3 way pass thru

[uncle mike]

The frames will actually be a little different from the one in the pics. No bends. All bars will extend straight out to a square bar frame. The whole unit then gets screwed into an angle iron frame so that they can be removed easily from the inside. They're actually going to be window security grilles. 

Gene, yes, I think Marc mentioned something similar. I think that design might be the closest thing to a "traditional" handling of that joint we have come up with. I worry that it may be too much work though for the quantity I have to produce!

I would like to take a minute to apologize to anyone I may not have answered. Everyones input is very much appreciated! Thank you!    

[Marc1]

2 hours ago, uncle mike said:

I think that design might be the closest thing to a "traditional" handling of that joint we have come up with. I worry that it may be too much work though for the quantity I have to produce!

Don't even try that. Only if you want to make one ...

And it will be nothing traditional since you will have to forge weld the ring back using an oxy. 

[ThomasPowers]

I second the MIG welding and then hot galvanization which should help keep the joint from rusting. 

[Marc1]

I agree ... HDG is the best but it shows and cleaning and filing all the bits would be an extra job.

Perhaps hot metal spray galvanising will make a smoother finish and be hidden under the paint. 

[Al Stephens]

So Mike, any pics of an original piece, front and back, with all the paint, rust cleaned off? That way we can all get some sleep and not lay awake all night thinking about it.

If you've priced to do 123 of them, at least of pic of your sample, trial pieces. Thanks for the interesting post, it's generated some good conversation on FB also. Al

[ThomasPowers]

Note the lack of proper maintenance; try to get the cost of making the new ones to include resisting environmental abuse.

[anvil]

Nice piece! The cool thing is backwards engineering to figgure out how to match it,, especially if it's a restoration.  Certainly a pic of the back is needed.  Let's assume it's a traditional piece, not contemporary, thus we select our tooling.  For the "C" scrolls. The screw head at the center of the scroll may or may not be a screw. What we see could be a weather issue.  There are a number of ways to recreate this. Lol, a round headed screw is first on the list with the slot filled with a filler. This could be hot lead. Lead looks like iron and can be painted.  It could be a blind rivet. This is a stud threaded to fit the hole, then the head is made from the stud sticking up proud. Or it could be simply a tenon on the end of the bar.   The scrolls need 2 more points of attachment on the sides. I would again use "blind" pins. In this case, a hole thru the round bar. Holes in the "C" scrolls are blind. 

Now the 3 way. A 3 way pass thru has been ruled out, so here's how I would achieve what we see. Here a rear view would be really good.  The diagionals are two pieces, not one. I believe there must be  secure joinery at the Apex. Again,  there could be a tenon at the Apex of the vee that fits into a drilled hole. This would be a forged and filed detail. Or, and most likely, a single pin could go thru the original pass thru and the diagonal pieces would have their own drilled holes to fit the other end. My bet is a single pin thru the original pass thru.   The inboard diagional piece too must be made secure. If you look closely, you will see that the "C" scroll finials just leave room to set the ends.   However, most likely this joint is blind, as are the pins on the pass thru. This is a repeat from above.  Here's the trick, and it makes the whole deal rather simple. Figure out the assembly and you have the answer.

All is pined.  All pins are blind(not drilled thru)  Assemble the quatrefoil and the associated diagionals and clamp/secure them with say, wire.  Drop this assembled component into it's home then any of my above joinery would work for the outer pieces that pass thru horizontally.  Place the outer diagionals on to their pins and put this whole shebang onto the base.  Now each corner is supported via three members.  Now place the pieces that pass thru the single hole thru the pass thru. Any of my above solutions will work here.  Set all remaining supports into the frame. I'd make tenon's on all of these. Set the tenon's and  Done.  No power tools, no braising, just plane ole simple forgework.

Thanks for the opportunity to figure out this puppy.

 And by the way, once you make a 100 plus, any contemporary tooling would just slow you down.

17 lines of empty wasted bandwidth removed

[anvil]

More stuff.  I described a form of joinery for the 45 degree angle that had a tenon on the end.  Well I remember a bottom tool I saw in, I think, was in one of Schmilerler's books that was round going in,   45 degree angles on the end, and a tenoncentered on the Apex.  I've always wondered at its use. Now I know.I suspect this was a common form of joinery.

STOP wasting bandwidth also its harder to read when you insist on placing every sentence on its own ;line

[VaughnT]

My take on it -- don't assume that smiths back in the day would have "refused" on something or "insisted" on something else.  They were humans just like us and leaped on new tools and technologies.  Rivets, welding, brazing.... at one point it was all "new".  If it made the job easier, they were generally all for it because it could decrease labor, increase profit, open new design pathways to more customers, etc.

As to the design, like others have said, it's impossible to pierce a three-way intersection like shown in the pics.

What I think they did, and a pretty common "trick", was to assemble the  horizontal bar and the diagonal bar.  If you look at the joint, the two bars have a very nicely fitted joint that looks like it took a lot of filing.  If I was doing this out of wood, it'd be a half-lapped joint, coped, filed and sanded to give me a fine intersection.

