Many products described as wrought iron, such as guard rails, garden furniture and gates, are actually made of mild steel. Many items, before they came to be made of mild steel, were produced from wrought iron, including rivets, nails, wire, chains, rails, railway couplings, water and steam pipes, nuts, bolts, horseshoes, handrails, wagon tires, straps for timber roof trusses, and ornamental ironwork, among many other things.Wrought iron is no longer produced on a commercial scale. However, as properties such as brittleness of mild steel improved with better ferrous metallurgy and as steel became less costly to make thanks to the Bessemer process and the Siemens-Martin process, the use of wrought iron declined. The demand for wrought iron reached its peak in the 1860s, being in high demand for ironclad warships and railway use. Moreover, the presence of slag produces a structure which diminishes the effect of fatigue caused by shocks and vibrations.Historically, a modest amount of wrought iron was refined into steel, which was used mainly to produce swords, cutlery, chisels, axes and other edged tools as well as springs and files. The non-corrosive slag constituent causes wrought iron to be resistant to progressive corrosion. The slag characteristic of wrought iron is useful in blacksmithing operations and gives the material its peculiar fibrous structure. The chemical analysis of the metal shows as much as 99 percent of iron. Neither wrought iron nor mild steel contain enough carbon to be hardenable by heating and quenching.It is a highly refined iron with a small amount of slag forged out into fibres. The modern functional equivalent of wrought iron is mild or low carbon steel. It was given the name wrought because it was hammered, rolled or otherwise worked while hot enough to expel molten slag. Before the development of effective methods of steelmaking and the availability of large quantities of steel, wrought iron was the most common form of malleable iron. Wrought iron is tough, malleable, ductile, corrosion-resistant and easily welded. It is a semi-fused mass of iron with fibrous slag inclusions (up to 2% by weight), which gives it a "grain" resembling wood that is visible when it is etched or bent to the point of failure. We did something different and more personalized here.ĭrawing Print Here’s the layout print (PDF) for the 104″ x 32″ balcony.Wrought iron is an iron alloy with a very low carbon (less than 0.08%) content in contrast to cast iron (2.1% to 4%). You’ll notice some smaller scrolled heart-shaped pieces in the center that I call the “medallion”.After typing it out, I regret not sourcing them before, I suppose the leaves could be ordered from somewhere and welded on….I assumed both that we’d leave out the stuff we’re not experts on, and those involved in fabrication of this project are not blacksmiths. This one has various acanthus leaves that weren’t included in my design, although I like the way they look.You can see in this image that it’s a “ Juliet Balcony“, usually meaning it’s merely for window or door decoration, and not an actual deck for standing on (because it doesn’t have a deck, or its deck doesn’t have enough room for feet).I was given this image as an example of what was wanted for style.
The balconies are very similar, just different widths on the deck subweldments, which drives several other changes in miter angles, front rail curve radii, and corresponding changes to the size of decorative faux wrought iron inserts to make up the differences.ĭifferences in decorative inserts between 2 different widths of balconies A Picture is Worth a Thousand Sketch Entities.This was planned to be just a set of 2 balconies for a residence, so they were fabricated from steel for convenience of materials on hand.I was asked to design a set of balconies to match 2 different french door openings on 2 different landings for a residence.♥ FEA Simulation Safety Test: Deck Loaded for Weight (Go to the balcony FEA post) ♣ Balcony Assembly Shop Prints & Renderings ♦ Curved (Rolled Sheet Steel) Decorative Balcony Designs that Mimic Wrought Iron Fabrication ♠ How to: Wrap Flat Extrusion Onto Curved Face in SolidWorks