Ateliers Bouvy : workshops specialised in decorative or building metalwork and wrought iron

MODERN - CLASSIC

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The essential difference between our external and internal balustrades and guard rails lies in their surface treatments. External metalwork is subjected to capricious, damp weather conditions that can attack a material such as steel. In order to overcome this disadvantage, we always require the surface to be sprayed with a coat of ZN.80 zinc.

This coating has many advantages in addition to preventing the steel from oxidising (rusting). The process consists of spraying molten zinc on the surface of the steel which will have first been sand blasted. This surface treatment better preserves fine ironwork details than galvanisation (which involves dipping in a bath of molten zinc) and gives the metal so protected a slightly grainy surface which provides excellent substrate for the paint to adhere to.

The lacquering of our external balustrades and guard rails is carried out in two stages. The sprayed zinc protection must first be covered with a sulphating primer, to which will then be applied the finishing coat that will give the metalwork its final colour.

Too many people still believe that decorative metalwork only comes in black or white, yet the addition of colour greatly increases the decorative power of our balustrades and guard rails. We offer a large range of colours, of which some are architectural paints that we have created especially to better suit and fit into a modern urban or rural landscape. The level of quality imposed on these paints is Draconian. We essentially use two part polyurethane topcoats which provide a high level of resistance to scratching and to erosion due to climatic change, as well as having excellent colourfastness in the face of UV attack.

Our external balustrades and guard rails are produced and installed to the same high standards of quality as our internal metalwork fittings. Here again we essentially give preference to constructing our metalwork items in our workshops, which allows us to avoid the need for the surface treatments described above. We provide a fifteen year maintenance-free guarantee, knowing that their service life largely exceeds this timescale.

In view of the large choice of models already created, we have also decided to divide this section into two separate groups, with a first page illustrating our traditional and baluster guard rails, an a second showing our contemporary guard rails.

Once again, the few examples chosen to illustrate this section represents only a small sample of our work. Please don't ’hesitate to contact us, we would be only too pleased to show you the remainder of our range.