Swissmiss,

I'll take a stab at this.........It's hard to tell you exactly without a picture or drawing of what you want fabricated, but yes $1600 does sound high to me. Are these panels solid metal with the cirlces/triangles cut out, or do you want the circles/triangles formed out of steel rod and welded together?

$1600 should buy you several days of shop time, and I just can't imagine the pieces you describe (small size) taking that long to construct.

Perhaps you could provide more detail about your idea?

David

David - thanks for your posting; sorry it's taken me so long to get back to this.... the pieces would need to be welded together (I imagine the fabricator would use, say, 1/4" steel strips to make it). I am actually aiming to copy a photograph of a kitchen hood on one of last year's issues of This Old House magazine. If I knew how to take a digital photo of the magazine photo, it would make things clearer; maybe I can get someone to show me how to do this. Thanks for your interest; I really want to get this made, but the price is just too high. Be back with a photo (hopefully )...

Swissmiss, If there is a steel supply place in your area, it might be worth a trip to pay them a visit. The steel company where I occasionally buy steel stock like angle iron, rod, square tubing, rod etc. has a wall covered with a lot of design pieces. Perhaps you could find something similar to what you are looking for that could be welded together to take a lot of the work out of the job. For a better idea of what I am talking about, peruse this site. You should be able to copy and paste this into your browsers address bar, then enter. They have many categories to sort thru.
http://www.decorativeiron.com/
Hope this helps some.
Bill P.

Well after your clarification it definitely sounds like the $1600 is too much. A scanned image of that magazine cover would help make a more accurate estimation of the time/work involved.

I had another thought for you to try: there are suppliers that provide the pieces for metal shops to make railings, gates, and other ornamental items. These places carry a surprising amount of prefabbed panels with various patterns, scenes, leaves, etc. already made that are meant to be welded into the center of a garden gate (or similar) to provide the main focal point. You probably should check these out, prices would be (guessing) $15 to $50 for most of them. Try these websites:

kingmetals.com (go to catalog, then the drop down for "cast iron castings" and then "center door friezes")

archirondesign.com (also has similar items)

Good luck, David