RelightAmerica's forges
Our mission is to keep America's independent shops open and busy, and to bring back the manufacturing work that left.
Our mission is to keep America's independent shops open and busy, and to bring back the manufacturing work that left.
Small shops have always done the quiet half of American manufacturing. They machined the parts, welded the frames and kept the big plants running. In the last ten years [two thousand] of them closed. We started Relight the Forge to turn that around, one shop and one job at a time.
Every time America needed to build, it leaned on its small shops. Here's how that went, and where it stands now.
Springfield Armory opens. In the decades that follow it builds the American System, with private contractors making rifle parts to the Army's master gauges so a part from any shop fits any rifle.
Over five years the program certifies 1,759,650 supervisors in 16,511 plants, teaching new workers on the job.
Congress creates the Smaller War Plants Corporation to put small plants on war work and finance the ones that need it.
America goes from 20,734 machine shops to 18,734, and more than half of the country's small-business owners are now 55 or older.
The defense bill sets up a Civil Reserve Manufacturing Network, modeled on the airline fleet the military calls on in a crisis.
On August 25, the SBA and the Department of War create the Smaller War Plants Commission.
We start in California's San Joaquin Valley, organizing independent shops so they can take on the work together.
Your name stays on the door. Your customers stay yours. Joining the network adds work and takes nothing away.
We bid with the number you give us. If a job doesn't pay, you pass on it and nobody holds it against you.
Registrations, bids, packaging and marking rules, inspection records and invoices belong to us, so your people can stay on the machines.
No shop in the network ever sees another shop's prices.
When the customer pays us, we pay you. We don't sit on your money.
If you run a shop, join the network. If you need parts made in America, send us the drawing.