Beam & column packages
$118per hour + steel at cost
- Connection detailing before the crane books
- AWS D1.1 procedures, weld log joint by joint
- Coordination with your engineer’s stamps
- Set with our own gantry and crew
Priced from stamped drawings, five days.
Guards & gates
$98–146per linear ft, installed
- Load-calculated past the 200-lb code push
- Hot-dip galvanized under powder, standard
- Automation conduit framed into the leaf
- Century match work from photographs
The zinc kettle is in the exterior rate.
Rig & repair road calls
$95per hour + steel at cost
- Mill-town coverage, usually same-week
- 7018 in the wind, MIG on the bench
- Rewelded stronger than the first build
- Written verdict when scrap beats repair
The call-out sits inside the first hour.
What we do
Three jobs from the mill towns
The gantry over Kiln Street
A hundred feet of conveyor gantry for the brickworks, in eight bolted spans so the crane never lifted more than the street could close for. Welded to AWS D1.1 with the log beside every joint, hot-dipped span by span, and aligned to six millimetres over the whole run — the belt has run two years without chasing itself.
The shoring for the Chapel conversion
Temporary steel for a chapel becoming four homes: needle beams through the tower wall, props calculated with the engineer’s stamps on every page, and the whole package removed through a doorway one Saturday. The builders’ favourite drawing set of the year, they said, because it assumed they had not done it before.
The foundry gate
A five-metre leaf for a courtyard the presses shake — drawn with the wind load on its face, framed in automation conduit from day one, and hung on bearings rated for decades of rattling windows. One finger closes it, which the foundrymen test endlessly.
Hollowmere
The yard on Siding Two
Two structural bays off the old rail siding, a plasma table, a blasting cabinet, and a gantry of our own for the proof loads. Three certified welders, a detailer who used to be the fourth, and a rule from 1999 that has never bent: the load path is drawn before the steel is ordered, and nothing exterior leaves in primer alone.
The load path, drawn before the steel
Every structural package leaves with connection detailing, calculations where the structure asks, and the weld log — bound, tabbed, yours. If the building department ever asks for something the folder should have said, the re-submission and the delay are ours to pay.
The five the towns ask
Answers in amps and microns
From homeowners and site managers alike — the answers are the same whoever asks. The yard line at the bottom runs six to five, and the person who answers owns the folder.
What amp settings do your welders run?
TIG on 1/8-inch wall: 105–120 amps behind a 3/32 lanthanated tungsten with 308 filler. Structural laps: MIG at 24 volts, and the log records machine and range beside the welder’s initials. Sheet drops to 60 amps. The numbers are printed because a number you can check is the whole point of a weld log.
Galvanizing, powder-coat or primer — the honest version?
Hot-dip galvanizing is eighty-five to a hundred microns of zinc fused into the steel, and it is the only exterior system we sell — the kettle is in the exterior rate because the mill weather does not negotiate. Powder alone indoors, baked at 200°C, outlasts paint five to one. Zinc-rich primer, seventy-five microns of zinc-bearing paint, is a legitimate dry-interior finish and a two-season promise anywhere else.
Do I need my own engineer?
For straightforward beams and guards, our calculations and the department’s checklist suffice. For the genuinely novel — the Chapel’s crooked tower, long spans, odd loads — we bring Halloway & Vann on Foundry Row and carry the stamped package ourselves. We will not size a beam from a look and a handshake; the towns outlive all of us.
Are the guards actually load-calculated?
Each one is calculated for the code’s 200-pound concentrated push at any point and direction on the top rail plus fifty pounds per linear foot along it — and the sheet ships in the folder. Copied patterns are how a rail that passed on one porch fails on the next span; calculated ones do not care whose porch.
How fast, honestly?
Repairs inside the week — the rig covers every mill town. Beam packages follow your build schedule, drawings in five days. Guards and gates run three to five weeks through floor, kettle and powder, and we name the week at the quote, not after you chase it.
How it goes
Drawing to torque wrench
The same sequence on every job — the only variable is your project.
Day 1
The measure
Tape, laser and photographs of every anchoring surface — and the load path sketched on paper you keep before the rig leaves the site.
Days 4–5
The stamped package
Shop drawings, connection detailing, calculations where the structure asks, the finish named in writing — reviewed, stamped, and a fixed price under it. You sign the drawing, not just the number.
Weeks 2–3
The floor
Plasma-nested parts, frames pinned square on jigs, MIG where the load lives and TIG at eye level — every structural weld laid to procedure and entered in the log.
Week 4
The kettle and the colour
Exterior work blasted to near-white and hot-dipped, then powder baked over the zinc; interiors take primer and two-pack. The schedule chooses, never the mood.
Set day
The torque and the folder
Set on our own rigging plan, anchors torqued to spec, guards gauged to the code push — and the folder lands on your table the same afternoon.
The mill towns, 2025 — 2026
Iron around the towns
Six fabrications from the last year. Every exterior piece went through the zinc kettle before the colour — the captions say which span is which.
The yard, in figures
The Chapel shoring arrived with drawings a first-year site joiner could follow, and the tower stood over four homes for eleven months without a movement worth the gauge. When the needle beams came out, the removal sequence was drawn as carefully as the installation — through one doorway, one Saturday, no surprises. Twenty-six years of hiring fabricators, and the folder is still how I tell them apart.
Stamped packages inside five business days · (555) 019-6620 · shop@thornpikeiron.example
Send the span, get the stamp
Drawings if they exist, photographs if they do not — beam packages come back stamped inside five days, guards with their load sheets, gates with the wind load on the drawing. shop@thornpikeiron.example