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I Forge Iron

Window grate


Davor

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I just got back from vacation, I was at Island Rab in my home country Croatia. And there is an old town also called Rab, the buildings are old but surprisingly little old forged stuff (not welded with modern welders), except for few of these window grates. They are without a doubt cut with a chisel and it is quite a thick material. Just thought I'd share, never saw such design, very simple.

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  • 2 weeks later...

This design is simple, it does the job of defending and it seems that the idea came to blacksmiths everywhere. There are grilles similar to the one from Croatia in Québec city dating back to the Nouvelle-France period. 

I forged grilles like this (from the design I saw in Québec city) for the doors to my forge and larger ones for an access to a barn (pics follow). I also made some for basement windows.

I believe the design came about because it was easy to forge and it was efficient.

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Access to a barn

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Doors to my forge

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32 minutes ago, LeeJustice said:

Nice doors.  The sharp points would serve well to make it quite uncomfortable to try to squeeze through.

In Montréal, many burglaries are performed by intruders squeezing into the small windows in the bathrooms, an architectural trait. One such 'branch-grille' cut in ⅜"x1" would deter many burglars: they would go to another house. And these grilles work even when there is a prolonged electricity shortage… And they dont tell the police station that someone is presently burglarizing a house, they just stop that type of burglar from coming in.

I do wonder why I did not sell many more.

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Thomas Powers, I do take note of that. Such a pattern could very well decorate a wooden door (one strip running along the center) in one of our farm buildings. It could also make interesting (false) hinges. It probably has been done mind you.

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A slight redesign and the burglars will notify the police with their screams when they discover they're NOT getting that part of their body back out of the window. 

We used to make similar with 2 man saw blades to keep bears out of cabins. Screw a couple between the boards of the shutters so they hurt when you try to claw your way through door or windows. I made a large version of barbed wire for a gentleman who couldn't find the saws. He ordered more to line the top of his flower boxes to keep the bears off them too. 

Surprisingly it didn't take off as a marketable product. Go figure, eh?

Frosty The Lucky.

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  • 2 months later...

Yves that is very interesting, sorry I missed your post, haven’t had much time in the past few days. Still not forging because of my tennis elbow, but I have been on vacation again. This time Pula and Motovun, in my country Croatia. So here are some pictures, don’t know how old this stuff is but nothing is welded. I found the chain very interesting, never saw that before. The door grate is huge, I realize now that the picture doesn’t do it justice without anybody there for a reference, as well the same stile windows.

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I think the vertical bar was split and then the horizontal bar placed on top. I’m assuming that on the basis that the lowest row has the prongs to long to be made after the placement of the horizontal bar. Prongs of the other rows were probably made after the placement of the horizontal bars, as they must go together.

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Nowadays with the widespread availability of arc welding it's even possible to weld up the slits, dress them and have "impossible" grill work.  I saw one made by Hans Peot  where he had done that with a piece that interlaced in an oval IIRC where the joint was in the curved piece and well hidden. 

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On 10/28/2021 at 10:01 PM, anvil said:

Do you have any history on the old masters in your country?

If you are asking me, the answer is: No

I'm guessing it was a common thing to have blacksmiths everywhere, and then it just disappeared in a very short time. I asked my grandfather once how many blacksmiths where there in his village and he said more than 20 and the village was about 300 homes. They disappeared with the modern welding machine.

 

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On 10/23/2021 at 3:18 PM, Davor said:

 

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How is something like this pulled off? The vertical parts with the flare to each side…obviously doesn’t go thru the punched whole like that. I was thinking the bar went thru then the flares were chiseled out but it doesn’t look like the hole would be big enough for stock that would have enough width to pull those flares out once pushed thru the holes. It’s making me mad that I can’t figure it out haha someone tell me

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There is a lot of mass to those prongs to have been split from something that went through a hole in a cross piece. I think the prongs were welded on.

Or perhaps short vertical bars were riveted to the bottom cross piece, split in two pieces, a hollow forged in between in the crotch of the split, then the next section of bar welded into the split and the next cross piece fitted over it. Rinse and repeat. The bottom section could have prongs longer than the distance between the grate because it was done before the next crosspiece was put on. Just the next short vertical bar that went into the space between the split had to go through the cross piece.

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