In steel, the joint would be an absolute bugger to do and get that level of clean angle between the two pieces.  Someone spent some quality time with a file!

The two pieces might have been forge-welded together with top/bottom swages dressing everything up.  Those old shops would have had tons of swages, so it's entirely possible they used the same thing time and time again for different applications. 

Maybe brazing was done to fill the joint, then someone came in with files to make it look pretty.

The vertical bar has all the piercing work done on it.  All of the other members could have been forged and riveted into place.  The hole made for the crazy corner intersection was then cut on the back face, opened up, and the crazy corner inserted.  We see this technique used by Samuel Yellin quite a bit.  With the cut in the loop on the back face, customers can't see it.  It's also easy to fill in with some weld, but that would usually not be opted for since it wasn't showing and would only add to the labor/cost of the piece.

[VaughnT]

Well, looks like the problem was solved by the good smith at Athens Forge.

I was wrong in my guess, sort of.  On the right track, but still wrong.  The only consolation is that I was thinking the same thing as the great Peter Ross!

 

[Al Stephens]

A pictures worth a thousand words. A good afternoon spent with a friend.  Al

 

[uncle mike]

Holy xxxx Fellas!  I was expecting a bit of brainstorming about this joint design between different smiths who have different backgrounds and different experiences. However, I never expected someone to head out to their forge and make one! You guys are awesome!

That dowel set-up is exactly what I pictured! The bars can easily be drilled on the lathe so they would be dead center. The birds mouth could be roughed out in the mill. The entire unit gets HDG after construction, so all joints should be sealed up nicely. Maybe a simple drill jig to line up the angled dowel hole. This jobs almost done!! We just have to do that 491 more times! Heh heh heh. 

On 2/14/2018 at 2:08 PM, anvil said:

Well I remember a bottom tool I saw in, I think, was in one of Schmilerler's books that was round going in,   45 degree angles on the end, and a tenoncentered on the Apex.  I've always wondered at its use. Now I know.I suspect this was a common form of joinery.

I agree. This is a fairly common design, and this is probably how it was done. If that bottom tool was made like a monkey tool, that would mean one bar was forged with the tenon and the other was drilled. I think I'll stick with the dowel though since there are a few different size grilles and the angles would be real simple to change accurately. 

On 2/14/2018 at 2:35 PM, VaughnT said:

We see this technique used by Samuel Yellin quite a bit.  With the cut in the loop on the back face, customers can't see it.  It's also easy to fill in with some weld, but that would usually not be opted for since it wasn't showing and would only add to the labor/cost of the piece.

Does this mean you have had the honor of working on something of Samuel Yellins? The majority of my work is restoring and reproducing historic metalwork, but have never seen Yellins work up close. Unfortunately 99% of all metalwork I see has no indication of who the creator was! Unless you see something familiar, or the owner knows the history, you can only wonder about the artist behind the work! 

[VaughnT]

26 minutes ago, uncle mike said:

Does this mean you have had the honor of working on something of Samuel Yellins? The majority of my work is restoring and reproducing historic metalwork, but have never seen Yellins work up close. Unfortunately 99% of all metalwork I see has no indication of who the creator was! Unless you see something familiar, or the owner knows the history, you can only wonder about the artist behind the work! 

Oh, no.  I wish!  A lot of Yellin's work is still "known" because it's on historically significant buildings and they're really proud to have some Yellin work.  The Yellin shop is still operating, last I heard, too.

You can see the cut-loop technique used on some of his pieces, but you have to look for it because it's not something you'd expect to see.  Sometimes it looks like a flaw or a weld line, but when you see that same thing pop up on every single through-hole in the grill, you kind of get the idea that it was intentional.

I'm pretty sure Yellin or one of his guys commented on it, saying something to the effect that it was faster/cheaper/easier to assemble a piece when you could just lay everything together and then close of up the "collars".   As long as it's on the back face, away from the viewing public, nobody is the wiser and everything looks like it supposed to look.

When I saw your pics, the first thing that popped into my mind was the cut loop technique because it would have kept the outward appearance yet made assembly so much easier.

 

[anvil]

20 hours ago, VaughnT said:

was wrong in my guess, sort of.  On the right track, but still wrong

Actually when I wrote my post above on how I would do this, one of my alternatives was as you described,, opening it up and treating it like a complex collar of sorts. But I deleted all but my "solution".

Their solution, like many others, works, but for me, I would forge the angle on the diagional pieces out of solid stock and either with a tenon or  drill the solid to accept a pin, as they did. And if I had many to do, I would make a top and bottom tool that would function as a tool to clean up the forging with tenon and as a monkey tool to better set the forged angles to fit the rounded eye detail. 

2 hours ago, uncle mike said:

Does this mean you have had the honor of working on something of Samuel Yellins?

I worked with Francis Whitaker for about 5 years as one of his students. Pretty close to Yellin! 

I also have done quite a bit of restoration work. A highlight was to be involved as the blacksmith on the restoration of the superintendent of the Air Force academy's residence.