Wrought Irons, Anyone? - A Market Friday Contribution

gems.and.cookies (65)in Market Friday • 4 years ago

Hello my Steemit friends. It's Friday once again. It's one of my most awaited day of the Week! It's time for the popular #MarketFriday tag hosted by @dswigle. This is an initiative I highly recommend you join or at least know more about. Just click on the link here and have a real cool Hive experience you'll always look forward to.

Today I go back to my tour of this home depot my wife and I have visited during the past month. This is the same store that had the very wide variety of lights and lighting fixtures which I featured in an earlier post (click here for those who missed it). This Friday let me take you to their wrought iron section.

What is wrought iron? The Oxford Dictionary defines this as:

a tough malleable form of iron suitable for forging or rolling rather than casting, obtained by puddling pig iron while molten. It is nearly pure but contains some slag in the form of filaments.

The next question that comes to mind is "What is the main difference between cast iron and wrought iron?" Actually, the basic distinction between the two is simple: Cast iron is iron that has been melted, poured into a mold, and allowed to cool. Wrought iron is iron that has been heated and then worked with tools and allowed to cool. It may be reheated again so further work can be done, especially for the more intricate designs, then cooled down again. In fact it is normal for some wrought iron to have been reheated and cooled multiple times. The term “wrought” is derived from the past participle of the word “worked.”

Wrought iron was used mainly for making nails, horseshoes, nuts and bolts, rivets, rails and railway couplings, pipes to carry steam and water, as well as for ornamental ironwork. Today, wrought iron is mainly used for ornamental purposes especially for gate and fence designs and balustrades.

And they are very expensive. The difficulty in making these designs, especially the more elaborate ones, make it more expensive than cast iron. It is also expensive to install. Some of these designs range from 4,500 to 7,000 pesos (US$90 - 140) per piece. Installation is not included in the price.

I remembered this is the same home depot where, years ago, my wife bought some iron mouldings as design and support for a stand she wanted done. There was this plank of wood that the carpenters working on some repairs in our house were using as scaffold. It looked like it was good wood and true enough it was a hardwood specie. So we decided to make use of it after the repairs and made a stand out of it. Here's a partial photo of the stand.