My background
I began college a year or so after high-school, with a strong dream to design and work with steel, so I took up welding. While attending school I worked as a mechanic for a local bowling alley, and obtained a certification for repair and maintenance of their pinsetters. During my senior semester of my welding program I was offered a position in Myrtle Beach, SC as a welder/fabricator. I jumped on the opportunity and before I knew it I was packing and moving to Myrtle Beach.
I started my position laying out, torch/plasma cutting, punching, and arc welding beams and columns. I knew this wasn’t my long-term goal, but it was a place to learn more fabrication and enter the job field. A foreman for another department of the shop quickly learned of my aluminum/stainless TIG experience from college, and within a few weeks convinced the owner to let me join his crew in fabrication and install of aluminum hand railings and gates. I worked contently for 6 months, before being introduced to an owner of a high-quality rail shop. The work at this new rail shop made my eyes open wide, as I had never seen anything like it.
I began working for the owner of the new shop, an 80 mile commute, and built many automated driveway gates. All of our work was hand shaped, detail-oriented welding and grinding, filing, hand sanding, DA, and then rubbed with scotch-brite. Both shops also did powder coating on site, so our work was done all in shop from start to finish, as well as installed. I took great pride in the final product, and knew I was moving in the right direction for my future career. After 6 more months of working for this shop, I was involved in a car accident, and was forced to move back home to New York.
I began looking for jobs that were just as high quality as I was used to, and I found my present employer DeSantis Forge and Studio. I have been employed with them for almost two years, helping design, hand forge/shape using conventional blacksmithing methods, combined with TIG/MIG welding, quality grinding, as well as assembly and installation of our work. I currently travel to places such as Lake Placid, Saratoga Springs, Brooklyn, Manhattan, New Jersey, and North Carolina to install completed work