READOS / Business / KEVOS® original book
Setting Up a Welding Shop by the Numbers
Work mix, floor layout, power, gas, fume extraction, equipment, fire safety, hourly cost, pricing and the first year's cash, from the 1917 repair shop to today
Plan a small welding and fabrication shop with numbers: the work, the floor, the power and gas supply, fume extraction, equipment, fire safety, the hourly cost, pricing and cash flow.
Start readingAbout this book
Many welders dream of their own shop, and many small fabrication businesses outgrow the corner of a shed where they started. Setting up a shop is a chain of decisions that are easy to get wrong and expensive to change: how much floor to rent, where the bays go, whether the power supply will run the machines, how the gas will be supplied, how the fume will be removed, what equipment to buy first, how to keep the place from burning down, and what to charge so that the business survives its first year.
This book is for welders and fabricators setting up their own shop, and for owners and managers planning a new welding bay or reorganising an existing one. It assumes a working knowledge of welding and simple arithmetic. It puts numbers on each decision, so that the shop is sized for its work and its prices cover its costs.
Early manuals as a starting point
In the years after 1910, oxy-acetylene welding opened a new kind of small business: the custom repair welding shop, mending broken castings, cracked cylinders and worn parts for garages, farmers and factories. The makers of welding equipment and their writers knew their customers were often new to business. The Imperial Brass Manufacturing Company’s handbook of 1916 warned new owners not to solicit work before they had learned to weld. P. F. Willis’s Practical Manual of 1917 listed the tools a repair shop needed and told owners that few custom welding shops properly accounted for overhead. M. Keith Dunham’s Automobile Welding of 1917 advised on where to put the welding outfit, how to build a welding table and how to keep a cost card for every job.
Their advice about overhead, cost cards and practice before taking customers’ money is as sound now as then. Each chapter takes up one of their themes and works it through for a modern shop.
The running case
This is an illustration. A qualified welder with fifteen years’ experience in a fabrication shop plans to set up her own business with one employee, doing jobbing fabrication and repair: trailers, gates, brackets, machinery repairs, site work for farms and local industry, and small structural jobs. She has found a rented industrial unit and savings to equip it, and wants to plan the shop, its services, its equipment and its prices before signing the lease.
The business, its building, costs and prices are invented for teaching. They are not KEVOS® work. Real shops must meet planning, building, electrical, gas, fire and work health and safety requirements, and the advice of licensed electricians, gas suppliers, accountants and insurers governs.
How to use the book
Chapter 1 decides what work the shop will do. Chapter 2 sizes the floor and lays out the bays. Chapters 3 and 4 size the power and gas supplies, and Chapter 5 the fume extraction. Chapter 6 chooses the first equipment, and Chapter 7 deals with fire and safety. Chapters 8 and 9 build the hourly cost and price jobs, and Chapter 10 forecasts the first year’s cash. Every chapter ends with an exercise and its worked answer.
Limits and professional responsibility
This book is educational. Electrical installation work must be done by licensed electricians to AS/NZS 3000 and the network’s requirements; gas storage and supply must follow AS 4332, the supplier’s instructions and the regulator’s requirements; hot work must follow fire precautions such as those in AS 1674.1; and welding must follow the work health and safety regulator’s requirements, including Safe Work Australia’s model code of practice for welding processes as adopted in each jurisdiction. Leases, planning permits, insurance, tax and business structure need professional advice. The prices and costs in this book are illustrations.
An original treatment
READOS covers the welding processes themselves in Arc Welding by the Numbers and Oxy-Fuel by the Numbers, and the gases in Industrial Gases by the Numbers; this book links to them rather than repeating them. The explanations, the shop case, the calculations, figures and exercises are original KEVOS® writing. The historical manuals are public-domain works in the United States; their advice is summarised in new words, and none of their text, tables or illustrations is reproduced.
Who this book is for
Welders and fabricators setting up their own shop, and owners and managers planning a new welding bay or reorganising an existing one, who need to size the building, services and equipment and set prices that cover their costs.
What you will learn
- Decide what work a new shop will do and size the floor, bays and layout for it.
