NOMMA Northeast Chapter Workshop Recap

On December 9, 2017, the Nomma Northeast Chapter held a workshop at La Forge de Style in South Hackensack, New Jersey, company owned by Dave Gore, long time NOMMA member. Despite the inclement weather, 40 members participated, some coming from as far as Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

During the first half of the day, Keith Majka of Majka Railing, Jay Shah of Architectural Iron Designs, and Richard Dantoni of Julius Blum & Co., went over NOMMA's latest changes, in particular the new executive structure and organization, NOMMA's NEF, the work being done on NOMMA's website, and the AIA committee.

A new president was elected to replace Scott Hess of Hess Ironworks who needs to concentrate on his fast-growing company. This position is now held by Philippe Fiers of Armadillo Metalworks, Inc of Passaic New Jersey and Eric Cuper or Cuper Studios remains as the chapter’s secretary/treasurer.

Later, Philippe talked about a professional training project for the chapter, which had been previously discussed with all the members of the chapter earlier in the year. The intent of that discussion was to assess the needs and to remind everyone of the importance of a prompt feedback.

After enjoying a plentiful hot buffet (thanks to La Forge), a discussion and exchanges about custom and standard bronze handrail mouldings took place, followed by a live demonstration by Robin Miellet from La forge of a cap rail end hot forming. The goal of that demonstration was to introduce an alternative to cast handrail ends (thank you Julius Blum for providing samples) and to compare the cost of both options.

This was followed by an extensive demonstration of templating, flat layout and forming of a multi curve railing by Jacky Dupont of La Forge. This technique of templating, mainly taught in Europe, was new to most members and the demonstration generated lots of questions.

To close the workshop, a quick class of how to unfold a spiral railing cap or stringer was given by Philippe Fiers of Armadillo Metalworks. Two methods were demonstrated - one being a simple tracing that can be executed on the shop floor and one using a mathematical formula that can be easily solved with the help of a calculator with trigonometric functions.

In short, the short classes were given to show everyone the power of sharing ideas and techniques and talk about the possibility for the chapter to host longer seminars that can tackle full subjects.

Thank you to the whole team at La Forge de Style for hosting this fine event, for the time spent at preparing the space, tooling, photographing equipment and the display of all these beautiful mock-ups. Anyone interested in hosting the next Northeast Chapter event (due for April 2018), please come forward and contact Philippe Fiers.