Cinderpoint Metal Co. · Verrill Bay & the headland parishes · Fabrication since 1997
Metal remembers who welded it. We build for the day it is asked.
Verrill Bay
The shop above the shingle
Two bays, a plasma table, a blasting cabinet and a finish room with two doors: one to the powder line, one to the patina bench. The bay eats salt air for breakfast, so nothing exterior leaves in primer alone — hot-dip galvanizing under everything the weather touches, seeded patina only where its brown run-off will read as character, and zinc primer strictly for the dry indoors. The finish map hangs by the door and the whole parish has read it.
The finish is chosen by the map
Tell us where the piece will stand and the finish is decided before the price is — kettle, powder or patina, in writing on the schedule. A Cinderpoint piece that rusts through its finish inside twenty years is re-finished at our cost.
Services
The numbered card
01
Quay & headland railings — $102–148 / linear ft
Stainless for the splash zone, galvanized-and-powdered above it — every run TIG-finished where the eye lands, walked at 105–120 amps on 1/8-inch wall, and load-calculated to the 200-pound code push with the sheet in your folder.
02
Gates — drawn, wind-checked, from $2,200
The headland gales sort the gate-makers every February. Ours are drawn per opening with leaf weight, hinge spec and wind load on the face of the drawing, hot-dipped before painting, and hung on bearings rated for decades of weather.
03
Stairs & stringers — from $255 / stringer
Plasma-cut pairs, drilled and notched for your treads, load-rated for the run — shipped bare for your carpenter or finished with grating treads and a matching rail from our floor.
04
Patina work — by conversation, from $1,400
Weathering steel that grows its own seal-brown armour: honest, self-healing, and only ever placed where its run-off drains to gravel or its own footing. We seed the patina on the bench so day one already looks like year three.
The finish questions
Patina, kettle or booth?
The finish decides how the metal spends its thirtieth birthday, and the bay makes the weather rules plain. Four questions decide the schedule — and the fifth is the one everybody asks about the creed.
Why does salt water decide my finish?
Because it always will anyway. Within sight of the tide we hot-dip galvanize and powder over it — the zinc takes the weather, the colour takes the compliments. Zinc-rich primer is a real finish for dry interiors and a two-season promise anywhere else; we sell it for the first and refuse it for the second, in writing, on the schedule.
What amp settings, and why print them?
TIG on 1/8-inch stainless wall: 105–120 amps, 3/32 lanthanated tungsten, 308 filler, the cup walked. Sheet drops to 60 amps; structural laps go MIG at 24 volts. They are printed because they are checkable — a bead laid at the right number with the right filler is a document in itself, and metal remembers who welded it.
Is a load-calculated railing really necessary here?
The code asks a guard to take a 200-pound push at any point on the top rail and fifty pounds per linear foot along it — the headland wind makes both look optimistic. We calculate past it, weld past it, push-test it on the floor with a gauge, and the sheet ships in the folder. The parish assessor has a decade of them.
Does the stainless truly never rust?
It tea-stains where salt sits on it unwiped — freckles a cloth and a spring afternoon remove. We weld it with backing gas so the beads themselves do not orange, which is the failure you see on cheap quay furniture, and we say the cloth part out loud because pretending is how the cheap furniture got sold.
How long does a patina take?
Seeded on the bench, most of the colour inside a fortnight, the deep seal-brown over its first season outdoors. What it does NOT take is a holiday: the oxide layer is the armour, not the wound. It just needs to stand where its run-off is welcome — which is the conversation we have before the deposit, not after.
Verrill Bay, 2025 — 2026
Iron on the headland
Six builds from the last year. The brown ones are patina on purpose; everything else went through the kettle before the colour.
The shop, in figures
How it goes
How a Cinderpoint job runs
The same sequence on every job — the only variable is your project.
Day 1
The measure and the map
Tape, laser, photographs — and the piece’s address taken down, because the finish is chosen by where it will stand, not what it costs.
Week 1
The drawing and the schedule
Dimensioned drawing with the load rating on its face, finish schedule on the back — kettle, powder or patina, named and warranted — fixed price underneath, signed by Annag.
Weeks 2–3
The floor
Plasma-cut parts, frames pinned square on jigs, MIG where the load lives, TIG where the eye lands — every showing bead walked at the logged amperage.
Week 4
The finish room
Blasted to near-white; then the kettle and the powder line, or the seeded patina bench — whichever the map and the schedule chose, never the mood.
Install day
The hang and the folder
Anchors torqued, gates cycled a hundred times, guards gauged to the code load. The folder — drawings, load sheet, finish warranty — lands with the invoice.
The mission hall rail is a match to iron nobody has rolled since the 1890s, and the parish spent two years being told so by everyone with a welder. Cinderpoint cut the pickets from a photograph, aged the finish until the new run sat beside the old like a sibling, and then handed the harbourmaster a folder with the load maths in it — for a decorative rail. That is the shop the parishes have been recommending since, and the reason the recommendation sticks.
Estimates within two days of the measure · (555) 018-0946 · forge@cinderpointmetal.example
What holds, what swings, or what stains
A length, a photograph, or a napkin sketch — all three start a Cinderpoint drawing, and the finish conversation starts with your postcode. Repairs usually see the rig inside the week. forge@cinderpointmetal.example