PORTER — Tucked in the woods off a dirt road, quick sprays of sparks and the sharp spff! of a welding torch filled Bill Mason’s shop last week as he finished up orders bound for Windham, Minnesota and New York.

His family has been in this small Western Maine town at the southern tip of Oxford County since 1600. Mason is a third-generation maple sugarer and the state’s only welder, to his knowledge, crafting sheets of food grade-stainless steel into maple syrup evaporators, the waist-high stands used to boil down sap into sweet Maine gold.

It’s one-man shop except when friends pitch in. This is busy season with a capital B.

“I work seven days a week from Nov. 1 through the month of April,” Mason, 52, said. “Every year I expect the market to be saturated; you can only have so many customers.”

But there’s been no syrup ceiling yet. 

“Right now I already have a half a dozen orders for the coming season next year,” he said. 

Mason was working for a large company making medical equipment in 1988 when his brother-in-law asked him to make a sap pan. Someone else admired it, asked him to build another. 

“Everyone that makes syrup knows everyone else that makes syrup,” Mason said.

By 2001, he had enough interest to go out on his own full time and started W.F. Mason Custom Welding.

Powered by a little maple syrup on his oatmeal each morning, Mason makes dozens of wood-fired evaporators each year. He’s shipped to 18 states and four Canadian provinces.

“My real niche is the person who wants to put out 10 (sap) buckets or 20 buckets,” Mason said. “The hobbyists, the grandparents who want to make syrup with their grandchildren. I’ve shipped these to many colleges that have sugaring programs.”

His evaporators are meant for small-scale operations making five to 15 gallons of syrup. (In maple math, it takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup.)

Units range from $900 to $1,600. He also sells tubing and other supplies.

About 20 percent of customers are in Maine, where the season this year is off to a late start.

“April ought to be the best month for sugaring,” Mason said. “It’s usually March. Some years it just doesn’t cooperate.”

He’s heard the same news in Pennsylvania and New York. One Tennessee customer has made five gallons of syrup already. He’s frequently sent samples.

“I’ve had maple syrup from many, many states — Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Missouri,” Mason said. “You don’t really think of those places as places that make maple syrup.”

When crunchtime stops in May, Mason said he’ll often treat himself to a nice vacation. Of sorts. He likes to tie in a visit to a customer. Last year, during a fishing and sightseeing trip, he dropped in on a customer in Alaska making birch syrup.

“The most terrible syrup you’ve ever tasted, unfortunately,” Mason said. “It tastes like molasses; it’s really nasty.”

In the summer, during rare lulls, he puts the syrup work aside and fields odd welding requests from enterprising farmers.

“Cheese processors or butter churns or alpaca manure grinders,” Mason said. “A lot of strange stuff over the years.” 

kskelton@sunjournal.com

Go & do

Maine Maple Sunday is March 22 (for some farms, it’s spilled into Saturday).