The shop

Sawmill Steel Co. is a steel shop on Sawmill Road in Greenfield, New Hampshire. The shop fabricates and erects structural steel for builders, general contractors and owners across New England: beams and columns, metal decking, precast and shear studs, stairs, rails and ornamental ironwork.

What the shop does

Three crews share one yard. The fabrication crew cuts, copes, welds and paints in the shop: plate, angle, channel and bar to the drawing. The erection crew sets what the shop ships, from a school gym frame to a hospital wing addition, with the shop's own ironworkers on the hooks. The finish crew handles the small metal that closes a building: stairs, rails, gates and grates.

What the bench notes are

The site keeps a written bench for every check the crews run: a measured value, the instrument that read it, the job it came from, and what the check does not cover. The notes sit in four benches. From the shop holds fabrication and plasma work. From the field holds erection, decking and ironwork in the air. Projects holds the jobs themselves. Steel notes holds what the crews learn about the trade, the codes and the New England weather.

Where the shop works

The yard sits in Greenfield, at the foot of the Monadnock hills, and the crews work the southern tier of New Hampshire first: Hillsborough, Cheshire and Rockingham counties, then the rest of New England as the schedule allows. Greenfield, Peterborough, Keene, Nashua and Manchester are home ground; beyond that, the shop prices the drive like it prices the steel.

What the shop is not

The shop on Sawmill Road is a new crew with a new name, working the same trade this address has known for years. It does not carry another company's contracts, customers or letterhead, and it does not pretend to. The bench notes stand on their own: each one says what was measured and what was not.