Garden Arches and Rose Arbours - China vs Australia

In the previous post I mentioned 'The Wedding', the one major event which was taking up every waking hour, not only with typical wedding preparations but also the mad haste to "fix and clean up" the property for the pending celebrations. Now, Murphy's Law or should I say curse, has a way of embracing this property at the most inopportune times.  One such event was when the rose arch that my prized Pierre de Ronsard was trained against had finally given up the ghost.  Our 'cheap and cheerful' China-made arch which I brought up here 7 years ago from the city, being typically made from cheap thin walled tubing, finally rusted through ... completely.  I was devastated to find my beloved Pierre on the ground. 

Despite making and selling garden arches I've been without one myself for quite some time, so here was the prime opportunity to get a sturdy, strong and more appropriate garden arch made up. The climbing rose was positioned right where the tea and coffee was to be served after 'The Ceremony', so no excuses, making a rose arbor was one job that was not going to be filed into the invisible list of 'to do's' which Andrew kept in his head. This was a project that needed to be done and finished. Unfortunately we didn't have time to powder coat it, but it did get a lick of black paint with some gold rubbed over the flower motifs. 

It's a prime example of wrought iron made to fit.  One side of the garden arch fits the purpose of supporting my Pierre de Ronsard and the other side, with its decorative wrought iron work is ornamental with beautiful scrolls and hot stamped steel flowers. Being narrower in depth it doesn't block the path either.  This is one arch which is not going to rust away and should last a couple of decades at least.

Wrought iron pool fence

It's amazing how much gets done when the pressure's on!  The night before Andrew went in for a hip replacement our daughter announced that she wanted to get married, the bombshell dropped when we found out she was giving us only 9 months notice - they wanted an autumn wedding.  Miss Independent was only 19, so our reaction after the initial shock, was "how the heck are we paying for this?", followed by "Oh, you want it here at home ... looks like we're going to have to do a major tidy up". Now, we live on 75 acres, work from the property and have been here 6 years. The property was run down to start with and there was still alot to fix up.  But most importantly the swimming pool didn't have a child proof pool fence - or more practically from our personal perspective a barrier to stop the wildlife and curious calves testing the solar pool blanket - but that's another story. 

I've never particularly liked standard tube pool fencing, and I figured that it was my turn to have Andrew make me something really lovely from wrought iron.  I'm glad my man likes a challenge, he on the other hand was far more practical ... "you want it, you give me a drawing and I'll make it".  The challenge was on!  After a couple of knockbacks from the 'welder extraordinaire', along the line of "that won't work", or "have you any idea how much that's going to cost?", a compromise was reached. [Sidenote: it's not only our customers that have to work with mercenary husbands]. 

 The pool fence is made, each panel from solid steel and wrought iron so it's quite heavy, and it came up beautifully.  It would have been nice to have had more wrought iron in the design, but unfortunately South Australian swimming pool regulations are such that there must be a minimum 1.2m clearance from top to bottom between where a child can get a foot hold.  I think the gold caps, which incidentally started out as a joke really set it off.

On a final note, I really enjoy watching Andrew beam with pride when people admire his wrought iron pool fence.

Cast Iron McKay Sunshine Gates and Simpson Gates ... the modern alternative

The old Sunshine heritage gates of the turn of the century are fetching very high prices at clearing sales and auctions. It's amazing to see some appear on Ebay in really bad shape, only to go for ridiculous prices. Could this be due to the fact that they're becoming harder to find? I recall seeing a pair of 2.4m (8' in the old imperial measurement) gates going for in excess of $2500, some being irreparable and others needing some serious restoration work. These prices were for gates that were pick up only, which would have restricted the interest and lowered prices.

Many of the original old gates typically require a significant amount of restoration to fix badly bent and rusted out bars. I'm not sure what makes these gates so appealing, they were extremely heavy old things, made from solid steel bars and joined with cast iron joints. I suppose the castings on some of the fancier ones were quite pretty but the ones with a steel frame and twisted wire (instead of bars) may not have been the safest of gates around stock.

Left: Farmweld's New Cast Jointed Gate

We've had many enquiries about cast jointed gates over the years and have finally succumbed to the pressure!  A Victorian insurance company approached us recently to make up a set for a customer of theirs and we agreed to take on the job. The castings cost an absolute fortune, so they're not a cheap gate to replicate, however what we came up with looks just like the original.

