Fabricator wannabees tell us how it’s done

One Barnes MetalCrafters' first fire pit designs featured a marlin.

My dad and I go to a few festivals a year where we display our fire pits and other things we make at Barnes MetalCrafters. We also go to a local farmer’s market nearly every weekend where we display with several other local craftsmen and artists. It is nice to have the opportunity to talk to a lot of different types of people, but occasionally you run into some that make you think a little. Some good, some bad, and others that really make you mad.

The other day I was reading a recent blog post by Josh Welton of Brown Dog Welding about respecting creativity. He mentioned a brief conversation with an onlooker about his work and how the person kind of snubbed some of his metal sculptures, implying that they are easier to make than they really are. I, as well as many other makers and doers, have run across these people on many occasions. Josh is not alone, as there are many people that come by our booth and rub us the wrong way.

In the beginning people like this made me mad, but now they really don’t bother me. I catch the occasional person sneaking into our booth while we are busy with another customer. They pull out their cell phone and start snapping photos like they are doing a magazine shoot.

These visitors don’t bother asking you if it is OK to take pictures. I like to walk toward them very fast and ask if I can help them get a closer look. I’m not the smallest person, so I usually startle them and they scamper off as they tell me they are fine. They usually go back to their significant other and they walk off together. If they really want to copy something bad enough, they should just buy it so they don’t have to try so hard.

We also get a lot of people who waltz up to our booth and begin to spit out this wealth of metal fabrication knowledge. They like to tell us and their cronies with them what machine we used to cut out our fire pits and how they were fabricated. Because, as you know, my dad and I have no clue how we made these pits. They say something like “water laser” or “you sure do have a nice diamond cutter.” We politely say these parts were cut on our 4,000-watt laser and they look completely amazed. “You mean to tell me that this thing is cut with a light beam?” Yeah, just like “Star Wars.”

Some other people who show up at festivals think the stuff we make happens at the snap of a finger. They like our products but they want something custom with their last name on it. They don’t realize the price will go up because this is something we don’t normally make, something obviously known as a custom order. It takes time, and time is money!

I like it when people play our work down as being something really simple that everyone could do in their spare time. Some people tell us, “You must have one of those machines where the computer tells it what to do and cuts out any design you want.” I usually smile and say, “Yeah, kinda.” There would be no skill or artistry in our industry if we just told our computers to go do things for us. Computers, by all means, make things easier, but they don’t comprise the multilevels of skill that it takes to complete the fabrication process.

A lot of these people often have ties to a friend or family member that could make these products for them, but they live up north. They’ll tell me a little about this person and how skilled he or she is. It’s nice to hear about these people, but I laugh when they tell me they are going to go get them to make them one just like ours. I bet you will.

After a while you learn how to read people and figure out what is going on in their heads. A product is best when it can sell itself without you having to throw too much of a sales pitch. So, when these people are interested, they usually will be back to purchase something. But if they tell you, “I’ll be back,” following some interest, then most likely you will never see them again. We like to call these people “be-backers.”

When it comes down to making something, you are the only one who knows exactly what you do and how you do it. It makes things unique when you put your own personal touch on it. I’ll let the onlookers tell me what we should do while we continue to make things that we know we do well.

I hope all of you enjoy these next few weeks of the holiday season with your families. Maybe you will get out there and talk to some people like us and share your thoughts on how we make things. Merry Christmas!

Slide Show | 6 Images