Ornamental & architectural metal · Bracken Rise & the coast road · Drawn, forged, finished
GATES THAT READ LIKE ENGRAVING. RAILS THAT READ LIKE A SIGNATURE.
Scrollcrest designs and builds ornamental metal for the houses of Bracken Rise — hand-forged scrolls, laser-cut screens, guardrails with a drawn line. Show surfaces are TIG’d and dressed; the structure underneath is MIG’d and calculated to the 200-pound guard load before the first scroll is heated. Exteriors go in the kettle and come out powder-coated; interiors are waxed black or left to bloom.
Commissions drawn one at a time · every exterior piece dips in the kettle · guards calculated before they are forged
Bracken Rise & the coast road, 2025 — 2026
The season’s ironwork
Six pieces photographed on their houses. Forged scrolls hold their section — look for the even shoulder, the thing a bending machine cannot fake.
Services & rates
What a commission costs
Per opening, per foot, per hour — the same card the coast road’s architects price from. Every exterior number includes the kettle; the powder colour is yours to choose and ours to bake at 200°C over the zinc.
Garden & pedestrian gatesfrom $2,900
Drawn per opening; scrolls forged over jigs, not bent
Driveway gates — by designfrom $6,400
Wind load calculated per leaf, automation conduit in the frame
Guardrails & balustrades$150–240 / linear ft
Calculated to the 200-lb concentrated load, TIG show beads
Laser-cut screens & panels$185 / sq m
Your pattern or ours, 3, 6 or 10 mm plate
Stair rails — straight or spiralfrom $210 / linear ft
Paired stringers too, when the stair is ours to build
Restoration of old ironwork$115 / hr
Straightened, re-forged, patina matched from a photograph
How a commission runs
From the drawing to the kettle
Four stages, and none of them skippable — the order is older than the shop and older than the trade.
The drawing
Pencil first, then a scaled rendering of the piece on your own house front. One round of changes is in the price, and the drawing you sign is the piece you receive — to the scroll.
The forge & the table
Scrolls drawn hot over the jig, leaves hammered thin at the edge, structure plasma-cut and MIG’d square before any show bead is TIG’d. Ornament rides on engineering, never instead of it.
The kettle & the powder
Exteriors hot-dip galvanized — eighty-five to a hundred microns of zinc fused in — then polyester powder baked at 200°C over it. Interiors are waxed or bloomed, never painted; paint is what renovation crews scrape off.
The hang
Hinges on sealed bearings rated for decades, leaves cycled a hundred times before we leave, guards pushed to the code load with the gauge on the rail. The house gets the drawings and the care card.
The Bracken Rise studio
Why the forge still matters
A bent-tube gate is a catalogue product that wears your measurements; a forged one is a drawing that happens to be made of steel. Forging keeps the section even where the metal turns, so the scroll reads as one gesture instead of a pipe that gave up. It costs hours — and it is the entire reason the studio has a wait list.
The pattern is yours
Every Scrollcrest drawing is signed out to the commission — your gate is never reprised into a catalogue, and the bracken pattern belongs to the studio only where no one has bought it outright. The zinc under the powder is warranted against red rust for twenty-five years, in writing.
We had a photograph of the lodge gate from 1908 and half a broken scroll in a shoebox. Scrollcrest re-forged the missing half from the photograph, matched a bloom nobody sells in a tin, and hung the whole thing on bearings the original never had. The heritage board approved it by mail — which, if you know the heritage board, is a standing ovation.
Before the drawing
Fair questions
The five asked at every first sitting. The studio line at the bottom of the page answers between the forge and the drawing table.
Forged or bent — can an honest person tell?
Always. A forged scroll keeps its section through the turn; a bent one thins at the outer shoulder and ripens at the inner. Run a thumb along the shoulder — even metal says forged, a blade edge says bent. Ours will say forged, and your thumb is welcome to check every one.
Galvanize, powder-coat, or both?
Both, in that order, for anything that meets weather: hot-dip zinc stops the rust, the powder baked over it carries the colour and takes the compliments. Powder alone is paint with better manners — one stone chip and the rust has a doorway. Interiors skip the kettle; zinc would erase the bloom.
Is wrought iron real anymore?
The genuine article stopped being rolled mid-century; what sells as wrought today is mild steel with a story. True wrought survives in salvage, and on restorations we weld reclaimed sections with a low-temperature rod and re-forge the missing parts in mild — the mix is honest and it outlasts us all.
How does a screen pattern happen?
A sketch on paper, a vector on the screen, a test cut in 3 mm, and the pattern held against your actual window before the full plate is cut. The bracken pattern in the gallery is ours; the reed pattern belongs to a house on Lantern Row, outright, forever.
What about coastal work?
The coast road gets 316 stainless and wider gaps between bars — salt needs airflow or it sets up house. Anything within sight of the spray zone dips in the kettle regardless of finish, and the drawing says so before you sign it.
The gate closes like a watch case — one finger, no shudder, and the latch finds itself. The scrolls are the drawing, the drawing is the house, and two neighbours have already asked the question we refused to let them finish.
The drawing table books six weeks out · (555) 010-7788 · studio@scrollcrest.example
Start with the opening — or the photograph
Rough sizes, the house, the side the wind punishes, and one sentence about what the piece must not look like. A sitting at the drawing table follows, then a rendering on your own frontage before steel is ordered. studio@scrollcrest.example