The gate differs in that we've used modern techniques. The cast joints are from iron, and the bars are steel pipe, so not quite as heavy as the originals. Don't get me wrong, the gates are still very heavy. The only down side is that the castings, like the originals are cast and limited to specific sized gates.  We'll be adding these to our range of gates, and will soon advise as to what sizes will be available.

 

Garden Arches & Rose Arbours ... whimsical wrought iron gates

We've been intending to come up with an easily transportable design for nearly a year but spare workshop time had been limited as demand for our gates grew. We recently had a customer order a garden arch so it gave us the opportunity to create what will be a standard design in our range. This rose arbour comes apart ito two halves but like all our products, is still very sturdy when bolted together.  

We're finding that over the last few months the workshop has been putting through more bespoke or custom designed pieces. I'll showcase these as we make them. But two pieces we made a few months ago for the Newman's Nursery at Tea Tree Gully in Adelaide have really taken some people's breath away. Situated by their Topiary Cafe the short wrought iron ballustrade, and large and small sets of wrought iron gates have got customers asking who made them! We're currently making up a small single version for a chicken run - lucky chooks!

There's another two new gates designs coming soon.

2009 Gate designs update

It's been while since we've posted anything to this blog, however this isn't really a reason for concern as the reason has been that we've been run off our feet with work. The last 12 months has seen a fantastic growth in demand for our heritage style gates, and the introduction of wrought iron has widened the scope immensely. We're continually adding more steel gate designs to the range in both country styles and wrought iron garden gate designs.

The Eleanor (above), one of our first larger wrought iron gates introduced a year ago, has been extremely popular both in large and small versions, as has the more provincial style garden gate, the 'Florence' which was also introduced last year.

By the middle of the year we found that it was necessary to employ the services of another welder to assist Andrew in the workshop, freeing him up to do more designing and quoting of custom orders and also give him time to recover from a hip replacement. Graham Jonathan has been a welcome addition to our Farmweld team.

The warmer weather has brought out the gardeners all around Australia, over the last couple of months and again the workshop is busier than ever. Some designs which started out as custom gate designs for particular customers are being added to our standard gate range. A couple of the designs are shown here. We are getting more customers asking about unique custom designs for both gates and other items incorporating wrought iron. These include matching garden ornaments such as arches and trellises, which are the next items to be added to the website.

The website has been much neglected due to our overwhelming workload, but this is slowly to be rectified. If you like what you see here please tell your friends about us and leave a comment.

Wrought Iron Garden Gates - new release

Farmweld have added a new wrought iron garden gate to their existing range of heritage style country gates. This new gate design is the first in a series of wrought iron garden gates. The 'Florence' is a heritage style gate reminiscent of the turn of the century, heritage wrought iron gates and a design that even the famous garden designer Edna Walling would have loved. The frame of this wrought iron gate is made of flat steel with hand turned scroll work and solid steel vertical bars. The wrought iron 'C' scrolls have decorative hammered ends giving this gate a more formal look than Farmweld's other heritage style country gates.

Made entirely of untreated steel, the gate can be supplied as is and allowed to weather and rust adding to its charm. Like the other heritage style country gates from Farmweld, this wrought iron garden gate can be powder coated in any of the colours from the Interpon powder coating colour chart.

This garden gate would look beautiful displayed as a wall ornament, or more practically as a pleasing entrance or feature in your garden. This wrought iron gate would look stunning in a cottage garden or Edna Walling inspired garden.

Hinge sockets come standard and latches and hinge pins can be supplied. The pictured gate is 1250mm x 900mm, but can be made to any size as a garden gate or full sized wrought iron entrance gate.

For a short time only Farmweld is offering the pictured 900mm garden gate for only

$500 with FREE DELIVERY and ALL HARDWARE SUPPLIED.

A gate of this size will normally retail for $540 plus delivery and hardware so considerable savings are to be had.

ORDER NOW before the Christmas rush begins to avoid disappointment.

Farmweld heritage style country gates and wrought iron gates are available direct from the manufacturer and are delivered all around Australia via courier, at a reasonable rate. All gates are custom made to any size and Farmweld offer a gate design service.