Custom Metalwork near you

Much of what is sold as wrought iron today is mild steel, shaped and welded to look like traditional forged work; true wrought iron is rare and mostly met when restoring old ironwork. The real choice for most homes is between steel and aluminum, with stainless steel for some modern designs.

Outdoors, the finish decides how long metalwork stays sound. Hot-dip galvanizing immerses the finished steel in molten zinc, coating it inside and out, and the zinc keeps protecting the steel even where it gets scratched. Powder coating is a dry powder baked onto the metal into a hard, even layer of colour; it protects well until it chips. Applied together, galvanizing under powder coating combines the zinc's protection with the colour you choose. Paint is the easiest finish to touch up, but it needs the most upkeep.

A decorative railing is still a guard as far as the building code is concerned. Part 9 of the National Building Code of Canada, or the provincial code based on it, governs where guards are required and sets their height, opening sizes, limits on climbable designs and the loads guards and handrails must resist; the railings page explains these points. For a fabricator, that means designing to the code in force at your address, showing it on the shop drawings and anchoring posts so the whole assembly takes those loads. Scrolls, curves and horizontal bars need particular care so they don't leave gaps a child could slip through or footholds to climb.

Steel stairs, stringers, posts and structural brackets fall under the code as well, and their design may need an engineer's review or seal. Your municipality decides whether a permit is required, and in Quebec, a contractor installing railings, stairs or other building elements needs a licence from the Régie du bâtiment du Québec covering that work, which you can check in its online register.

Steel can't be trimmed on site like wood, so measuring usually happens twice: roughly for the quote, then precisely once the surfaces the metal attaches to are final, such as finished stairs, tiled floors or a poured slab.

Some shops design, build and install; others only fabricate and leave installation to a general contractor, or install onto a stair or deck someone else built. Either arrangement works when responsibilities are clear. Weld quality and finish defects belong to the fabricator, while a railing that works loose is usually an anchoring problem, which falls to whoever installed it and to the structure it was fastened to.