Austin Metal Gates builds and restores wrought iron gates in Austin, TX, and is Travis County's leading shop for ornamental iron entries, specializing in forged scrollwork, cast and forged finials, and rust repair on older ironwork. We offer new hand-detailed gates and restoration of the gate you already have.
Our team provides forged and fabricated ironwork with one honest assessment of the joints and the finish, delivering a gate that looks hand-worked for homeowners and lasts through Central Texas storms on residential and commercial properties alike. We bend and weld every scroll in our own shop from drawings you approve first, the same crew measures the opening and hangs the finished gate, and old paint is tested before any of it is stripped.
From the first sketch of a scroll to the last coat of finish, our team handles every detail. Serving Austin along with Rollingwood, Barton Creek and Lakeway, we work on new garden and entry gates as well as iron that has stood at the same wall for decades.
Why Austin Metal Gates
No stock panels cut down to fit, and no handoffs. The crew that measures your opening builds and installs the gate.
A gate sold today as wrought iron is almost always mild steel worked to look hand-forged, and that is a good thing for a new gate. True wrought iron, with its low carbon and fibrous slag, is no longer made commercially, and the little still produced is recycled from scrap for heritage restoration. What really separates one iron gate from another is how each part was made.
A forged part is shaped hot at the anvil. The smith draws a bar out to a taper, bends it into a curl at forging heat, upsets it to thicken a point, or punches and drifts a hole for a picket to pass through. Forged work has the slight irregularity and crisp ends that make an ornamental gate look made by hand.
Fabricated parts are cut from bar, tube and flat stock and welded together. The frame, the rails and most pickets are fabricated, because they need to be straight, square and strong more than they need to look forged.
Finials, rosettes and some panels are cast in a mold. Many older decorative gates and fences were cast rather than wrought. Cast iron carries more than 2 percent carbon, is strong in compression but weak in tension, and is brittle, so a cast piece can snap under a blow that would only bend a forged one. Ask any shop which parts of your gate are forged, which are fabricated and which are cast. The answer tells you what you are paying for and how the gate will age.
The ornament is what you are buying when you choose an iron gate over a plain steel one, so it deserves its own drawing. We sketch the details at full size before any bar is heated, and you approve the drawing before work starts.
The pieces most Austin iron gates draw from:
Local rules can decide the top before taste does. Lakeway has banned spiked and open-picket fencing since 2019 after deer were impaled and asks for a continuous flat top, Sunset Valley bans spiked pickets above the top rail, and Rollingwood does not allow sharp or pointed tops on front fences. Some Barton Creek sections set the color too, with brown or bronze iron-style pickets. When a gate sits in a fence line covered by one of those rules, we draw a top that passes it, often a flat cap rail with the scrollwork carried below.
Rust starts where water sits, and an ornamental gate has far more places for water to sit than a plain one. Rust needs only iron, oxygen and moisture, and water finds its way into tiny gaps and cracks that look solid from a few feet away.
Austin gives it plenty to work with. The city has a humid subtropical climate, highs of 90 degrees or more on about 123 days a year, and thunderstorms that can drop heavy rain in a short time. Heat dries the surface fast, but water trapped in a joint stays behind.
The spots we check first on an iron gate:
Rust also takes up more room than the iron it replaces. Inside a tight joint, that growth pries the parts apart, a process called rust jacking, which is why a collar can split its paint and lift away from a picket even when the rest of the gate looks sound.
The finish on an ornamental gate has to reach into every curl and behind every collar, not just cover the flat faces. A finish that skips those hidden surfaces fails first exactly where it is hardest to repair.
For a new gate in mild steel, the frame and ornament can be hot-dip galvanized after welding, so zinc coats the inside of the joints as well as the outside, and then powder coated in the color you choose. Zinc protects the steel even where the top coat is later chipped, because it corrodes first.
