Flatbar & Fillet · Welding & fabrication · Culverton, the slag flats
STOCK SECTIONS. PUBLISHED RATES. WELDS THAT READ.
No showroom, no consult fee, no quote-by-silhouette — a two-bay shop on the slag flats that publishes what things cost and lets the beads argue the rest. Flatbar, angle, tube and plate off the rack; TIG where you look, MIG where you lean; the same card for homeowner and site manager.
Card updated this quarter · 2,300 jobs out of Culverton · the zinc kettle is in the exterior rate
Services
The numbered list
01
Railings & guards — $92–138 / linear ft
Load-calculated past the code’s 200-pound push with the sheet in your folder, built as pickets, cable or glass-ready frames, and finished to the exposure — kettle for the street, powder for the stair.
02
Gates — drawn per opening, from $1,850
Leaf weight, hinge spec and wind load on the drawing before steel is ordered. Automation conduit framed into the leaf, bearings rated for decades, and the latch a gloved hand finds in the dark.
03
Stringers & stairs — from $235 / stringer
Plasma-cut pairs, drilled and notched for your treads, load-rated for the run. Ship bare for your carpenter or finished with grating treads and a matching rail from the same rack.
04
Repair & site welding — $95 / hr
The rig covers Culverton and the flats same-week: sagged gates, cracked welds, the guard the snowplough argued with. Rewelded stronger than the first build, or a written verdict when scrap wins.
Services & rates
The rate card
The whole card, homeowner and site manager the same number. Exterior rates carry the zinc kettle in them because the slag flats eat bare steel — hot-dip under powder is not an upgrade here, it is the exterior system, and the card says so before you ask.
Railings — fabricated & installed$92–138 / linear ft
Load-calculated, push-tested, sheet in the folder
Gates — driveway & pedestrianfrom $1,850
Wind-load checked, conduit framed in, bearings hung
Stair stringers — plasma-cut pairsfrom $235 / stringer
Drilled, notched, load-rated for the run
Stock-section brackets & framesfrom $340
Flatbar, angle, tube and plate off the rack, same week
Mobile welding & repair$95 / hr
Culverton and the flats, usually same-week
Galvanize + powder, two-coat exterior$32 / linear ft
Kettle first, colour second — the finish the flats respect
Culverton, 2025 — 2026
Jobs, unstyled
Six off the floor this year, photographed the hour they left. Galvanized-and-powdered unless the caption says otherwise — sparks are how the work happens, not how it ships.
How it goes
Phone call to powder, in order
The call
Feet, photographs and what it fixes to — enough for a card-rate estimate on the phone, and a drawn fixed price within two business days.
The drawing
A dimensioned sketch with the load rating on its face and the finish named — kettle, powder or primer. You sign the drawing, not just the number.
The floor
Stock sections off the rack, parts nested on the plasma table, MIG in the joints that carry and TIG on the joints people read. Certified hands, logged welds.
The coat and the hang
Blasted, primed, baked at 200°C in the colour you picked from the card — then installed, torque-checked and push-tested by the crew that cut it.
Fair questions
The counter questions
The five the counter hears before eight most mornings. The shop line at the bottom runs six to six, and whoever answers is standing beside whoever welds.
What amps do you run — and why say so?
TIG on 1/8-inch wall: 105–120 amps behind a 3/32 lanthanated tungsten with 308 filler. Structural laps: MIG at 24 volts. Sixteen-gauge sheet: 60 amps, or it becomes lace. The settings are published because they are checkable — a shop that hides its numbers is hiding its welds, and the card is not the only thing we publish.
Why is the exterior rate higher?
Because it includes the zinc kettle. Hot-dip galvanizing fuses eighty-five to a hundred microns of zinc into the steel and the flats punish anything less; powder goes over the zinc for the colour. Zinc-rich primer — seventy-five microns of zinc-bearing paint — is honest for dry interiors and we sell it for exactly those, in writing on the schedule.
Can you match the iron on my 1920s porch?
Photograph the picket profile dead-on and send one caliper reading. The plasma table cuts the match from the photograph, and the finish is aged to sit beside a century of weather rather than shame it — four of those matches stand on the terraces and nobody has found the seam.
Is my railing really load-calculated?
The code asks a guard to take a 200-pound push at any point and direction on the top rail plus fifty pounds per linear foot along it. Ours are calculated past both and the sheet ships in the folder — the municipal assessor stopped phoning us in 2019, which is the actual compliment.
How fast, honestly?
Repairs inside the week, flats-wide. Rails and gates two to four weeks — the powder and kettle queues decide which, and we name the week at the quote. Bracket work sometimes ships in days; the plasma table likes small batches and so do we.
The card said ninety-two a foot and the folder said why. The invoice said ninety-two a foot. Three documents agreeing is more than my last three fabricators managed in total.
A gust off the flats took the old market canopy like a magpie takes a button. The replacement came back wind-load checked in writing, and three winters of gales later it has not moved a bolt. The drawings were better than the ones I paid an engineer for.
They matched our 1920s porch iron from two photographs and half a picket. The conservation walk has been past twice and neither officer found the new run — and then the folder arrived with a load sheet in it, for a decorative rail.
A fillet is the honest weld — two pieces and the truth between them. The card is the same.
The counter opens six to six, Saturday to noon · (555) 012-7093 · card@flatbarfillet.example
Read us the tape measure
Feet, material and the town you are in — that is enough for the card rate, and a drawn fixed price follows within two business days. Photographs with a boot in frame are a house speciality. card@flatbarfillet.example