- Estimate the electrical demand of welding equipment and the gas a shop will use.
- Size fume extraction and plan fire precautions for hot work.
- Choose and cost the first equipment, and calculate an hourly rate that covers overhead.
- Price jobs from a cost card, set a minimum charge, and forecast the first year's cash flow.
Inside this book
Chapters
- 01Deciding what work the shop will doChoose the work a new welding shop will do, estimate the hours it can sell from two people's time, and see how the work mix decides the building, the equipment and the prices.
- 02The floor and the layoutSize a small welding shop's floor from its largest jobs and its zones, lay out the flow from steel rack to dispatch, and keep welding, grinding, visitors and flammable materials where they belong.
- 03The power supplyEstimate what a welding shop's machines draw from the supply, from arc power to three-phase current, check the worst realistic demand against the unit's supply, and cost a year's electricity.
- 04The gas supplyEstimate a new shop's yearly use of shielding, fuel and cutting gases from its arc hours, decide how many cylinders to hold, store them safely, and measure what each job really uses.
- 05Fume extraction and ventilationPlan fume control for a new shop, size a capture hood's airflow at each distance from the arc, choose between extraction arms, mobile units and on-gun extraction, and keep it working.
- 06Equipment: what to buy firstList and cost the first equipment for a small welding shop, compare the 1917 repair shop's tools, decide what to buy, lease, hire or subcontract, and turn the purchases into a yearly cost.
- 07Fire, safety and the hot work areaEstimate how far welding and grinding sparks travel, keep a small shop's hot work from starting fires, plan first aid and emergencies, and set up the controls a two-person shop needs.
- 08What an hour costsBuild a small shop's yearly costs from wages and overhead, divide by the hours it can bill, add a margin, and see how the rate depends on utilisation and on the owner paying themselves.
- 09Pricing jobs and the cost cardPrice a fabrication job from labour, materials, consumables and subcontract work, set a markup and a minimum charge, keep the early manuals' cost card, and learn from estimates that missed.
- 10Cash and the first yearTotal the money needed to open a welding shop, forecast the first year's cash month by month as the work builds up and customers pay late, size the reserve, and review the year against the plan.
References and source notes
The manuscript and worked examples are original KEVOS® writing. References inform particular concepts; their authors do not endorse this book. Web references were consulted on 25 October 2026.
- M. Keith Dunham (Norman W. Henley Publishing, New York). Automobile Welding with the Oxy-Acetylene Flame (1917). Historical source for setting up a welding outfit in a garage or repair shop: locating it away from petrol vapour and visitors, the welding table, preheating by charcoal, gas and oil, measuring gas use from gauges and cylinder weights, and the welding cost card. Summarised and checked in new words; no text, tables or illustrations are reproduced.
- P. F. Willis. Practical Manual of Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting (1917). Historical source for the tools of a repair welding shop, the welding table, the share of castings in custom repair work, and the overhead a custom welding shop must recover. Summarised in new words.
- The Imperial Brass Manufacturing Company, Chicago. Imperial Welding and Cutting Hand Book (1916). Historical source for advice to new shop owners to practise before taking customers' work, figuring the cost of gases on a job, checking invoices by weighing cylinders, and allowing a high overhead in a repair shop. Summarised in new words.
- Safe Work Australia. Model Code of Practice: Welding processes (current edition). Named in Chapters 5 and 7 as the model code for fume, radiation, fire and other hazards of welding processes. Check which version applies in your jurisdiction.
- International Agency for Research on Cancer. IARC Monographs, Volume 118: Welding, molybdenum trioxide and indium tin oxide (2018). Source for the classification of welding fumes as carcinogenic to humans (Group 1), from the working group evaluation of March 2017, cited in Chapter 5.
- Standards Australia. AS/NZS 3000, Electrical installations; AS 4332, The storage and handling of gases in cylinders; AS 1674.1, Safety in welding and allied processes, fire precautions (current editions). Named in Chapters 3, 4 and 7 by number and scope. No content or values are reproduced; licensed electricians, gas suppliers and the regulator's requirements govern.
