Meet Ryan Alford | Custom Sheetmetal Fabricator

We had the good fortune of connecting with Ryan Alford and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Ryan, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
I didn’t grow up in an environment where owning your own business and being your own boss was a thing. My parents worked their 9 to 5 jobs Monday through Friday and that was all I knew. I got a taste of being my own boss when I had hip surgery years ago. The freedom of not having to ask permission for anything at all was incredibly satisfying. Answering to no one but my customers really made my life a lot less stressful. I fell in love with the peace it brought to me. I’m not a stranger to working long hours, late nights, and weekends. That part is normal. Having the freedoms to set my own hours and choose the work that I want to do was incredible!

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I knew from a young age that I wanted to work on aircraft and rockets. In 1999 I joined the Marine Corps to work on the CH53E helicopter. I was an Airframer and we mainly worked on the hydraulic systems of the aircraft. I was as an E3 when an E7 in my shop pulled me to the side and told me something I would never forget. He said “mechanics are a dime a dozen. If you want to set yourself apart learn sheetmetal”. Then he put me to work with the civilians that were doing the repairs we couldn’t do to learn the trade from them. When I got out of the Marine Corps I went to work for a FBO on Hobby Airport. There I continued learning. From there I went to work on Apache helicopters and this is where everything changed for me. The Apache helicopter has every type of material you can think of in aviation. Aluminum, stainless, carbon fiber, Kevlar, fiberglass, plastic, and more. I went to our back shops area and started teaching myself and asking the older more experienced guys questions. This is where I took my skills to the next level. I listened and learned what I could and could not do with metal. Several years later I was in Afghanistan. We were in between working on helicopters and we didn’t have much to do so I started building stuff to pass the time. I built this little stool out of scrap aluminum and a few rivets. It weight 2.5 pounds and supported 220 pounds. I knew I was onto something. So when I came home from Afghanistan in 2010 I sold my truck and bought a beater and spent the rest of the money on tooling. I wanted to combine what I had learned from the 10 previous years of working on aircraft with my love for cars and trucks. My first truck interior that I built out of aluminum on my garage floor went to a show in Mississippi and beat out some very expensive competition and took home best interior. That truck then got featured in Mini Truckin Magazine and it took off from there. I later went to work for SpaceX where I got to build some really cool custom parts for rocket testing. I have lived out my childhood dreams of working on aircraft and rockets and found my love for sheetmetal fabrication along the way. To be successful in anything you do you have to love it. You have to have a passion for it. You have to pour yourself into it and keep an open mind. Listen to your support network as well as your haters. Take that negativity and criticism and be better. Take that love and support and be humble. Focus on you and your craft and keep moving forward. My story is much deeper but this is an article and not a book lol.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Downtown! There are so many beautiful parts of the city but some of the parks and bars and restaurants downtown are like no where else. I’ve been all over the world and Houston has always felt like home. Now it is and I’m still exploring myself but I love the skyline and going downtown on a Friday night. Even if it’s just cruising.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
1st shoutout goes to my parents. I grew up being my dad’s helper and turning wrenches on anything he had in the shop. It was always something different. My dad is a man who has a lot of different interests (ranching, racing, and sports). It was the cars that stuck with me. My mom was very artistic. She always had me doing something artsy at the dining table. I think that helped me pay attention to what I was doing and give me the level of attention to detail I have now. My 2nd shoutout goes to Bobby Martins at Sadistic Iron Werks in Hesperia, CA. I learned a lot from Bobby from a distance and over the phone for years. I had the opportunity to meet up with him a few times. Observing his attention to detail and ingenuity with what he does helped me to be better at what I do.

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