Coldwell Ironworks · Railsend & the harbor parishes · Custom metal since 1994
Anyone can stick two pieces of steel together. We build the one your grandchildren will not have to replace.
Railsend
The Anchor Street shop
One shop since 1994: a plasma table, two welding bays, a blasting cabinet and a powder-coat oven the size of a small garage. Gates and railings leave here framed on jigs, square to the diagonal, hung on sealed bearings rated for decades of harbor weather — and the drawings they are built from carry the load rating on their face.
Square in ten years, or we re-square it
Every Coldwell frame is checked diagonal-to-diagonal before a hinge is hung, and the ten-year promise is printed on the estimate. A frame of ours that goes out of square comes back onto the jig at our cost.
Services & rates
The fabrication card
Per linear foot, per stringer, per hour — the same card the parishes' contractors price from. Gates are quoted per leaf after a site measure, because a five-metre leaf in a wind load is engineering, not arithmetic.
Interior railings — fabricated & installed$88–125 / linear ft
Steel or stainless, TIG-finished at eye level
Exterior railings & guards$115–160 / linear ft
Hot-dip galvanized under powder-coat, code load rated
Driveway gates — by designfrom $2,400
Drawn, load-rated and priced per leaf; conduit for automation built in
Pedestrian & garden gatesfrom $850
Framed on jigs, hung on sealed bearings
Stair stringers — CNC-cut pairsfrom $260 / stringer
Plasma-cut, drilled for treads, load-rated for the run
Site welding & repair$95 / hr
Mobile rig; the call-out is inside the first hour
What we do
Three jobs, three lessons
The harbor rail
Three hundred feet of stainless handrail along the parish seawall, TIG-welded throughout — every bead visible from the promenade — with expansion slips where December does its worst. Salt is patient; we were patient first.
The foundry gate
A five-metre driveway leaf for a building that shakes when the presses run. Blasted to near-white, zinc-rich primer, hot-dip galvanized, then a matte black powder-coat baked over the lot. The hinge posts carry the mass — the frame only has to stay square and pretty.
The spiral stair
A paired-stringer spiral in clear-coated steel: plasma-cut stringers, oak treads bolted through slotted holes so the wood can breathe with the seasons, and a load rating on the drawing that the building inspector kept, his words, "for future reference".
How it goes
How a Coldwell job runs
The same sequence on every job — the only variable is your project.
Day 1
The site measure
Steel tape, laser, and photographs of every surface we anchor into. The load path gets sketched on the spot, on paper you keep.
Week 1
The drawing and the number
A dimensioned shop drawing with the load rating on its face, a finish schedule — galvanize, powder-coat or clear — and a fixed price. Nothing is cut before you sign the drawing, not just the number.
Weeks 2–3
The floor
Plasma-cut parts, frames pinned on jigs, MIG penetration inside the frames where the load lives and TIG on the beads that show. Every weld on a structural member is laid by a certified hand and logged.
Week 4
Finish and cure
Blasted to near-white, then hot-dip galvanizing for exposure work — or an electrostatic powder-coat baked at 200°C. The finish goes on after the metalwork is already right.
Install day
The hang
Anchors torqued to spec, gates cycled a hundred times on their bearings, guards pushed to the code load with a gauge on the rail. We leave the site swept and the drawings with you.
We have hired every metal shop in the harbor parishes at one point or another. Coldwell is the one we stopped checking on. The drawings arrive load-rated before we ask, the gates close to a click instead of a clang, and the one time a delivery driver took out a bollard, the replacement matched a nineteen-year-old powder-coat so exactly the adjuster asked which bollard was the new one.
Estimates within two business days of the measure · (555) 011-9072 · forge@coldwelliron.example
What holds, what swings, or what sags
A length, a photo, or a napkin sketch — all three start a Coldwell drawing. Repairs usually get the mobile rig out within the week. forge@coldwelliron.example