Jump to content
I Forge Iron

small project - present for a royal family


matei campan

Recommended Posts

here's a project commissioned by a wine producer to be offered to a royal family at the occasion when they received the title "official supplier to the royal house" (a rough translation). the key represents a so called "cellar key", decorative only, of course.
it combines a cross with a "M" monogram, the monogram of the king. it is 30cm tall.
this was a "ordered today to be finished yesterday" kind of commission, but I'm glad I succeeded to make it in time, even that it was half an hour before I had to send it. that's why the picture's not so gorgeous, made on a hurry.

post-5790-0-43219000-1343597424_thumb.jp

Link to comment
Share on other sites


not sure what you are talking about, photo is well centered, clear and in focus, A very good pic of a good job, I am sure they will be happy with your presentation.


I think he was refering to the 2.18 mb file size on the first pic. Generally I won't download biggies like that.

Beautiful job on the key!
Link to comment
Share on other sites

thanks guys!

about the pic, the problem was that I made it at 4'o clock in the morning, right on the kitchen table, under the light of the kitchen bulb. not that I have other professional lighting. yes, it's not so bad, but it could be better :)

the cross was made by forging the parts, then welded together,then prefinished, then reforged, final finished and burned repeatedly in the fire and quenched in water to get an uniform texture. finally it was looking like stolen from a museum :)
my ideal was to make it from one piece, but as it has to be finished in half a day, I didn't have the right material to start, nor the time to experiment till I'll get the shape right. so there came in the tricks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

wow matei im going to look on the blog - that is beautiful! really fantastic finish and so gorgeous close up - its blinkin lovely that is! :) very inspiring - what did you mean by repeatedly burning for even finish, what did you do? i really really like that! nice one :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

thanks for the appreciations.
after welding the parts together, finishing the welds, forging the finished areas to have the same kind of surface, filing a bit to refine the shape, there will still be areas which will differ a bit as texture. by heating the piece in the forge at a high temp to create scale on the surface and quenching in water and repeating this several times, you'll get that uniform texture. when you quench the piece in water, some scale will fall out exposing new surface, that will scale, and so on. I forgot about the wire brush. in fact you use a wire brush, too, to help the scale go down. you can experiment this.

and I also forgot about heating the piece and rubbing it with oil and then with charcoal powder - that will give that black-grey color.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...