Matt and Caleb Johnson have been working together their entire lives. Growing up in a small central Texas town, they spent their summers sitting on overturned buckets in their dad’s auto-body shop, trading hot rod hood ornaments, and staging car-antenna sword fights while dodging sparks from the guys working nearby. There, they learned that if something needed to be fixed, they had to learn how to do it.

One year, Matt got a small MIG welding machine for his birthday and set out to learn how to use it. By 2012, Matt and Caleb were self-taught welders working together in a custom fabrication shop in Austin, TX. Notably, they spent five years building custom barbecue smokers and other fire based cooking devices for some of the biggest names in barbecue.

While focusing on metal fabrication, heat, and smoke, the Johnson brothers came to understand the demands of learning the welding trade, and how to manage a fire. Both require discipline, adaptability, and time. And at the end of the day, you’ve just got to have the heat right.