the problem of repairing something or making a replica of an exisiting strap hinge. Trying to produce something that doesn't look so obviously new or faked is the challenge.
Just to be clear, I'm not in the business of trying to deceive for monetary gain - collecting very old furniture is one of my interests and I often get them with much of the ironwork either missing or replaced with very makeshift parts that just don't look right.
Thanks
Pentrene

As Devon says, the starting material was hand drawn... Never use modern stock, for example: if you need 3/8'' sq make it from 1/2''dia. Hammer marks don't look right unless they have actually moved the metal rather that just bruising the surface.

Another way is if you need sq stock hammer it out of round and if you need round stock hammer it out of square.

One good method of avoiding folks who buy high level reproductions with intent to defraud is to clearly stamp the date on a part that is not seen---like the wood side of a strap hinge.

One method of accelerating decay is burying under a manure pile for a time (dependent on location, ammount to be decayed, etc...)

Edited June 22, 200916 yr by ThomasPowers

Think of what materials were generally available to a Medieval blacksmith for "treating" the outside of metal work. That then points towards animal fats, some vegetable oils (like olive), oils from grains like linseed, and pitch from pine trees. Each of these will give a different look when applied to hot metal.

"Aging" under a manure pile does work, but slowly. The use of a little bleach will really speed up that artificial aging - without that "new rust" look. It ... stains ... the metal as well to give it that "long time exposed to the weather/elements" look - including pits.

A friend repairs Scandinavian iron work from the 1500's to 1800's - on things like immigrant trunks. Matching the same wear/age of iron work to the remaining parts gets tricky. Lately he has been using that new stuff called Pure Iron instead of re-working wrought iron. He's had lots of good things to say about that Pure Iron.

Mikey - that grumpy ol' German blacksmith out in the Hinterlands

Tinning and the burnt feathers are both mentioned by Theophilus as finishes for iron in the book "Divers Arts" he wrote around 1120 A.D....