Architectural Ironwork
Forging Texture

b y :     e n r i q u e

Not long ago I had the opportunity to take a walk under a full moon along the shoreline of Emerald Isle, North Carolina. The 2 a.m. stroll allowed me to experience one of the great visual wonders available to us on this planet.

I don't know if you have ever had the opportunity to see the light show created by reflections of light dancing across the darkened surface of the ocean at night. If you stop and allow the light to penetrate your eyes and soul, you will experience the greatest light show on the planet! There is something about the constantly changing light reflections which become mesmerizing and heal the soul.

Watching the oscillating patterns made me ask myself, "How can I reproduce this light pattern in my artwork?" It seemed impossible because of the constant motion of the water, but I was so intrigued with the visual effect the reflections created that I felt I had to try. Luckily, my current project provides the perfect opportunity to experiment with this concept, because my Dragonfly Railing has a water scene as one of the main design elements. As you can see, the main balustrades are curvilinear in form and represent small waves in a pond, but I believe that it still doesn't give the piece enough visual motion. So what else can I do to give it that sparkle? After considering various treatment possibilities, I decided to make a set of dies that have a texture that mimics the light reflections which are cast by the moon on moving water.

My approach for making the dies for my 25 lb. Little Giant mechanical hammer was to lay hard surfacing welding rods onto a high carbon die blank I had already forged on my 4B Nazel pneumatic forging hammer. I used the lowest possible current to create high ridges on the weld bead, then brought up the dies to a nonmagnetic heat - just enough heat to displace the carbon for ultimate hardness, and quenched the top surface for hardness. Annealing was controlled by various water quenches to allow the heat from the inside to anneal the surface of the die without removing the hardness.

• Digital Design - Introduction
• 1st Floor Railing - cattail newel post
• 2nd Floor Railing - perspective
  • Scaled Elevation view
• Dragonfly Split Level Railing
  • Tracing perspective
  • Creating Scaled Elevation
  • Skewing for perspective
• Outputting Scaled Drawings
  • Image Transfer

• Forged Texture Reflections
  • 25 lb. Little Giant Demo
• Silver soldering cattails
• Applying Verde patina for color
• Metamorphosis of an Iron Dragonfly
• Yin and Yang of twisting wrought iron
• Forge welding for natural form
• Basis for a distinctive newel post

• Installed railings

Contact:

E. Vega Studios

p h o n e : 9 1 9 - 3 6 7 - 7 2 3 3

apex, north carolina

c o m m e n t s ?

So now that I had these new dies for texturing, I had to rethink the stock size for the waves. I originally ordered 1/2" by 1 1/2" cold rolled steel because the plan was to draw out and texture the material using my flat dies. But since these new texture dies would have a deep drawing effect on the steel, I decided to try 1/2" square stock. I was amazed that I was able to get a final textured material which was approximately 3/8" by 3/4". This worked well for both overall stability and had enough width to meet the 6" opening for code requirements.

If you haven't had the chance to experience the forging of steel with a coal forge or a Little Giant mechanical hammer, go to the next page by clicking here or use the right arrow at the bottom of the page.

It's amazing what a little heat and a lot of hammering can do to a piece of steel!

last refreshed Mon, Sep 14, 1998
© copyright 1998 E. Vega Studios