For Chris Ball of Moses Lake, it all started when his younger brother wouldn’t let him borrow his welding kit to work on an off-road truck at age 16. Ball said he took it as a challenge to work with metal fabrication.

He worked more than 14 years with Genie Industries as an engineer tech and two and a half years as a metal fabricator with Busby Metals. Ball’s custom metal fabrication business, CBCustom Creations, started on the side eight years ago and he decided April 5 to work full-time on his business.

Ball said he doesn’t consider himself super-creative, but has always been told that he had a creative mind.

“In my younger days, I used to get school credit for drawing on my folders because my teacher said it looked so good, he’d give me credit for them,” Ball said.

His business began after a coworker at Genie asked if he’d help her use a new 2-by-2-foot CNC plasma cutting table she’d recently received. Ball said he’d always been interested in trying something like that.

“Got a chance to look at the machine, learned how to use it, designed things on it and cut anything she wanted,” Ball said. “That was the deal, I could use it anytime I wanted as long as I cut whatever she needed. Shortly after, she actually sold me the machine because she wasn’t wanting to learn it.”

Ball said things progressed as he crafted some of his first custom metal signs and smaller fabrication work. He said he still uses the same cutting table, as well as a 5-by-10-foot table that fills up most of the space in his shop beside his home outside of Moses Lake.

With the two plasma cutting tables in his shop outside his home right now, Ball said he’s pretty much reached his capacity for space. He said he’s finishing a new 40-by-60-foot shop next to his house.

Ball handles a wide variety of projects with CBCustom Creations. He might one day work on small parts for a dirt bike motor or craft custom three-dimensional painted trophies for the Moses Lake Sand Scorpions. Other days, he might tackle bigger projects like a 50-foot Gothic iron fence or custom arborist equipment for Green Tree Preservation.

Some of his bigger projects often find Ball working outdoors, and he said those can be some of the funnest projects. He said he recently got to work on a dock repair project right on the Columbia River. He said it was pretty easy and working surrounded by scenery was simply awesome.

“The bigger projects definitely pay more, but I love doing all the little ones because they’re somewhat kind of quick and easy, and they keep things going,” Ball said. “It’s kind of 50-50 right now in that sense.”

Steel, stainless steel and aluminum are the three main metals Ball said he works with, and he uses each equally. He said aluminum is supposed to be the toughest of the three for fabrication work, but he was able to pick it up pretty quickly.

Ball said he believes his high-quality work and word of mouth from customers has helped him pick up traction with his business. He said the majority of his projects feature custom designs with customers typically sending him a picture or an idea of what they’re after.

Once he has an idea, he says he’ll come up with a few samples for customers to choose from with some minute differences before beginning the final model. Most people want a fairly simple design, he said.

“I’ve never done something too fancy-dancy that I couldn’t handle that was way over my capabilities,” Ball said. “I keep on waiting on that one person to come in wanting that amazing sign or project that I’ve never done before.”

Ball said he wants to continue to get more creative in his metal fabrications and designs, hopefully incorporating some more three-dimensional styles and colors in his work. He said his goal with CBCustom Creations is to offer products and projects customers couldn’t just find at a store.

“Whatever their dreams are, they don’t need to be held up. They can have it done, have something amazing for themselves,” Ball said. “I can do it.”

Casey McCarthy can be reached via email at cmccarthy@columbiabasinherald.com.