The Gate

Once I was happy with the design of the gate I decided to use different thicknesses of brass rods to construct it – 0.3mm for the overall framing, 0.2mm for the inner supports and finally 0.1mm rods for the intricate swirls. Firstly I made the outer framing of the gates, to make sure I made it perfectly square I drew the frame on a spare piece of MDF; this with a square enabled me to solder the pieces together accurately. To make the top curve of the gate I found a bowl with exactly the right circumference that was needed, however as I was using a 0.3mm piece of rod I had to heat the rod with a flame torch to soften the metal making it a lot easier to bend into shape. 

For the soldering procedure I did the following:

-          I cleaned the sections of rod that were going to be soldered with a fibre glass pen (wearing gloves in a ventilated room)

-          Applied some flux to the joins

-          Then soldered the pieces together making sure the solder went right through the join to completely seal/join the pieces together.

-          I finally filed the solder to neaten up the joins.

 

For the outer frames of the gate I decided to make a holder due to the amount of little pieces it contains. I used odd bits of balsa wood to create the template, which worked perfectly making sure the rods didn’t move and were perfectly square/straight. 

This shows the overall framing of the gate all soldered

Before adding the verticals to the gate side supports I made sure they fitted into the side of the pillars correctly are were sturdy enough to with stand the weight of the gates. Once happy with the positioning on the pillars I added the verticals and soldered into place. 

The next stage was to create the intricate swirls contained within the gate design. I started by making a template swirl by hand, using jewellery rounded pliers etc. I found it very hard to make a smooth flowing curve on this first swirl so there was no chance of making other identical ones. I therefore came up with the idea of creating a template that I could bend the rods around. This worked perfectly creating smooth curves that all look identical. 

Once I was happy with the main swirls I soldered them in place before adding the verticals and smaller swirls. Below shows the main swirls all in place.

Below you can see the gate with all the little intricate swirls soldered into place.

Before painting I wanted to add a few last little details to the gate to finish it off. Using miliput I added little balls to the ends of the swirls to neaten up the rough edges as well as the horizontal sections to hide some of the joins. 

 Below you can see the gate with the pillars and walls, giving an idea of scale and positioning.The next job is to start painting.