Welding & metal fabrication · Ferrow Crossing & the vale mills · Est. 2012
Everything holds because the tack held.
Tackline builds guards, gate frames and production fixtures in the old bobbin mill on Gaff Street — parts nested on our own plasma table, frames pinned square on jigs before a single finish pass, TIG at 105–120 amps where the bead is read and MIG at 24 volts where the load lives. The tack is the promise: square before it is welded, welded before it is pretty.
Tack, then weld
Every frame is pinned on a jig and checked diagonal-to-diagonal while it can still be persuaded. A welded square is decided before the arc is struck, not argued with after.
Load-calculated guards
Railings built past the code’s 200-pound push with the calculation sheet in your handover folder — the numbers travel with the steel, not in a drawer here.
Two processes, one hand
TIG at 105–120 amps behind a 3/32 lanthanated tungsten where the bead shows; MIG at 24 volts in the structural laps; sixty amps flat on 16-gauge sheet, because thin metal punishes impatience.
Services & rates
The fabrication & rate list
Homeowner and production manager pay the same list. Anything living in road salt or mill damp leaves hot-dip galvanized under its powder — the zinc kettle is in the exterior rate because the weather does not negotiate.
Guards & railings — fabricated & installed$96–142 / linear ft
Load-calculated past the 200-lb push; galvanized or primed to the exposure
Gate frames — drawn per openingfrom $1,950
Wind load on the drawing; automation conduit framed in, not zip-tied
Production fixtures & jigsfrom $1,200
Plasma-nested parts, repeatability to half a millimetre a batch
Stair stringers — plasma-cut pairsfrom $245 / stringer
Drilled, notched, load-rated for the run
Mobile repair & site welding$95 / hr
The Crossing and the vale, usually same-week
Powder-coat, any card colour$27 / linear ft
Blasted, zinc-primed, baked at 200°C
How it goes
From sketch to square
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 3–5
The drawing and the number
A dimensioned shop drawing with the guard’s load calculation on its face and the finish named in writing — kettle, powder or primer. Fixed price underneath, signed on your phone.
Week 2
The fixture floor
Parts nested off the plasma table, frames pinned on the jig, tacks checked square to the diagonal — then the finish passes: MIG where it carries, TIG where it shows, every structural weld logged.
Week 3
The coat and the hang
Blasted to near-white, galvanized or powdered per the schedule, anchors torqued to spec and guards push-tested with a gauge on the rail before we leave.
Ferrow Crossing, 2025 — 2026
Runs off the floor
Six jobs from the last year, photographed at handover. The repeats are the point — batch forty-four of anything should look like batch one.
The Gaff Street shop
One bobbin mill, three bays
Three bays in the old bobbin mill: the plasma bay, the fixture floor, and the finish line with the powder oven the gates drive through. Four hands — two of them certified to AWS D1.1 — and a library of ninety-eight jigs built for jobs we have already done, which is why the second batch of anything costs you less than the first.
Square is decided before the arc
Frames are pinned and checked diagonal-to-diagonal while they can still be adjusted. A Tackline frame that goes out of square in ten years comes back onto the jig at our cost.
The five we always get
Straight answers, factory settings
The questions the vale’s maintenance leads and homeowners ask over the same counter. If yours is not here, the mill line at the bottom runs six to six.
What amps do you actually run?
On 1/8-inch wall we TIG at 105–120 amps behind a 3/32 lanthanated tungsten with 308 filler — hot enough to penetrate in one pass, slow enough to stack dimes. Structural laps inside gate frames go MIG at 24 volts, and 16-gauge sheet drops to 60 amps or it becomes a colander. A shop that cannot recite its settings cannot vouch for its welds.
Why do your fixtures matter to my one gate?
Because the jig does not care whether it is holding your gate or a batch of forty brackets — it holds the frame square the same way every time. The one-off gets the same diagonal check the batch does, and the batch gets the same finish pass your gate does. That is the whole advantage of a shop that builds its own tooling.
Galvanizing or powder-coat — which is mine?
Indoors, powder alone: electrostatic, baked at 200°C, outlasts paint five to one. Outdoors — road salt, mill damp, the Crossing’s weather — we hot-dip first and powder over it: eighty-five to a hundred microns of fused zinc under the colour. Zinc-rich primer is a real finish for dry interiors at seventy-five microns, and we say which of the three is on your schedule before you sign.
Is my railing genuinely load-calculated?
Yes — the code asks a guard to take a 200-pound concentrated push at any point and direction on the top rail plus fifty pounds per linear foot along it. We calculate past both, weld past both, and the sheet ships in the folder with the weld log. Copied patterns pass on one porch and fail on the next span; calculated ones do not care whose porch they are on.
How fast?
Repairs inside the week — the rig covers the Crossing and the vale. Guards and gates two to four weeks, and the powder and kettle queues decide which: we name the week at the quote, not after you chase it. Batch work runs to your schedule, and the first article is always ready for you to measure before the rest of the nest cuts.
Batch forty-four of our brackets arrived a week early and a bracket from batch one sat beside one from forty-four on the inspection table — nobody at the plant could tell them apart without the stamp. That is not welding; that is a system.
Nine metres of playground guard with a load sheet the head teacher now shows off at governors’ meetings. The inspector pushed the rail, read the folder, and asked where we had found a shop that led with paperwork. Ferrow Crossing, apparently.
They rebuilt the weighbridge canopy a truck had folded, from photographs, between two rain fronts. The drawings came back load-rated before I had asked for that, and the kettle line was on the quote in plain type. Second job with them is already booked.
Free measures across the Crossing and the vale · (555) 013-2284 · shop@tacklinemetal.example
Send the sketch — or the sample part
A photograph of the part you need more of, or a length of rail: both start a Tackline drawing, and the fixed price lands within two business days. Repairs usually see the rig inside the week. shop@tacklinemetal.example