PROFILE-October 2010

by Rebecca Falzano
Photography Nicole Wolf

Al Kronk’s journey from underwater welder to Maine metalsmith

Al Kronk has spent most of his working life underwater. From the depths of the sea, he learned to weld. He has wrestled with steel and hydraulic machinery 300 feet below the ocean’s surface. He has worked in waters all over the world, from the North Pole to the South Pole, from the coast of Spain to the shores of Africa. He’s been electrocuted—twice—the metal fillings melted right out of his teeth.

Today, Kronk owns Rusted Puffin Metal Works, a high-end custom welding and metal fabrication business in Portland. While his days in a wet suit are over, he still culls inspiration from his world-romping, waterlogged experiences in the navy. One wall of his workshop is a still-life aquarium, lined with bronze and steel marine sculptures he’s made—fish and turtles, but “no lobsters, ever”—things that he says remind him of his travels. Those projects are “just for fun,” though. His “real” work is done for local designers and businesses—staircases, range hoods, bars—or for larger institutional clients, such as the Maine Medical Center, that are looking for small- and large-scale art installations. Anything they dream up, he can make in metal. Kronk considers himself a one-man market. “I don’t know anyone else doing work quite like this,” he says.

Everything Kronk does happens in his 1,200-square-foot shop located on the industrial Cassidy Point in Portland. In an uncommon arrangement, his ex-wife works for him, learning the ways of the craft from her former husband. A few other guys help along the way, and a dog named Oliver watches. Sparks are always flying.

The forty-six-year-old Michigan native got his start in the early 1980s as a welder in the U.S. Navy’s underwater construction unit. He joined the military, he says, for a fresh start. “I was a very troubled youth heading down the wrong path. If I didn’t turn my life around things were going to get worse.” Kronk was in uniform for eleven years, working on submarine-tracking systems all over the world. On the job, he learned the highly specialized skills and methods required to work underwater, including deep-sea diving, which he quickly learned is more about technique and experience than strength.
“When I was twenty-one years old, I thought I ruled the world as far as physical fitness goes. One of the guys I was diving with at the time, who had been on the underwater construction team for a long time, was a little bit overweight and he drank a lot of beer and smoked a lot. That guy could swim twice as fast as I could. All my muscle didn’t compare to his technique.”

After the navy, Kronk moved to Maine to work for Northeast Marine Services in Falmouth as an underwater welder. He worked on paper-mill dams throughout northern Maine, an average workday often entailing six hours in the water. Then one day Kronk purchased an old iron bed at a garage sale. He got the bed home and decided he could make one that was better—after all, he had been welding for fifteen years. But when he set out to build it, he soon confronted the limitations of his skill. “It had a couple of curved pieces that were tubular metal. I just assumed that I could bend it easily, but I couldn’t. It takes a lot of experience to be able to do it so it looks right. That was the spark it took for me to want to learn how to make furniture on my own.”

Kronk gradually began building furniture for his home, fine-tuning his technique and his craft as he went along. He would build pieces and display them in his home. Eventually, word spread. Local designers started getting in touch with him to work on custom metal projects for their clients. Kronk first worked with interior designers Brett Johnson and M. L. Norton when they asked him to make a series of tables out of steel and brass. “They wanted them to look like they were a hundred years old but still be functional,” he recalls.

Within a couple years, Kronk began building bars out of copper and bronze for high-profile restaurants such as the White Barn Inn. “I think since then I’ve probably built about ten of the bars downtown,” he says. He’s currently working on a project for the sister restaurant of Walter’s, Gingko Blue, in Portland: a gingko tree made of polished stainless steel and a few tables for the bar as well. Kronk has also built a number of staircases and kitchen hoods. In his shop are the beginnings of an Old World–style fire escape made with aluminum stair treads (“which you don’t see anywhere in Maine,” he says) and steel landings. “People are generally hiring me to make something pretty special. I’m not making a mass-produced thing. It’s one of a kind.”

When it comes to working with metal, Kronk is a purist. “The pieces…I kind of feel them when I’m working on them. I love the metals most when they’re in their natural state. I like my steel to look like steel, and my bronze to not have a patina to it. Whenever I build a staircase out of steel, I convince my clients not to paint it. I think it just takes the entire feel out of it.”  

Kronk is also a purist when it comes to marketing his business. “I believe there’s more credence to your quality and experience if it is coming from somebody else. I’ve always felt that a quiet champion is a true champion. When you start tooting your own horn, people stop listening. I want the work to speak for itself.”