VB Steel is a family-owned fabrication and welding shop located at 710 Pioneer Road in Chisholm, Ontario, a short drive from North Bay. Ian and Lisa Van Blyderveen own it and run it. Ian has worked with metal for 26 years. He holds a Red Seal as a Structural Plate Fitter/Welder and carries CWB Certified Welding Supervisor papers. The company itself is CWB Division 2 certified. The man who quotes the job is the man who welds it.For contractors across the region, the shop serves as a structural steel contractor for beams, columns, stairs, railings, brackets, lintels, and custom reinforcements. Every cut is made in-house on a CNC plasma table that handles material up to 1 inch thick on a 5-foot-by-10-foot bed. Welding runs MIG, flux core and stick, whichever the job calls for. Nothing gets imported and resold. That matters when a piece has to carry load through a Northern Ontario winter, because a weld that lets go in February is not a paperwork problem. It is a structure with a problem.
"People find out what their fabricator is worth the first time something goes wrong," a company spokesperson said. "We would rather they never get there. Certification is not a sticker on the door. It is the reason the weld holds when snow piles up on it. Nothing leaves here that we would not bolt to our own property, and we will tell a customer straight if what they want cannot be done the way they described it."
The plasma table cuts any conductive metal. Copper, brass, aluminum and steel have all come off it. VB Steel also stocks square tubing, angles, flat bar and plate, and can order anything else. Most finished work is powder coated and cured in an oven at roughly 350 to 420 degrees, which sits on the metal far harder than paint on a windy driveway. Custom jobs start with a sketch or photo, and a design screenshot is sent out for approval before anything is cut.
Waiting three weeks on a part from a supplier two thousand kilometres away costs a builder more than the part. VB Steel takes one-off orders and repeat production runs alike, and, as a structural steel contractor, handles delivery and installation for the North Bay and area, priced per order.
About VB Steel
VB Steel handles steel fabrication in Ontario for residential, commercial and industrial customers, from load-bearing structural work down to powder-coated signs and fire pits, all made in-house. Hours are Monday to Thursday, 8 am to 4 pm, and Friday, 8 am to noon. For more information, visit https://vbsteel.ca/.