How do you remove the stubs of old railings.

Soldato
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What I am talking about is the left overs from Iron railings that were cut off during WW2.

These were originally set into the stone foundations by pouring molten Lead into the gap between the holes drilled in the stone and the Iron work.

Now I have cut off Iron work set in lead. How do I remove this?

(I am wanting also to install new Iron work)

The obvious way just to drill it out, I am just wondering if there is some other clever way of doing it. ;)
 
Soldato
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Interesting little job you have to do here. I can't quite think what would work best. Would welding the new fence onto the stubs be possible? How about a hole cutter/core drill slightly larger than the metal. Bore around it and then maybe chisel it out?

Tricky one.
 
Soldato
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Somewhere in the middle.
Other ideas would be to melt the lead, but I think the heat would risk cracking the stone. Drilling holes all around the area you want to remove and then wiggle it out. Or finally weld new railing onto some kinda footing on top of it.
 
Caporegime
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Yeah, melting was my first thought too. You'd probably need a heck of a lot of energy even with the melting point being low. You could always try on one and see how it goes, directing the flame at the remnant piece of iron, that way the stone won't take the brunt of the heat. It would be clean - if it works.
 
Soldato
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The engineer in me says if you want to do a proper job you need to drill a pilot hole dead centre then drill down the pilot hole with increasingly large drill bits until all the material is removed then make good the hole.

You could have a go at threading the hole and using some studding to jack it out but there is a degree of safety risk if the threaded studding breaks and you also risk cracking breaking the stone.

The low tech equivalent of the above is to chisel them out and make good the hole.

Heating the lead sounds like a bad idea unless you fancy inhaling lead fumes. If you were absolutely sold on heating then drill a hole in the steel and drop a thin induction heater(or similar) in there. That way the steel will heat the lead and it will probably distribute the heat more evenly and the lead will lose it's bond to the steel before it is fully melted so you may be able to pull the steel out with pliers.

I've never done what you're proposing just my engineers thoughts.
 
Soldato
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What's the spacing like? could leave the current ones in place and fit new holes in-between.

That way you're left with the heritage of the WW2 removal, as well as a new fence.

Not sure how that would look overall, though.
 

SPG

SPG

Soldato
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28 Jul 2010
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No easy way, we did this on a old Victorian wall, in the end it was easier to replace the stones to accept the new railing, it was only 5m long and the by the time we sold the old stones to a rec Yard, we lost about £250 or so.

Gave up drilling them out, took far to long.
 
Associate
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I'd be tempted to put the new holes equidistant between the old holes and make them a feature rather than bodge removing the old ones.
 
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