Keith Wineinger and his burn table make custom designs, art and signs with a variety of metals, electricity and forced air. Torin Halsey
KAMAY – Keith Wineinger cuts metal with lightning at the Burn Shop.
A high-tech torch burns metal to make the Wichitan’s custom designs. He creates everything from grill grates to signs such as the one on The Highlander Public House downtown.
His wife, Ivonne, is the spark behind The Burn Shop. She wears many hats in the couple’s flourishing business while Keith puts in time behind the burn table.
“It’s been a wild ride for the last two years,” Keith, 36, said.
It all started about two and a half years ago when he was working in the oil business. The price of crude plummeted.
“Naturally the income dropped. I was only working about half a day,” he said.
Keith needed to do something else to earn income. He pitched the idea of buying a CNC plasma cutting table to Ivonne.
He wanted to make a go in metal design, taking advantage of the resurgence of interest in metal art.
“He was very excited,” Ivonne said. “I’m not a risk taker, but he is. So sometimes we kind of balance each other out.”
The cutting table is automated via computer, and CNC means Computer Numerical Control.
“It’s just a fancier way of cutting metal where you don’t have to use an acetylene torch,” Keith said. “You’re using electricity. So basically, you’re cutting with lightning.”
Keith has had a lifelong fascination with metal and is a self-taught welder.
“I would work out of my garage doing just random projects. I’ve built two or three smokers,” he said.
At first, he cut out anything he thought someone might be interested in.
“Whatever I could do to make a buck, I would cut it out. That quickly evolved,” he said.
The breakthrough came when he made a customized grill for his Weber kettle and posted it on The Burn Shop WF, the business’ Facebook page.
“Overnight, the grill grates stated going crazy,” Keith said.
The business ships custom grates all over the world now, he said.
“I would have to attribute a lot of the success that we’ve had to social media. Facebook and Instagram have done a lot for us, for sure,” he said.
The venture’s Instagram handle is @The_Burn_Shop.
The way Keith sees it, he gets to combine two things he loves and make money.
“My two biggest passions are probably outdoor cooking and metal,” he said. “It’s kind of like the absolute perfect scenario for me.”
The next big break was the Highlander sign. It ignited the custom sign side of the business.
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“It was eight feet tall and 15 feet wide, a big, big sign,” he said.
Since then, The Burn Shop has made signage for the Wichita Falls Brewing Co., a taproom and brewery opening March 30, as well as the Eighth Street Coffee House, Dear Heart Designs in Henrietta and oil companies in Holiday.
Keith is still involved in oil production south of Holiday with his father, Randal Wineinger of Akins Oil Co.
For the Highlander sign, Keith crafted about 40 pieces.
“But that’s a small number. I would be willing to bet that the Wichita Falls Brewing Co.’s is probably closer to 200,” he said.
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His signs have a three-dimensional feel, he said. Keith uses bolts between their layers as spacers.
Keith and Ivonne’s business has been doing well enough to hire a full-time employee, Taylor Bivona, a 20-year-old member of the Marine Reserves.
In addition, their daughters, 10-year-old Hailey and 8-year-old Addison, help out sometimes, Ivonne said.
“They’re a big part of The Burn Shop,” she said. “We want them to learn what hard work is about.”
“That makes my job a little bit easier,” Bivona said with a smile.
On a warm March day, Keith sat down at a computer in the corner of his shop, using DesignEdge software to plug in parameters for a project.
Then he slipped on workman’s gloves and wrangled a piece of metal onto the 5-foot-by-10-foot burn table resting on a bright red frame.
He stood back and set the table in motion. Sparks flew as the automated torch carved out a grill grate in minutes. The cutter’s current has a maximum of 65 amps.
“Plasma cutting is a technology that uses electricity and forced air to cut the metal,” Keith said. “Essentially you’re using electricity to get extremely hot, and then you’re forcing that heat down into the metal with the air to cut metal.”
Plasma cutters send an arc of electricity through a gas – such as forced air, heating the gas so it transforms into plasma, according to www.Torchmate.com.
Plasma is a fourth state of matter in addition to solid, liquid and gas.
The plasma transfers to the electricity-conducting metal. It burns through molten metal to cut it as the computer specifies.
Keith said the burn table can cut metal as thin as 26 gauge – about the equivalent of sheet metal – and as thick as three-quarters of an inch.
The burn table can precision cut aluminum, stainless steel, corrugated metal and more.
“If it conducts electricity, we can cut it,” Keith said.
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