Lamb's House and Culross projects

So here are a few more pictures of the gates at Lamb's House which Jim took the last time he was out on site. He's done a lot of work for the interior of the house as well, but that was before I started to work for him. As for the gates, my job was pretty much just assisting in the installation. It was a great project to work on though and the house itself has been beautifully restored so if you are ever in the area, go and have a look!

Here are the 'small' gates (which to a small person like myself are still pretty big).

And here are a few photographs of the bigger gates.

Another project that I worked on recently was a set of gates which were for a National Trust property in Culross. Jim had a workshop with the kids from Culross Primary to get some ideas for the design and I think they really enjoyed it. The final design incorporated stylised medlar fruits which I had a lot of fun making...after a lot of trial and error on the most efficient way to make them. I also had more tapers to forge so with all this practice I'm getting a lot faster at making them.

So here are the medlar fruits being made (they were welded together by Jim).

And here are some photographs of the finished gates.

Here's a close up of the latch. Jim likes to make sure that the latches on all of his gates fit in with the design so they don't interfere with the overall aesthetic.

So that was a great project to be a part of and I would strongly recommend a visit to the Royal Burgh of Culross because it is apparently one of the most complete examples in Scotland of a Royal Burgh of the 17th and 18th Century.

Now, here I want to introduce you to the newest member of the team. This is...TITAN!

I know what you're thinking...why make such a big deal about a vacuum cleaner? Well for those of you who don't know me, I like to think that I'm one of the cleanest blacksmiths in the country, so having Titan to help out with the dust on site after an installation or just having a clean out of the workspace is just fantastic.
However...
I don't actually get to use Titan very much because I tend to get carried away with cleaning and forget about the work I'm supposed to be doing...

I also got very excited the other day about another gift for the workshop. In fact I think my exact words were 'Christmas has come early, yaaaaaay!!!'. This was in reaction to these...

I've been looking for some nice leather work gloves for a while so THANK YOU JIM for finding these and letting me have a pair! It's pretty cold in the workshop so these are great and it also stops little scrapes from the ends of bars.

So that's what's been happening recently and in my next post I'll put up some pictures of the projects we're currently working on. I know I keep saying this, but I've been wanting to wait a bit so I can get some good photographs of the pieces nearly finished.

I'll say take care here and also if you're near Edinburgh anytime soon, check out the Christmas market at Princess Street Gardens. I was there last night and it was fantastic!