The name of the Bellefonte-based business—Mix Match Craft & Metalworks or, simply, MMC Metalworks—is perfect. When Dave and Christie Lose mixed their hobbies, they matched their inspiration to produce metal-based crafts, from home décor to decorations to smokers and firepits and various holiday decorations.
It’s not their full-time job—Dave works for Polymics in State College and Christie for the legislative agency Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing—but it is a full-time hobby into which they pour hours of devotion. You can see their products at mmcmetalworks.com or at select arts and crafts shows throughout the area as well as on social media.
What you don’t see is the time, the work, and the talent involved. The two graduated from high school in 1999—Dave from Bald Eagle Area and Christie from State College Area. They were introduced that year by a mutual friend but went their own way for nearly a decade before reuniting in 2008 and marrying in 2009.
The business end of the story has a fairly unique genesis: Dave liked to weld, he says, and he liked smoking meat. “So I got the idea that I was going to make a smoker. I just started cutting out some parts and stuff like that,” he explains. “And then I thought, getting a CNC [computer numerical control] plasma table would make things a lot easier.
“So I talked [Christie] into buying it, and then I just started cutting out some parts. We made that first one, and then somebody wanted one, so I sold it. I had fun making that one, so we made another one.”
Christie was always into crafting, she says. “I realized I could do metal crafting with the plasma table, so I started playing around with that, cutting out different designs, and then we kind of came together, and it was just like, well, why don’t we just do this hobby together,” she says.
MMC Metalworks was born. “We put our stuff together,” Dave says. “Today, we’re not just cutting out parts; we’re making custom signs, we’re making fire pits, custom metal signs for business, seasonal decor.”
Pick a season, see a product. “With fall just ending, we had a bunch of pumpkins that we cut out. Then for Christmas, we worked on snowflakes that were 3-D. When you cut them, they slide together and they’re 3-D,” Christie says.
Dave is into the larger items. “We make barbecue smokers. We make fire pits. We do powder coating service as well as a little bit of sand blasting and a little bit of welding service,” he says.
Dave’s father owned a welder and Dave opted to purchase one, too. “I just did it over the years and kind of got a little bit better and better at it,” he explains. “I’m not good by any means but I’ve learned how to do it.”
So much that he taught his wife that trade. “When we were building smokers—you only have two hands, so there was only so much I could do. I taught her how to weld, so now we both do it,” Dave says.
It naturally became a team effort. “We’ll cut out parts, and either he will run the machine or I will run the machine,” Christie says. “After they’ve been cut out, he’ll clean them up, I’ll rinse them off, and I’ll work on the powder coating.”
The powder coating is an electro-charged process that applies a layer of powder, and the powder’s particles become charged as they are sprayed. “I can get them in thousands of colors—any color you can imagine—and we spray it out and the powder sticks [to the metal],” Dave says. “We bake them for ten to twenty minutes at 400 degrees. The powder coat is very durable and that’s our process.”
They take pride in the fact that they make everything they sell. Their most popular products are the home décor items, such as little metal farm animals and seasonal decorations. Snow-depth gauges are popular in the winter, Christie says, and they also make a lot of custom signage and metal numbers to mark street addresses in front of a home. While women tend to order more items, men make the bulk of custom orders, such as tool holders, a device that holds twenty-eight-volt batteries, and the larger smokers and firepits.
“We do make some inventory; it’s just finding a balance between making too much. We’re a small business, so we can’t have a lot of overhead; it’s just too expensive for us, so we try to find a balance, and usually it works out,” Dave says.
Christie says they’ll try new ideas, make a couple of them, take them to a show and see how they sell to test the waters and price fairly.
“We do market ourselves on Facebook and Instagram and Google, and we do have a following, which is nice,” Christie says.
“Absolutely,” Dave says, “we love doing it.” T&G
Jim Carlson is a freelance writer living in State College.
