collaring.

[whitebear]

hello all. my name is Jonah i'm an apprentice to master Whitebear A.K.A. Son Daughtry i'm using his internet name becasue i live with him and don't have my own computer.
my question is. about collaring. i need to make a candelabra for my October project (with no help from Mr. Daughtry) it needs to have at least 3 candle cup holder places. and i can only use tools and equipment from the 1800's so again. my question is. can a collar give a tight enough connection to hold up the candelabra arms. like this one. iForge porject number 105
thanks you
Jonah
and greetings from Mr. Daughtry. (whitebear)

[HWooldridge]

Yes, but they need to be properly constructed and installed. Francis Whitaker's "Blacksmith's Cookbook" has a very good chapter on collars. Suggest you read that and see if you have other questions.

[whitebear]

thank you very much. i will look into that book maybe Mr. Daughtry has it laying around somewhere. does anyone have any other ideas for a candelabra type hting other than the one that i poster earlier. just a little intro on myself. i'm a 16 year old boy with a background and heritage in tinsmiths and coppersmiths. but my paretns "sold me" to Son Daughtry to be a blacksmtih apprentice and have been such for almost 5 years now. i live with him and his wife in a small country house in texas. i have experience doing just about ever blacksmtihngi technique there is. i can forge weld i'm jsut not very good at it.

thanks again
Jonah

[Anvilfolk]

Hi!

It's great to see people are still using apprenticeships for such wonderful things as blacksmithing! It's inspiring! Someday, I hope to be able to have that kind of training, if even just for one year.

Did you notice this link while browsing the site you gave us? It has some information about collaring, even though half of it is about welding (which doesn't interest you, I think).

And also, funny thing you mention candelabra. Just last weekend I was visiting the Museu do Carmo here in Lisbon, and one of the few sections that didn't collapse with the Great Earthquake of 1755 had a huge candelabra, hanging from the ceiling. I gaped at it until one of my friends clouted me and told me to move on

Anyway, if it wasn't original, it was a replica, and the whole thing was joined together with collars, so it was possible to make a thing that big without welding

The one collar I've done is pretty tight, but if you knock it around a bit, it will move. It may depend a lot on the tightness of the bend. If you have a really tight bend, it won't have anywhere to go, but if you have a loose, open bend, it might be easy for it to move around.

I'm sure you can there are other solutions... instead of a "regular" collar, you can do like that link I left here, where they wound a finer piece of steel around the area, so even if one isn't perfectly tight, the others compensate. You can probably also make a few grooves on the pieces, and then make the collar fit snuggle against those, which should make it pretty solid.

Good luck! And do post some pictures when you're done, or even before!

[HWooldridge]

To paraphrase Whitaker, he premade the collars using hardened dummy blocks after tapering the ends so they would lap nicely when closed. He would then reheat and bend them back open so the laps opened enough to allow the joined pieces to slip into the collar. A job might have hundreds of collars so most if not all were premade before assembly started. The pieces were positioned so they could be struck easily, the collar was reheated in the forge then moved quickly to the joint location, and the collar closed with a hammer. Like any other fastener (including welding), having multiple collars made for a tighter assembly since it can't rack as easily - although both Whitaker and other older texts I have read used a sag factor on gates because some amount of drop was inevitable. However, this would be neglible in a candelabra.

[whitebear]

thank you very much for helping jonah out alittle bit. he is moving very quickly through the learning process. he has made knives along with many other iron works and it suprizes me everytime i see his hammer skills. i took him on when he was only 10 yaers old. and when he came to me he had olny done cold tin work with his parents (who never let him get close to the fire) but that changed rather quickly. i think that becasue it's his first time using a collar connection i'll help himout alittle bit. in fact he's out in the shop right now trying some of the things y'all have shared with him. tomorrow his lesson of the week is gonig to be scarfing. to prepare him for forge welding. he has only ever done faggot weld as far as i know. he's a stout young man with a strong arm. hopefully before his 10 year apprenticship is over we will make him an anvil. i've only made one anvil in my life and i told myself i would never do it again. until...he asked me if we could do it the other day. but first.. he needs to learn to weld very well. and built up his arms to swing those 26# hammers used to weld the anvil together.
thank you all again very much for taking an interest in jonah. i know he appriciates it.

Son Daughtry

[bruce wilcock]

collaring like most jobs the more you do the easier it gets ,the basics have been well coverd by H Wooldrige, the most important and easily over looked part of the job is that the parts to be collared, must fit together well no daylight if there is a gap a collar will find it.

[evfreek]

Hi. I asked a very similar question to the local blacksmith recently. He recommended against it. He said that a lot of blacksmiths were familiar with the "hide the arc weld" type of collar. These collars are very strong, and will not twist out of line (weakest part of a collar). Usually, these are applied in places which are kind of tricky to put a forge weld in to.

His suggestion was to dispense with the idea entirely, and replace the joint with a split leg tenon, with the leg riveted in two places. Collars are more appropriate in locations where the twisting moment is neutralized at the end of the lever (bar).