Traditional Wrought Iron Railings and Handrails

Whilst I was a journeyman I was lead blacksmith on a very large building project that required the forging of over 400 identical tapered and chiselled railing heads for runs of straight and curved railing panels that would be drilled and leaded into the stone. However due to the number of uprights that would need fixing the contractors decided that chem-fixing and grouting would be a more suitable option. In order to make the railing heads identical and quickly I made a taper block for under the power hammer and a fly-press tool to press in the two chisel marks needed on each of the four faces of the railing head. After many weeks of power hammer and fly-press work using the coke forge to heat the bars we managed to get hold of a gas forge which sped up the process massively. Unfortunately we only had about 20 railing heads to do so it was a bit late to the party. Once all the railing heads were done I was given 4 sheets of MDF which when put together made a huge template of the curve I had to make the top rails to and started on bending the bars to match. The next job was figuring out and marking out the hole centres and punching the top rails. In order to stop the top bar from growing or warping I pre drilled the holes before punching so that I only had to remove the corners stopping the bar from moving and growing and making my job much harder. The next job was assembling the railings into panels and painting ready for site fitting. The process above was repeated for many different runs of railings and handrails on this job with convex top rails and flat top rails all to the clients specification. After many months of workshop and site work the client was extremely happy with what we achieved.

Services: Traditional forge work

Materials: wrought iron

Size: 1100mm x 1.8m per panel

Finish: hot zinc sprayed and primed and painted.