American Portable Welding

Welcome to American Portable Welding, your source for all things to be welded! We do complete shop or on-site fabrication, and we serve the entire Bay Area!  All Metals/All Methods Small Jobs to Large Fabrication Plant Maintenance and Shutdown Services Construction – Structural Welding, Equipment Repair Forklifts – Mast Straightening, Structural Repairs Balers/Compactors/Recycling Equipment – Relines, Structural RepairsLew Larimer, the current owner of American Portable Welding, has 38 years of experience in the welding field. He started building baler equipment in 1970 at a local factory. At the time, Lew worked for a man who was to become his mentor, Jay Guhl, an inventor who had 62 patents in the U.S. Patent Books. With Jay, Lew learned to take machines apart and improve them when putting them back together, making them more efficient and better working.  Auto Cross Corvettes came next, which moved him up to road racing and building a B-Production Vette from the ground up. It was during this year, 1971, that Lew began welding at Sears Point and Laguna Seca on race weekends. He liked studying the weak structural links on parts so that he could eventually repair and strengthen them.  In 1974, Lew started American Portable Welding, first in a friend’s welding shop in San Leandro, then in a mobile trailer that he built himself. In 1976, Lew participated in SCCA Racing, and in 1979, he was in the National Championship SCCA Racing. From there, he built his business based on knowledge, quality, and service to the shop he has today.