Behind the Scenes | Crafting Our Gooseneck Arms
One of the things customers love about our gooseneck lighting is the ability to customize the fixture with just a few clicks. From a wide variety of shade sizes to a rainbow of finish colors, it’s easy to create a custom barn light that suits your home or business perfectly.
The mounting for these fixtures is called the gooseneck arm. We handcraft 30 different styles and sizes of arms to accommodate most any space. Whether your ceilings are high or low, if you need a 7″ projection from the wall or even a whopping 50″ projection, we have the styles to suit most needs.
The man behind the crafting of our gooseneck arms is Nate, a Key West native, who has been working with Barn Light Electric for almost five years. Nate started out in the paint and prep departments but has been working in the machine shop bending pipe for two years.
“I love bending pipe,” Nate says. “This is a great company and I enjoy working and helping the other guys in the machine shop. I love it here.” With a towering stack of pipes piled on a rack against the wall, Nate takes each piece through four steps.
“I cut each pipe, then de-burr the ends,” he explains. “Then I make the threads on the ends. Bending is the last step.” He can bend, on average, 200 gooseneck arms an hour. Sometimes customers need a special size or style of gooseneck arm which presents Nate with a bigger challenge.
“Custom stems are tougher,” he notes. “It takes a bit to figure out how to bend at different angles and make the different shapes.” At the end of the day, the pipe rack is empty and boxes loaded with gooseneck arms are ready for finishing and assembly. Even with gloves on, tiny metal shards work their way into Nate’s hands each day, but, he notes, it’s just part of the job.
Nate came to Titusville five years ago from Key West where his four daughters and grandchildren still live. His Yorkshire terrier, named Champ, keeps Nate company and waits patiently for him to come home each day.
“I love it here in Titusville,” Nate says. “And I love what I do.”
