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I Forge Iron

Building a 17th. Century Door knocker


JRigoni

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Any smith worth his salt needs to see the collection of ironwork in Rouen, France. The ironwork here at Musee Secq des Tournelles is held in an abandoned church and holds the finest collection of ironwork in the world.  After seeing the collection years ago, I was inspired to make this door knocker.  The backing plate and outer ring is lathe turned to look like wood moulding.  the face is made from 18 gauge sheet metal, using repousse.  I chose a popular image, the green man.  He has acanthus leaves and an acorn stuck in his beard.  The inner ring is forged and lathe turned.  Alfred Habermann made a door knocker for his journeyman status, so this is mine.

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Now for the ring.  I wanted a clean sphere on the end, so the initial work is on the lathe, turning the ball.  I built a sphere cutting tool earlier and used it for this purpose.  the arms are forged square, then octagonal.  I ended up reducing the thickness of this later.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I went to the museum about 15 years back, the complexity of the medieval window grills was amazing.

Do you have a copy of 

Decorative Antique Ironwork a pictorial treasury by Henry Rene D'Allemagne?

He was the chap who set up the collection and the book is a 400 odd page catalogue of the collection covering medieval ironwork and onwards  it is published by Dover publishing ISBN 0-486-22082-6

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Thanks, yes I have the book.  The photos aren't great but it's a treasure trove of goodies.  Far more items in the book than the museum, but it doesn't show some of the bigger projects there.  I have a ton of photos from the collection, I should post it online somewhere.

 

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