Stainless Pleasure

Definitions of a hobby include an activity that you enjoy doing for fun, an activity or interest pursued outside one's regular occupation and engaged in primarily for pleasure or an activity that one enjoys doing in one's spare time.

Fun, pleasure and enjoy are three words that come to mind when I’m creating something using stainless steel.

I worked for over twenty years as a metal fabricator for the same company, where we built machinery for food and pharmaceutical companies. It was hard work, as steel is heavy, but I enjoyed my job. I’d enjoyed working with my hands and creating things from a young age.

I remember helping my father or grandfather build or fix things all through my youth, starting as early as ten years old. I remember the pleasure and pride I felt from finishing a project that started out as basically nothing but ended as something useful or beautiful, or both.

Even though my job entailed working with steel every day, it didn't fulfill my creative side. Whenever I had time off from my job, I would work in my garage, creating things from stainless steel. I would build furniture or useful items for our house, but what I enjoyed the most was creating artistic pieces. One time I actually made a stainless steel maple tree, but that's another story.

After twenty years of service, I lost my job during the market crash of 2008 caused by the sub-prime mortgage crisis. With the money I received for my payout, my wife suggested I open my own business. After months of frustration, trying to find the right business to buy into, my wife sat me down and said, "Why don’t you just do something you enjoy. Look at this as an opportunity.”

The two things I enjoyed the most were writing and working with stainless steel. I knew that making any sort of living from writing was a long shot at best, so I decided to open a small fabrication shop. I already had most of the tools and machinery I would need sitting in my garage.

I found the perfect spot five minutes from my house and moved all my tools and machinery there in mid-2009. To say my wife was happy to see all my stuff leave the garage would be an incredible understatement. But honestly, I think she was delighted to see that look in my eyes again; I had a purpose.

I started out designing and building furniture and small artistic pieces, which I would put up for sale on various websites. I purchased an inexpensive 3D CAD (computer-assisted drawing) program online and, with a good friend's help, taught myself how to use it.

It was tough for the first few months to make any real money as nobody knew about me or what I offered. I barely made enough to pay the rent in those first few months, but with the help of friends and my contacts in the steel business, it slowly started getting better. Word got around that I was one of the only people in town that would take on creative projects that had an artistic flair. Don't get me wrong, I didn't start making bags of money all of a sudden, but I did start making a reasonable living doing something I loved.

A company that I regularly used to laser cut stainless steel parts would recommend me to any customers they had that were looking to have something creative built. That's how I got involved in the project that gives me the most pride in all the things I've built.

I was contacted by the owner of a company that did engraving and built trophies in April 2018. He said they were bidding on a special project and would like me to be involved. As I was picky about which jobs I took on, I asked him what it was, but he said he didn't want to talk about it on the phone and asked to come to my shop to discuss it. Now he had me intrigued, so I agreed, and he showed up at my shop later that day.

He showed me some rough sketches of a trophy that was to be built for the world under 18 hockey tournament being held in Alberta in August of that year.

Being a Canadian boy who had grown up around hockey his whole life, I agreed to build the stainless steel top for the trophy within minutes.

The tournament was called the "Hlinka Gretzky cup" and would have eight teams from around the world competing for the top prize.

The teams were divided into two groups. Group "A" included Canada, Sweden, Slovakia and Switzerland, while group "B" held Russia, the United States, the Czech Republic and Finland.

Wayne Gretzky is a Canadian icon, and I felt proud just to be asked to be involved in the project. He retired from professional hockey in 1999, and the NHL retired his jersey number (99) after his final game. Gretzky still holds several of the most important records in hockey, 22 years after he retired. To name just a few, he still holds the records for most goals (1,072), most assists (1,963) and most points (2,857).

The job involved making one large trophy and eight half-size replicas, one for each team competing. The top of the trophy was to be designed around Gretzky's number (99) and built entirely from mirror-polished stainless steel.

We had basically three months to make this happen, so I jumped in with two feet and started on the design right away. I took the rough sketches of the basic idea and, armed with those and the overall dimensions, came up with a 3D CAD drawing in a couple of days. My customer liked what I had done and asked me to make a paper mock-up of the trophy, so I printed out a scaled-down version of each of the pieces on heavy bond paper. I used scissors to cut the individual pieces out carefully and then tried taping them all together in the correct shape. It didn't work as the paper wasn't strong enough to hold the form once I stood it up.

I decided I had to do it the hard way and took every measurement I could from my drawing and painstakingly drew the trophy out, full size, onto thick cardboard. I then had to cut the design out with scissors and snips before taping it together and standing it up. It worked, and I called in my customer to check it out. He was pleased with my effort and gave me the final go-ahead to build the project from stainless steel.

That’s when the hard work began. I had to create a 2d drawing of all the parts that I needed and then beg the laser company to cut them as fast as they could for me.

It took about two weeks for the parts to be cut and arrive at my door before I could actually start working. Every piece had to be pre-polished, as they were scratched, before I could begin any welding. By the time all the prep work was done, and I was ready to start welding, we were down to less than two months before the tournament start date. It sounds like a lot of time, but the Trophy had to be in Alberta a month before the tournament for its unveiling and advertising campaign.

So really, I had less than a month to build one large trophy and eight small ones, but I loved it.

My customer was very apologetic but begged me to get everything to him within twenty days. I told him I would try my best, but I didn't know if it was possible, so he was surprised and thrilled when I called him after fourteen days to tell him I was done. He was delighted with the finished product and even insisted on paying me a twenty percent bonus, which I gladly accepted.

I remember the pride I felt when I saw the pictures in the news from the unveiling of the trophy in Alberta.

But the pride I felt on that day didn't come close to the joy and satisfaction I felt on the final day of the tournament when the winning team was on the news, skating around the ice with the trophy I'd built held high in the air.

What made that day even sweeter, and cause it to stick in my memory forever, was the team that carried the trophy that day was my team, Canada.