Gate Progress While Mentoring

I’ve been mentoring a Forest Grove High School student for his senior project. He wanted to build an iron and glass table so I taught him how to forge, weld, and then guided him through the rest.

He did a great job and I really like how it turned out. If you’d like to see more check out this video on Youtube.

As I welded the gate together I enjoyed watching the patterns of arc weld spatter on the floor.

The parts line up like little soldiers marching up and down hills.

Tomorrow I’ll start forging the flowers and vines that go in the open areas of the gates.

Letter Openers

Well I made some progress on the courtyard gate but got distracted again. Are you beginning to see a trend here?

I’ve been experimenting with some new letter opener designs. I start with 7 ½” of ¼” square stock or 3/8” round stock.

I heat up one end and forge an organic looking handle.

Then I heat the other end, fuller, flatten, and then taper one edge. After that’s done I grind the cutting edge and point to it’s finished size and shape.

To finish the letter opener I darken the steel, polish the high points, and then apply a bee’s wax finish.

The grand experment continued on with eight more designs. March first I’ll be selling these at a hair salon along with the hair pins I made last week.

Hair Stickpins

I got distracted from working on the courtyard gate this week while forging aluminum.

From ¼” x ½” aluminum I forge the design. Then I rough out the tapered end. This work is done on cold metal

Then I forge out the tapered end. This material forges like butter.



Here’s another hair stickpin I forged out of the remaining bar stock. The secret to forging aluminum is a lot of annealing.



I finish the hair stickpins with hardened coloring worked in to the design to accent the forging lines. Am I having fun or what?

Thanks to my design team for testing and
photographing the prototype designs.