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Über Jason

Das passiert, wenn ein Schweißer beschließt, ein Tischlerwerkzeug wegzuwerfen

Durch meine jahrelange Arbeit in den Bereichen Fertigung, Eisenverarbeitung und Mühlenbau wurde ich immer wieder mit Problemen konfrontiert. Die Werkzeuge, die für die zu erledigenden Aufgaben zur Verfügung standen, entsprachen einfach nicht immer meinen hohen Erwartungen. Die einzige Lösung, die mir einfiel, war, mein eigenes Werkzeug herzustellen, und das war der Beginn meines Werkzeugunternehmens.

Fireball Tool ist meine selbst geschaffene Plattform für Problemlösungen durch Design, Iteration und Produktion meiner Erfindungen. Ich möchte die Werkzeuge, die mein Leben und meine Arbeit so viel einfacher gemacht haben, mit anderen teilen und sie in Produkte verwandeln, zu denen jeder Zugang haben kann. Außerdem erstelle ich aktiv Inhalte auf einem YouTube-Kanal, um mein Wissen weiterzugeben und mein Publikum mit den Themen zu unterhalten und zu inspirieren, die mir am meisten am Herzen liegen.

Fireball Tool hat es sich zur Aufgabe gemacht, erstklassige Produkte für Handwerker und Bastler herzustellen, die mit ihren Werkzeugen konstruieren, bauen und Probleme lösen. Wir sind stolz darauf, jeden Tag die nächste Generation amerikanischer Talente aufzubauen und zu fördern, sei es durch die Erstellung von Medieninhalten oder durch Design und Fertigung, und ich kann es kaum erwarten, Ihnen zu zeigen, was als nächstes kommt.

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If You Don’t Have It, Make It

Over the course of his welding career, 36-year-old Jason Marburger (see Figure 2) has burned countless rods in every capacity, from automotive fabrication to commercial ironwork construction to mobile welding. Marburger has worked alone and managed crews over the years. Today he works as a contractor. Through it all he has wondered why welders often are limited to using carpenter’s tools that never fully meet their needs.

“They give you a flat welding table and ask you to build and weld with a speed square and primitive tools. I always thought there had to be a way to clamp things to it,” he said.

He started his latest job in Spokane, Wash., with the intent of customizing his welding table to better serve his skills. Marburger wanted a welder-specific square that was designed with weld accessibility, able to accommodate offsets, and constructed of a material that could withstand the heat and abuse of welding. With the goal of making his job a little easier, he sketched out a rudimentary design for something that would meet any needs he might encounter on the job. The next day he had a friend cut the parts with a plasma cutter, then welded a prototype, and immediately put it to work. It didn’t take long to draw interest from co-workers and others in the shop.

“It worked well. Everyone immediately wanted to check it out, and I thought I might have something here,” Marburger said.

From the Welding Table to the Web
When a local welding supply salesperson learned about Marburger’s creation, he asked him to demonstrate it at the company’s open house. He dove headfirst into the world of entrepreneurship and in only two weeks threw together a website, built a brand, and hustled to create a small inventory of products to present.

“I welded my butt off; showed up at the event; flopped down the tailgate; and was right there with all the big boys like Miller, Lincoln, and ESAB,” Marburger said.

He said his custom-designed square drew interest from welders, buyers, and other manufacturers. Leaving with new contacts, new ideas, and a greater awareness of his product’s potential, he set out to design a more accurate and repeatable square.

He immediately faced the challenges of balancing a full-time welding job with becoming an after-hours entrepreneur. Marburger sold his pickup trucks to raise capital for the first orders and managed most of the growth himself, building the business on a limited budget and with a do-it-yourself attitude.

One of the first steps was to improve the design and move production beyond the limits of his own hands and welding table. In July 2016 he discovered an aluminum foundry in Spokane that could cast the tool in an accurate, durable, one-piece design. Marburger had access to the production facility to ensure quality control. Also, he considered it important to keep production in the U.S.

With an avenue for more production, he started promoting and growing his Fireball Tool through application videos on his YouTube channel.

“Within the few weeks of someone showing my tool on YouTube, I was selling hundreds of units,” said Marburger. “It has been growing ever since.”

The tool has been starting to receive interest from larger organizations that buy multiple tools for their entire team of welders. Inquiries also have come from as far away as Australia and New Zealand.

Bringing Tools to Market
The tool is under a patent application, something he said has been a “roller coaster ride.” He has been reinvesting nearly all of the money from tool sales back into the business and also has a dozen new designs that he would like to test and prototype in the future.

“Because I have a day job, I don’t have to pull from Fireball. I’m just reinvesting to buy more molds, improve my products, and create new ones,” he said.

The tool variations can be used alone or in conjunction with each other to handle nearly any type of weld or joint a fabricator might encounter, according to Marburger. The company now has more than a dozen products and combinations, including preassembled tools and kits that are precut and can be welded together.

Marburger said the tools can be used in many ways that traditional squares cannot, as different angles, access points, and lengths allow them to be used in multiple capacities. Angles and squares also can be clamped together (see Figure 3) to create tools up to 2 feet long to assist in various welding functions. The dedicated-angle fixture has no pivot point in the corner, allowing weld access inside and outside, and it can be adjusted to serve as a fixturing device for cutting, grinding, and gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW).

“Having a tool that was really versatile, valuable, and could accommodate many angles was important. It can be used on a welding table, on sawhorses, or a man basket,” Marburger said. “We’re welders. We need to be able to weld what we put together. And we need to be able to quickly check it to ensure it is square.”

Fireball Tool, www.fireballtool.com

Freelance writer Craig Guillot can be reached at craigguillot@gmail.com.

Fireball Tool was born out of frustration, namely Jason Marburger’s frustration while trying to use a carpenter’s tool to do a metal fabricator’s job. Marburger built a robust square for clamping material during fabrication, and his creation of a better mousetrap led him to instructional welding and fabrication videos that highlight some of his innovative and inspiring builds.

Marburger’s fabrication shop is massive and his machines, as well as his skill in using them, are impressive. We all wish we could have a mill, a lathe, a shaper, and a 3-axis CNC waterjet cutter, but one of his latest videos, while definitely enhanced by his access to such a tool, relies much more on basic fabrication to create a piece of equipment that is used quite often in just about every garage: a bench vise.

Marburger’s design is sturdy, simple, and inexpensive to build. Its size is massive, so even if scaled down a bit to weigh less than its 90-pound total, it could service most garage needs. It uses easy-to-source materials including rectangular tubing, plate steel, nuts, thrust washers, and all-thread. Everything but the swivel mounting plate could be fabricated by just about anyone with a welder, a means to cut metal, and some free time.

We really enjoyed this video, and it might inspire us to try a similar project of our own, because after looking through our local classifieds, the best vise brands are hard to find—and when they are for sale, they aren’t cheap.

Marburger even tested some cheap vises against his own creation and some of the better brands out there.

That video is also worth a watch, although if you’re sentimental about old cast iron, you may have to look away from time to time.

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