This pair of extremely fine cast lead-alloy bookends almost stayed at our house because they were so beautiful. But sadly, the original owners declined to sell them to us, so we replaced the missing tail on one of the bookends and sent them home.

This South Boston townhouse, both long and narrow, was blessed with a five-story staircase and beautiful molded mahogany cap rail. The client wished to replace the straight wooden balusters with free-form ironwork, while keeping the unique and unusual cap rail in place. He also asked that everything be done traditionally, using old-fashioned methods. There is no electrical welding used in this design. The entire railing is done using the older techniques of piercing, hand-drilling, and non-electric soldering. All joins are pierced and threaded or collared with handmade iron bands. All leaves and ornamentation are forged by hand.The unusual and uneven dimensions of the old staircase required that each section of railing be designed and laid out for fabrication individually. There is no single repeating design, and each inch is carefully laid out to conform to code requirements and maximize aesthetic appeal. It wasn’t exactly restoration, and it wasn’t exactly modern, but all in all, it was about as enjoyable as work can be. It’s not often that we receive an order for non-electric work, but when we do, we enjoy it to the fullest!

This antique cast iron bench came to us with two broken front legs. Cast Iron is often difficult to repair properly, and even more so when dealing with complex or fine castings. It is difficult to retain or recreate the contours of the original casting, especially when (as happened here) small pieces are missing.On the left is the damaged casting, on the right the leg, repaired and re-contoured to show the original lines.

This heavy steel trellis had been the recipient of much modern painting and powder-coating. You can see the damaged layers peeling away to expose underlying rust.

The same trellis after restoration. This trellis was far more delicate-looking than anyone had imagined after removing several years’ worth of improperly applied finishing products.

This was the sight that greeted us when we did the initial site walk:

It was a fixer-upper!

Over the years, this fence had been vandalized, hit by cars, and pushed around by tree roots. It was in a sad state.

One of the greatest things that happened as we were doing our inspection was that employees of the hospital kept pulling over on their way into the parking lot and threatening to have us arrested for trespassing. That might not sound like much fun, but it sent us a very clear message that everyone, down to the pharmacy workers and custodians, felt attached to this lovely antique fence, and had a stake in its well-being.

There is always a little bit of heaven in a disaster area, and despite the discouraging first impressions, we found some pretty good news: much of the fence was salvageable. Most of the bottom rail (an unusual old casting) was completely underground, where it had been partially protected from the elements. It was broken, but repairable.

Being underground probably helped save this cast iron channel

Digging further, we found several cement piers that were buried, indicating that the fence had extended much further than anyone thought. By the time everything was tallied up, there was enough salvageable material to completely restore about half of the fence, and enough spare parts to partially complete the rest. We removed the fence, leveled the grade, and repaired and leveled the cement piers to give a good base for reinstallation. Our job at the shop, at least for now, was to rehabilitate, repair, and restore the usable parts while the patterns were made for the casting of new parts.

Anything that couldn’t be repaired or reused was sent to the casting company to be used  in making the new pieces. In all, we would need 500 pickets, 9 posts, and 5 bottom rails to complete the restoration.

It was apparent that the fence had been repaired before, at least twice. At some point, replacement pickets had been cast, probably using an original for the mold. This meant that not only were there two different-looking pickets, there were also two different-length pickets (due to shrinkage in the casting process). We reused the second-generation castings, but decided to have a proper pattern made for our new castings using an original picket as an exemplar. This gave us pickets more similar to the originals in both detail and size.

After a long wait, it was time to reinstall the fence. And that’s when the job got really challenging.

As it turns out, 450 feet of five-foot tall cast iron fence is really, really heavy. For some reason, it seemed heavier putting in back in than it had been taking it out.

He makes it look so easy

Perseverance prevailed, and after a long installation process, we were done. Sort of. I have always been of the opinion that cast iron restoration jobs should receive their final coat of paint after installation, and I almost changed my mind when I looked at the fence and realized that I couldn’t see the other end of it.

So we painted…and painted…and painted…and painted. And finally, we got to the other end, the very last brushstroke:

I'm not sure if the smile is from happiness or delerium

In the end, we survived, and we’re very happy to have had the opportunity to restore this beautiful piece of Portland history.

Now, we weren’t only excited because of the view from the top:

View from the top of Portland Observatory

Nor were we only excited at the prospect of actually working indoors in February for a change. (although it did make the job very attractive!)   It was a challenge. The Observatory is seven stories of enclosed irregularly semi-curved  staircases, no two of which are alike. To fabricate a continuous railing for each staircase required a bit of thought.

We started by removing the existing wooden railing…very carefully. We needed the old railing to maintain its shape so that we could pattern our slope and curves from it.

Existing wood railing, removed

The existing mounts were left in place and reused to create as little disturbance as possible to the building.

The railings were made up of two pieces: a length of flat bar topped with half-round stock to create a period-appropriate profile that was comfortable in the hand. Each section essentially had to be made twice; the flat bar was formed to the pattern, and then the half-round cap was formed to the flat bar.

Bending the flat bar to the pattern

Because each railing was made in one long piece, some of the layout and transport became very interesting.

Two sections of railing loaded and ready to transport

It wasn’t until the job was complete that I realized that there was no way to take a picture of it. By the time you could frame one part of the curve, it went around a corner and you missed the three other curves and twists at the end.

Top of railing

Bottom of railing