An older gate of true wrought iron is different. Wrought iron cannot be hot-dip galvanized the way mild steel can, so a restored antique gate is protected with a paint system instead: the metal cleaned back, a primer worked into the joints, and top coats built up over it.
Two details on our drawings help any finish last longer:
A few minutes of care twice a year keeps an iron gate from needing a full restoration later. The goal is simple: find bare metal early and cover it before rust spreads under the finish.
If a chip has already turned into flaking metal or a joint has started to open, that is past touch-up, and the next section is the one to read.
Most old iron gates are worth repairing when the frame is sound and the damage sits in the details or the finish. We recommend replacing when the frame itself has lost metal, because a new finish over a weak frame only hides the problem.
Surface rust and failed paint with solid metal underneath. A broken scroll weld or a loose collar. A missing finial or rosette that can be matched with a new casting or a forged copy. A gate that drags because a hinge wore out or the post moved, with the leaf itself still square.
A bottom rail or stile rusted through, or pickets that have lost much of their thickness. A cast panel that is cracked across, since cast iron is notoriously difficult to weld and a repair may not hold. A frame twisted out of square that will not hang straight on any hinge.
A gate of real wrought iron is worth extra care. Wrought iron is easily forge welded, and repairs are made with reclaimed wrought iron where it can be found, so the patch ages like the original. Where rust or a break shows a wood-like grain in the metal, that grain is a strong sign the gate is the real thing.
An iron gate on a house built before 1978 may carry lead paint under its newer coats. Federal rules require certified renovators when work on a pre-1978 home disturbs more than 20 square feet of lead paint outdoors, and HUD prohibits dry sanding, torching and machine grinding without dust controls. We test old paint before stripping a gate and choose the removal method to match. When replacement is the right answer, our gate replacement page covers what stays, what goes and how a new leaf fits the old posts.
Hand-worked detail is the biggest single factor in what an iron gate costs, more than its width. Two gates of the same size can be priced far apart because one has straight pickets and the other has a forged scroll panel.
These are estimate drivers, not prices. We look at the gate or the opening at the site visit, and the written quote that follows sets the price for your job.
The process
Four steps, and nothing is fabricated until you have signed off on the drawings and the price.
We measure the opening, the slope and where power can reach, and talk through style, automation and access.
You get scaled drawings for your approval and for any HOA or city review, with one written price.
Steel is cut and welded to the approved drawings, then galvanized, powder coated or both.
Columns and posts set, gate hung, operator set up to UL 325 and every safety device tested with you.
Questions
It might be, if it is old. A wood-like grain where the metal has rusted or broken is a strong sign of true wrought iron. Most gates made in recent decades are mild steel, and many older decorative pieces are cast iron. We can look at it at the site visit.
Usually, if the frame still has solid metal. Surface rust, failed paint, a broken scroll or a loose collar can all be repaired. A rail that has rusted through or a cast panel cracked across is often the point where replacing makes more sense.
There is no fixed schedule. Check the bottom rail, the collars and the hinges each spring and fall, and touch up any chip the same season. Small, regular touch-ups delay a full recoat for a long time.
Yes. We measure and draw the existing scrolls, pickets and castings, then forge, fabricate or cast new pieces to match, so the gate reads as part of the same set.
It depends on where you live. Lakeway, Sunset Valley and Rollingwood restrict spiked or pointed tops on fencing, and some associations set color and style. We check the rule for your address and draw a top that passes it.
It can on homes built before 1978. We test the paint before stripping, because sanding or torching lead paint without controls throws off hazardous dust.
Yes, as long as the operator is rated for the gate's weight and the posts can carry it. Forged ornament adds weight, so we weigh that on the drawing before choosing the operator.
Choose by the look you want. Both are usually mild steel underneath. An iron-style gate adds scrolls, collars and finials; a plain steel gate puts the money into a heavier frame and simpler lines.
Free on-site measure across Austin and the west side. We call you back to set a time.
Calls only, we do not receive text messages.
