3. a metalphor?

all hold on bending metal.

an emergency ladder is needed...

more correctly, a library ladder is needed urgently.   me old mate, lovely dave, a carpenter of some distinction, is making a four metre high bookcase that needs a ladder.   it must be light, elegant and unobtrusive, and run on a track attached to the top.   he concluded it would look too chunky made in wood.

he came into the workshop to take some samples of the sections of steel i'd use just to make sure the clients were happy with what they'd be getting.   i got the go ahead a few hours later.

to keep the structure light it was to be made of thin steel tube sections: the treads cut from a 30 x 20 rectangle section and the long uprights from a rather fetching D section.   these particular shapes and sizes are only available from one supplier in the uk and not wanting to bore you with the whole story, suffice it to say i very nearly fell out with them in trying to get it.

anyway, following the palaver of getting the specific section of steel in, in time, i set about fabricating the ladder.

as you can see the only available space to make a four metre long ladder was on the floor...

ladder made, i set about making a system for the top to be on wheels to run in a track.   again i won't go into the ins and outs of it, but it took a few attempts and a couple of days to get right.

finally, exact height of the bookcase double checked, angle of the ladder defined and bottom cut, filled and ground down to sit squarely on the floor; the steel was cleaned and patinated, all set to go.

my concern was that the height would be wrong, i'd made some adjustment possible, but still...

but it fit...  perfectly.   so it was waxed and installed.

... and the clients hate it.

so if anyone's interested in a light, elegant, beautifully made four metre library ladder that took nearly a week of my time to get right, nearly cost me a useful steel supplier and ate into my gate deadline, please let me know.

til next time...

2. painting the town red...

... well, the floor... purpley grey.
and white.

this week was all about getting the design onto the floor.   this was so i had a true size template, something to shape the metal to.

these gates are to sit between the side of the house and a wall, possibly a boundary wall, certainly it's an edge to the garden.   and there's a path, let's call it a garden path, that runs through them.
now, the last time i'd been to the site there was the side of the house and the foundations for the wall separated by 2.7 metres of mud.

i was due to go back to the house to install a balustrade that was to be fitted in mid january.   an ideal opportunity to check on progress, see if there's a scent of a path, refine the gate design...
however, in the way these things go, they've not yet got the stone on the stairs, so i'm still waiting for that ideal opportunity.

it's probably worth pointing out that i'm based in london, a hundred odd miles from the site in the cotswolds.   my guess was that if i took time out to visit i'd just be travelling to see the same 2.7 metres of mud.

needing to get on with work it seemed best to paint the design on the floor as one continuous panel (good for the flow of lines aswell) and then slice sections out for the posts and gate frames later.   the other advantage with this is that if it turns out to be a narrow path double gates won't look right and i'll be able to change it without too much hassle.

the original sketch was printed out with a grid on with 31 points along the bottom, each representing 100 mm so that i'd end up with 3.1 metres of panel, well you never know...

having drawn the grid on the floor of the workshop i started painting.

purpley grey because there was a nearly full tin in adam's cupboard and he didn't think he needed it.   (wish i'd nicked it to paint the doors at home - it's lovely).   adam, by the way, is whose workshop i share.

the white was to correct mistakes and sharpen the lines to give a better idea of their true thickness when they became metal.

there are more pictures but the changes are fairly slight so i'll cut to the chase and just add the last one.   in the end i changed some bits i didn't like and tried to make it make more sense organically.   i wanted to be sure i knew where each end / curl started from, so there wasn't an end just going to another end.   (two ends don't make a...)
as to why such things might be important to me, that'll be covered in the as yet unwritten 'making mental work' blog.   (the amount of people that think i'm a mental worker when i tell them what i do...)

anyway, this is the new floor of the workshop.

it'll change as i get down to making it and i'm still not entirely sure about some bits, but now i need to start bending metal.

til next time...