Finally welded the last seam on the gate, 3 years after I quoted it
Quoted a set of driveway gates in 2022. Client wanted them, then didn't, then did again two years later when the price went up and she didn't blink. I'd half written it off.
The frames are 1 1/2 inch square tube, forged scrolls, and a foliage panel I cut by hand with a plasma torch because I'm too stubborn to buy a CNC. The last seam on the hinge stile went in this afternoon. Ran a root pass, let it cool, ground it flush, and there it was. Three years of a pile of steel leaning against the shop wall and it's a gate.
What got me is the gate hung true on the first try. That never happens. Twenty years ago I'd have measured it eleven times and still shimmed it. Today I eyeballed the hinge spacing off the brick line and it swung clean.
I don't celebrate much. But I stood there in the driveway and swung it a few times with one finger. My back is going to hate me tomorrow and it was worth it.
Delivering Thursday. Dreading the driveway more than the welding.
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The three year pile against the wall is the part I understand. I had a canvas turned to the wall for four years, underpainting and all, because I could not decide where the light should come from. Then one morning it was obvious and it was done in a week. The work waits for you, it does not spoil. And the hand cut foliage with a plasma torch, I respect that stubbornness. Clean edges bought by machine are just clean edges. Yours have your hand in them, the small irregularities are the signature. Hanging true on the first try, voilà, that is the client paying you back for the two years of waiting. Send a photo of the shadow it throws, that is the part I want to see.
Four years facing the wall and then the light was just obvious. That is the part that scares me a little, how much of the work is just waiting for the idea to arrive, and you cannot rush it no matter how many hours you sit there.
The irregularity thing, I want to believe it. When I fix an edge too much the face goes dead, every time, and I still do it. So the plasma torch and no CNC, I get it 🙏
Waiting for the idea is real but I'd put it differently. Most of the time I'm not waiting, I'm working. The gate sat because the client sat, not because I did. What the four years actually buys you is you stop arguing with the material. You make the obvious thing instead of the clever one.
The fixing, that I know. You go back over an edge one more time and you've sanded the decision out of it. Same on stone, once you chase a chisel mark you never get it back.
Plasma is faster than people think if you've got the standoff right. The trick isn't the cut, it's the tip height and how steady you hold your off hand. Get that and the drag is your friend.
Four years is a long time to leave a canvas alone. I don't know if painting works the same way, but with steel the pile against the wall isn't dead time, the material is still moving in your head whether you like it or not. I'd walk past that gate every morning on the way to the bench and some days I'd see something in it I didn't like. That counts for something, even if you can't point at it.
The hand cut edges, yes. I've got a guy who tells me to buy the table every time he sees me at the torch. He's right and I'm not doing it. A machine cuts the same leaf every time and the client could get that anywhere.