Blast gives way to new business

WILTON – When the Strong pellet mill explosion occurred last summer, it did more than make one of its survivors feel lucky to have been able to walk away from it that day.

The blast gave Greg Toothaker the push he needed to do what he’s always wanted to do. In two weeks, Toothaker will be starting up GAT Multi-fab, a metal fabricating business in the Western Maine Development building complex in a space where he once worked building trailers for Nichols Custom Welding.

Toothaker, a production and maintenance worker at the Strong pellet mill, was one of four employees working at the mill on Aug. 8. Toothaker and Jim Smith happened to have been working near the wood chip dryer when it exploded. The blast ripped apart the 45-ton dryer, destroyed some of the cinder block walls of the former Forster Manufacturing Co. mill and rained glass and debris down around the facility. Some windows in nearby buildings were cracked. The powerful blast rocked the town of Strong like a big earthquake. Amazingly, no one was injured.

“I’d never dared take the big step and start my own business before, but when the pellet mill blew up and I almost got killed, well, that was a big decider for me,” Toothaker said and added, “It rattled me pretty good. It took me a couple of weeks but then I started to think, ‘you know, I’ve always wanted to start my own business.'”

So he did just that, but it didn’t happen overnight.

After the shock of nearly losing his life and gratefulness for it passed over him, the reality that he was out of work since the mill had closed indefinitely began to sink in. He bounced ideas off his friends and colleagues with Mark Berry, a part owner of the Western Maine Development Business and Technology Center complex, suggesting to get started he apply for a revolving loan through the town of Wilton.

“Town Manager Rhonda Irish was right there. She was so helpful with all the paperwork from the start,” Toothaker said. Contacting Androscoggin Valley Council Of Governments, Toothaker, under the guidance of its business counselor Rose Creps, came up with a business plan and he received more record-keeping organizational help from Joanne Reed, who also manages the books for Western Maine Development and his cousin Lisa Libby, who helped with the loan application.

“Everybody has been really great about helping me out,” he said. The revolving loan with a low interest rate and aimed at getting new, small businesses up and running did just that for Toothaker, but he noted it takes time and patience to wade through the paperwork and process.

The 5-year loan will help him buy the new equipment and materials he needs so he can be ready from the start to fill orders for anything that needs to be built with metal.

Toothaker is no stranger to designing and constructing things from metal. His ash buckets and shovels, dust pans, wall scones and lanterns he designs and creates are utilitarian works of art. He is currently working at the Hall Farm, repairing pieces of equipment on the fritz. Often callers will describe their needs for repair or an idea they have and Toothaker will produce it.

“I’ve built things over the phone,” he said.

It comes from his years of working at Forster Manufacturing Co. in Strong and Nichols welding in Wilton and more.

For a decade the Wilton native traveled as a union sheet metal worker from one town’s mill or manufacturing facility to another, designing, fixing, building, anything that was needed on site. Then he worked at Forster’s wood turning mill in Strong, often repairing mill machinery and boilers or building another time-saving gadget with whatever was on hand. It was at Forster’s where he learned his creative way with metal. Once Forster’s closed, he would work the next five years at Nichols, helping to design and build metal trailers of all kinds. When Nichols shut its big doors last March, Toothaker started work at the promising new pellet mill at his former place of employment at the Strong mill.

Geneva Wood Fuels LLC purchased the mill in December 2007 and began producing wood pellets in January 2009, after a $13 million retrofit. Although the mill’s owner, Jonathan Kahn of Chicago, Ill., has indicated he intends to reopen the Strong mill at some point in the future, Toothaker isn’t about to wait it out on unemployment checks.

Amid ordering the materials he’ll need on hand, to organizing the space he’s using at the Wilton Tech Center on Weld Road, Toothaker stops to adjust the handles on a design he’s recently created. Without an official name for it as of yet, the basket he’s finishing is precisely woven of shiny one-inch aluminum strips with a top hinged to open just like a basket’s should.

He got the scrap aluminum when he went “dumpster diving,” as he calls it with a wide grin, at a scrap yard. Often he makes things out of the metal he finds after it has been thrown away. He got the idea for the basket when, like so many other things he’s created, a need arose.

“I needed something to carry two, 13-inch by 9-inch pans, so I came up with the basket. I like to bake and when I have dinner at mother’s (Olive Toothaker’s) on Sunday I have something to carry them in safely,” Toothaker said.

Toothaker said if all goes well getting a permit at the planning board meeting on Jan. 7, he expects to be open for business on Monday, Jan. 11. He’ll be working 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays. If you would like to place an order or have questions, call him at 779-6601.

Read about the Aug. 8 explosion here.
Find out more about AVCOG here.