Design, templating, historical reference.

I've never been an artistic person. I am, however, creative. What I have been learning while developing my craftsmanship is that truly innovative design is rare. Folks have been making the basic shapes of boxes, tables, chairs, handles, candle sticks, etc. for a really long time. They've worked most of the variants out.

What makes each maker's work special is their "touch". When I make a hinge it's going to look a bit different from every other hinge out there. The differences may be tiny, but they are there.

That doesn't mean you can always walk out to the shop and just produce a working version of an object you saw in a picture.

My design sketch for a classic chest lift. Inspired by Peter Ross.

This is the basic sketch I did before making the prototype of my chest lift. The design is a classic. Read: Made by thousands of smiths for the last 300 years.

Still - There are some questions hidden in there. Let's just look at the handle. What stock should it be made from? How much stock do you need? How long should the tapers be? Are there any dependencies on other aspects of the design?

The choice of stock was often moot in the past. A smith used what he had and reforged it into the size and shape they needed. We have some options today, so to save time (and time is money after all) it makes sense to choose an appropriate starting stock that gets you the the finish line with the fewest hammer blows. For the scale of lift I'm making I decided something in the neighborhood of 3/8" at that fat part in the bottom of the loop looks quite nice.

Determining the length of stock required to make the whole part is important because in this design there are equal tapers on both ends. That can be worked on the end of the long bar (in fact that's exactly what I did to figure out how much I needed) but it is so much easier and accurate to cut to length and forge both ends the same way. For this first one, I measured an arbitrary distance from the working end of the bar and made a mark with the cut off hardy. I tapered out the free end and then started working the taper 'backwards' from thick to thin until I had the second side matching up pretty well with the first. After I cut the finished forging off the bar, I just measured how much was left to that mark I had made and did the math.

For the question of taper length, it's mostly aesthetic. However, the ends are important. They need to be small enough to fit through the hole you will punch in the legs, and long enough to form the stops as well as reach through the legs. That leads to the last question:

Are there Dependencies on other design elements? Well of course there are silly! Why else would I have mentioned it? :) Actually, this is the one that I missed out in the planning phase. Those little horns on the top of the handles are meant to rotate toward the lift plate and interfere as the handle is brought up to 90%. That prevents the handle from rotating further and smushing your fingers up against the side of the box you are carrying. Very thoughtful! The length of those horns is mostly dependent on how far the hole stands out from the plate. The length of the leg in other words. In my initial prototype, I made the horns a bit too short which I'll have to address in the next forging.

And that's why I always make a prototype first. The best laid plans of mice...

With that said, it's time to head out to the shop and get some work done. So long and thanks for all the fish!