Metal Solutions buys room for growth at Mound House

Metal Solutions LLC has purchased an 18,000-square-foot building with land to expand at 26 Stokes Drive in Mound House.

The company will sublease 5,000 square feet of the building to Comstock Metals until it's ready to expand into the full space, says Mike Castonguay, operations manager.

Castonguay and Greg King, plant manager, founded Metal Solutions five years ago in 7,000 square feet on Goni Drive in Carson City, then moved into 10,000 square feet on Highway 50 in 2005.

Metal Solutions employs 10 now, but will hire five to 12 more, says Castonguay, providing it lands a contract next year with a solar energy company in Spain that's looking for a partner to handle manufacturing in the United States. The company has a preliminary purchase order in hand.

"We've done work for practically every company in town," says Castonguay. Among its customers are Mariah Power, for which it builds 30-foot windmills. It handles sheet metal and fabrication for ElectroTherm and for

Aqua Sun International in Minden, a maker of water purifier systems. And Metal Solutions employees machine parts for the biomass generation plant at the Carson City prison and handles some military contracts. Castonguay says the new building will contain a climate-controlled room that will qualify the company to handle more precise jobs " parts that are highly machined to exact decimal points, so precise that temperature changes can affect their size.

King and Castonguay worked together for 30 years, and rather than retire,

Castonguay says, "Our mission is to help people in town with projects." The company has also made a mission of hiring and training local high school students in machine shop skills.

"We trained our machine programmer right out of high school, a special ed student, to run the punch press, and a senior from Carson High to run mills," says Castonguay.

"Our company is part of the manufacturing forum. We're the smallest manufacturer invited to join."

King and Castonguay started working with high school students back when King taught percussion students at Carson High.

"His students were named the No. 1 drum line in Nevada," says Castonguay. "He saw how intelligent the kids were and said maybe we could hire and train them."

Their first hire swept the floor the first couple of days before taking to the machines.