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This custom ordered hardware package included two bean style thumb latches as well as four heavy duty hinges and pintles, staples, door hasps, and hand forged nails. All hand made in our Tennessee shop in an authentic Early American / 18th century style.
This project came to us via Richards & Fowkes, Pipe Organ Builders out of Chattanooga, TN. Richards & Fowkes ordered five hand forged iron grilles as architectural elements for the Gothic style oak surrounding structure of an organ in progress, which needed to match exactly existing antique ironwork already in place in Trinity Wall Street Episcopal Church in New York City.. This project was a challenge!
Showing a variety of Suffolk latches, thumb latches, hinges, and pintles. All made in a reproduction 18th century style. Hand forged in our Tennessee shop, and carefully forged and filed so as to be visually pleasing as well as exquisitely functional. Love making Early American hardware!
This was something fun and different! A custom ordered set of four sturdy iron barn door handles with an equestrian theme. Cut, forged, filed, chiseled and punched - decorated with fanciful horse head finials and finished off with a horseshoe decoration. All hand forged and worked in our Tennessee blacksmith shop.
Bespoke kitchen pot rack for a luxury home. Features five riveted hooks and large decorative rivets. The design has a separate backpiece so as to be spaced out from the wall.
Hand forged bespoke 18th Century style Dutch tool chest hardware. Iron hinges and latch forged and filed in our Tennessee blacksmith shop.
Two different sets of custom ordered small hinges for cabinets. One set of six fancy filed hinges with a matching decorative plate, and one pair of plain dovetail hinges. Forged and filed by hand in our Tennessee blacksmith shop.
Custom ordered set of five hand forged cabinet bolts/ latches.
Bespoke pair of hand forged lantern wall brackets.
Bespoke heavy ring latch for a gate. Entirely hand forged in our Tennessee blacksmith shop.
by Jordan Goodwin
Jordan made the hardware for these oak doors over the course of a year beginning in late 2017. Consisting of 6 large strap hinges, 3 bolts, a Suffolk-style latch, and nearly 200 hand forged nails, the forging, finishing, and installation of the hardware utilized many different techniques, some requiring that new tools be made before the process could continue. Made almost entirely with hand tools, with each piece being hot formed using a coal forge & anvil, or cold formed at the vise, and shaped & finished using a hacksaw and files. Some of techniques used in the process included forge welding, hot punching, cold punching, draw filing, and cold-riveted tenon work.
This extensive project was inspired by many examples of early American ironwork, and brings together many different techniques and style elements to create a complete set of working hardware for these beautiful customer-supplied oak “braced & ledged” batten-style shed doors. Many thanks to Larry & Rachel Graubner for giving us the opportunity to help in the creation of these beautiful made-to-last doors for their cabin. You can see more pictures of the cabin and land at Walnut Hollow Farm on Larry’s Instagram profile @ljgraubner.
One of the doors fastens to the doorframe using two spring-loaded vertical bolts, and the second door fastens to the first with a heavy horizontal bolt. All three bolts are mounted to backplates using staples that are tenoned into the plates and cold riveted into place.
The hinge straps and pintles are made from 1/4” thick steel, and the rolled hinge eye swings on a 1/2” diameter pin that is forge-welded into the eye of the pintle.
While one door is designed to stay bolted unless an extra-wide opening is needed, the other opens and shuts freely as a single door, using a traditional “Suffolk” style latch. this latch has a simple handle with a thumbpress that raises a bar on the inside of the door out of a catch that has a ramp leading to the notch so that the bar will automatically slide up & drop into place when the door is shut. The long “tail” of the thumbpress extends past the latch bar and is curved to act as the inside handle to the latch. Just lift and pull!
The doors are assembled and all the hardware mounted using hand-forged “rosehead” nails that are driven through and clinched on the opposite side of the door- a widely used method in days gone by that results in rock-solid construction that will never loosen or pull apart.
The top & bottom vertical bolts feature different lengths of handles to facilitate use without having to bend over or stretch to reach them. These bolts have springs built in so they will hold position whether open or closed.
One of the first items Jordan started making when he took up blacksmithing was a flattened but sturdy hook designed for the elongated handle eyes of cast iron skillets. When his friend Larry requested some racks for his cast iron collection for his Walnut Hollow Cabin, Jordan had to come up with a rack design and adapt the skillet hooks to fit. He was able to come up with a rack made of flat bar and a version of the skillet hook that simply clips on to the bar with a snug friction fit. The hooks will stay put, but can also be moved around. These particular racks were made to a custom length and are more than sturdy enough to display the entire cast iron collection.
Although the name is recent, the Walnut Hollow Farm property has been a working farm for 150-200 years, and although none of the really old buildings survive, the evidence of decade upon decade of farming was found during current construction and cleanup. Scrap metal was found sticking out of the earth, washed out in the creek, and piled in the woods. This custom chandelier was created using only reclaimed metal from the farm- wrought-iron wagon wheel rims & hub bands, assorted hand-forged harness and implement chains, pieces of rods and bolts- even the rivets used to fasten the scrolls to the fire-welded wagon-tire frame were forged by hand from Walnut Hollow steel.