The five we get at the tailgate
Answers before rates
Mobile welding gets hired in a hurry, so the answers come first and the card second. If the question is not here, the storm line at the bottom of this page is answered by the same person who welds.
What can you actually weld in my driveway?
Steel gates, trailer frames, mower decks, three-point hitch arms, snowplow blades — anything that holds still. Aluminium is TIG work off the inverter with a proper preheat; cast iron gets brazed or stitched, never hammered cold. If the honest answer is a shop repair, the rig hauls it and hauls it back.
Hardfacing — what is it, really?
Chromium-carbide rod laid onto ground-engaging steel in a two-pass crosshatch, building a 600 HB skin over a softer parent that keeps the toughness. Plow shares and bucket lips that touch dirt or gravel all day are the whole point. One pass resists; the crosshatch keeps resisting after half of it is gone.
Can you galvanize on site?
Nobody galvanizes from a truck — the kettle is the kettle. Field joints get zinc-rich epoxy worked to a hundred microns, and for whole assemblies the rig will haul to the dip and back the same week. A brushed-on cold galvanize spray is for scratches, not for structure; we say so even when it costs us the upsell.
Can you fix it stronger than it broke?
That is the entire trade. A sleeve where it tore, a gusset where it flexed, a doubler where it thinned — repair is design work with the failure in front of you. Every Burnside fix comes with a scrap of paper saying what failed, what the fix assumes, and what not to do with it now.
When can you come?
Inside the territory circle, same week for booked work and same day when something is on fire or holding water. Storm-season downed gates and snapped axles jump every queue, day or night — that is what the storm line is for.
The territory
Where the rig goes
Cordwell to Tyree Landing, Harrow Flats down to the county line — a two-hour radius of the shop at Ferry Bridge. Call-outs inside that circle book same-week; haul-to-galvanize runs leave Tuesdays and come back Fridays. Median arrival last year: ninety minutes from the call.
Services & rates
The rig’s rate card
One card for the whole bottomlands. Steel and consumables are itemised at cost on every invoice — the rod is cheap and the pretending otherwise is what gives mobile welders the name we are stuck disproving.
Call-out & first hour, inside the circle$165
Weekdays; the weekend rate is marked on the invoice, never a surprise
MIG / flux-core field welding$95 / hr after
Steel repair — gates, decks, trailers, structural bracing
TIG — aluminium & stainless$125 / hr after
Inverter off the deck, preheat and purge included
Hardfacing, ground equipment$18 / sq in of bead
Chromium-carbide, two-pass crosshatch, 600 HB skin
Plow & bucket rebuildsfrom $340
New cutting edges fitted, hardfaced, set to grade
Haul-to-galvanize$120 + dip
Rig to the kettle and back; the dip itself billed at cost
What we do
Three calls from last month
The caved grain bin
A loaded ring buckled in the October wind and started pouring good corn onto the ground. Jacked, sleeved with rolled channel, stitched with flux-core at 26 volts — and painted before the co-op inspector’s coffee had cooled. The bin held the rest of harvest and the ring is on next summer’s schedule for a proper second skin.
The ferry ramp hinge
Tyree Landing’s ramp tore both hinge pockets out of the deck on the spring tide. New fifty-millimetre pins, bronze bushes, pockets re-welded into the cross members — measured, cut and hung between the 6:10 and the 8:40 crossings, because the 8:40 carries the mail and the mail does not wait on fabrication.
The marina davit
Aluminium, cracked through at the root from a decade of a yawl that grew heavier than her owner admits. Back-gouged and TIG’d both sides with 4043 rod, dye-checked on the dock. She lifts again, and the owner was handed the crack’s photograph — evidence he now shows his insurance man.
Storm line open all season — downed gates and snapped axles jump the queue, day or night: (555) 013-5541.
The bottomlands
Off the deck, 2025 — 2026
Six repairs from the flatdeck. Every one prepped with a grinder before an arc struck — the mobile shortcut everyone fears is the one we do not take.
The flatdeck
Why the prep comes with us
A mobile welder who skips the grinding and the fit-up is selling you a bead, not a repair. The deck carries the same abrasives, clamps and squares a shop does, because the joint does not know it is in a laneway. It takes ten more minutes per weld and it is the reason the two-year promise below is printable.
The repair is engineered or it does not happen
Every fix leaves with a written note of what failed and what the fix assumes. If a joint we laid fails within two years under the load it was built for, the re-visit and the re-repair are charged to the invoice we already closed.
The bin was pouring grain onto the ground at nine at night with rain forecast by morning. One truck, one light tower, one welder who asked to see the failure before he quoted a thing. By two the ring held a full load, and the sleeve he welded is tidier than the steel around it. I have the town’s shop numbers in my phone. I called the truck.
Tell the rig where to point
A photo, a town and a sentence about what broke — that is a booking. Storm damage, say so in the first line and the call jumps the queue. rig@burnsidewelding.example