Ironwork forged by hand, using traditional craft techniques, occupies a distinct niche from standard metal fabrication: the work takes markedly longer, and the final price reflects a different kind of value from a product made by repeatable industrial processes.
Why the times differ so much
Every hand-worked decoration — a forged scroll, a shaped leaf — depends on the smith's manual work and experience, without the repeatability of a programmed machine. Two apparently similar pieces can take different amounts of time depending on the complexity of the detail, a factor hard to reduce to a fixed formula.
The value that justifies the price
A customer choosing hand-forged ironwork is not buying a structural function alone — a gate, a railing — but a unique piece, often impossible to reproduce exactly. Communicating that value explicitly during the negotiation helps justify a price that, compared purely on the weight of material, would look disproportionate.
A quote honest about time, not only material
For this kind of work the material cost is almost always a marginal fraction of the final price: the dominant line is the smith's time. A quote that plays that component down to look more competitive nearly always ends up as a loss-making job, given the hours genuinely required.