One of our clients in the Philadelphia area had found breathtaking antique gates. He bought these wrought iron gates to protect the driveway of the house he was building. Since he didn’t have a place to store them currently, he simply leaned the gates against a large oak tree. Unfortunately, a tropical storm came along, blew the oak tree over onto the iron gates and bent them totally out of shape. The tops of these iron gates were bent into one large radius.
First, we brought the antique gates back to the shop to evaluate the damage and come up with a solution. We had to completely replace all the straight pickets with 5/8” round bar. Also we had to reconstruct all the scrollwork at the top. Next we mounted our own heavy-duty driveway gate hinge called “The Million Dollar hinge”. We mounted these on 2/6” square hinge posts. Furthermore, we had to reconstruct one of the medallions on the bottom panel. When its all said and done, you cannot tell a difference between what was reconstructed and what was original! A flawless finish!
Once the fabrication was completed, we completely stripped the iron gates back down to virgin metal by sandblasting them. To our surprise we found a stamp on them that said “Nantes”. From what we could tell these gates were originally built in Nantes, France! They must have been brought over more than 100 years ago! How cool!
To finish the driveway gates, we went with an E-coat process that would protect the original stamp while also providing a long life for the finished coat. We then completely power-coated them with a 2-tone molted powder-coat that emulated traditional wrought iron gates.
Lastly, we installed these iron driveway gates. So these centuries old French wrought iron gates have a new lease on life, and will provide decades of beauty, safety, and privacy for this Philadelphia home.
