Double R Steel tour

Inch-thick steel is almost sculptural.  Such were the awesome stacks of it at Double R Steel in Kitchener.  Last weekend, during the BOX Art Show & Sale, I had the good fortune to tour through Double R Steel’s heavy shop that adjoins the venue used for BOX on Ardelt Place.

Click through for a few photos…

Don Voisin, owner of Double R Steel, was our tour guide.  Don was a big help for BOX, lending his forktruck, installing steel plates to ease accessibility to the venue, and enthusiastically leading us through his shop.  Thanks Don!

First up was this enormous plasma cutter.  This computer-controlled can accurately blast intricate designs through massive sheets of steel.  This photo doesn’t do justice to the scale of this machine: it is huge.

Here’s a nozzle from the cutter head you see mounted to the gantry in the previous photo.

I believe this maple leaf is cut from aluminum plate.

These decorative fire pits (I think) are cut, then…

rolled, then…

welded here on-site.

I could have shot this shop the whole morning, but I was running and gunning so I could keep up with Don’s description of the various areas and products within the shop.

At the far end of the shop, amid ringing hammers, we found blacksmith Sandra Dunn of Two Smiths!  —brief digression: you must check out Jonathan Bielaski and Gabriela Soares’ excellent post about Sandra, then go down the rabbit hole reading all their posts on For The Love Of It—   Sandra was working with…

John Monteath (thanks James Nye) of Manuka Forge as they were designing newels for a pretty substantial railing.  A happy surprise to find this nook on our tour.

A huge shop, giant overhead cranes, gargantuan rolling machines, material on a massive scale, and great light to boot.  Fantastic tour.

Big thanks again to Double R Steel and Don Voisin for a glimpse into this domain.

DW