This is one of those interesting dilemmas that pop up in the everyday life of a blacksmith.
The customer specified that the screw hole needed to be 3/8″ from the wall. That one little detail completely throws off the whole design. How? Well, as the old saying goes, God is in the Details. As you can see in the photo the 1/4″ vertical leg is, um, a 1/4″ thick, taking up two-thirds of that 3/8″ spacing we needed. Since the head of the screw is 3/8″ in diameter, it’s got to go somewhere, right? That somewhere just happens to be either partially under the vertical element or deeper into the horizontal part -- which is contrary to the plans provided.
And if that wasn’t enough, because of the need for a fastener there, it means you can’t simply heat up a bar and then bend it into a pretty “L”.
To forge it into a 90º bend, you’d have to either drill and countersink before making the bend or after you’ve made it. In the first instance, you’d very likely collapse the hole and have no way to get tools in there to clean it up. In the second instance, you leave yourself with no room to get tools in there to drill the hole and make a countersink.
Isn’t it amazing how one little design element can dictate so much about what you do and how you do it? This is the part of blacksmithing that nobody outside of the Trades ever gets to see. Folks wonder why stuff is expensive or takes so long to make, but these tiny little details really add up in a hurry. Just emailing back and forth with the customer has taken up better than an hour of shop time. Making these little test pieces as “proof of concept” added more time to the bill. Both of those expenditures have to be accounted for, but paying attention to the plans and having a bit of experience saved both parties a ton of aggravation. There’s no worse feeling than running into an issue like this after you’re well into the project! :O
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