Spreading Flat Bar

This is another 'work in progress' clip I shot yesterday while working on the Richards House Railing project:

A new clip on YouTube

The work shown is preparing the ends of each of the heavy flat bars that compose the individual upright elements of the railing. The starting material is 3/8 thick by 1 1/2 wide. As you can see in the clip, these are slightly upset and knocked to a diagonal as the first step. Then each is spread under a Hoffi style crown die under my small air hammer. You will see that the construction of the hammer only allows me (easily) to use a profile die on the bottom surface. Next the surface is worked over with a hand hammer (1000 gm)to remove the marks from the die. The finial step is to straighten one side of the bar and even out the curved line on the other side.

The next stage for each element is drawing down from the centre of each bar towards the spread line at the end. At the narrowest part of each element, the stock is hammered to roughly 1 inch wide, increasing the thickness to about 1/2 inch. These tapers run about 34 - 38 inches long (depending on the individual element. Last each element is formed into a wide semi elliptical curve to fit the overall layout.