Company Profile

In 1974 we moved to our present location, a modern industrial building in Amityville (yes, that’s Amityville!) on Long Island. We own a moderate size building of some 11,000 square feet in an industrial park; it serves as both office and manufacturing space. Here we have evolved into a successful niche operator, supplying casting ovens, small heat treat ovens, melting equipment, forging equipment and gas burners to tackle heating projects ranging from black oxide tanks to pottery kilns, crucible pre-heating to lobster cookers. We specialize in designs which take full advantage of our wellcrafted Venturi air mixers to provide intense heat without the noise and complicated piping of forced air.

The Hones family owns the business and runs the business; 5 of our 9 employees are family members. The guys who help customers figure out what equipment they need and troubleshoot with them when necessary, write quotes, and answer questions are father and son: Mike and Rob. Mike’s sister, Susan, manages the office. Mike’s other son, my brother, Richie, builds our furnaces with a small team of craftsmen, and my wife Shelley designs our catalogs and flyers on her Mac at home. For nearly 100 years the Hones family has manufactured quality gas equipment of cast iron, firebrick, and steel here at home on Long Island, where six generations of our family have had the pleasure of living.

STRENGTHS
As a small company manufacturing a wide range of types and sizes of furnaces and burners, we are something of a “jack of all trades” shop. Because we build each furnace in house and to order, we can easily customize dimensions, BTU outputs, and accessories - and we have a great deal of experience in doing so. We relish the challenge of designing and building complex jobs, as well as troubleshooting all kinds of applications. Where such jobs might not be worth the “trouble” of the individual attention they require to larger or more specialized companies, we find such challenges give us a chance to learn something new, and keep things interesting in our shop. We also understand the needs of smaller companies especially well; we welcome small orders and try to offer a range of solutions whenever possible so our customers can choose the level of “fix” they prefer, from getting a little more mileage from their aging equipment to replacing an entire system.

But perhaps our greatest strength is the quality that we strive for in every aspect of our business. Naturally that means offering our well-crafted, durable goods at reasonable prices and dealing fairly with suppliers and customers. But to us it also means choosing the individuals and companies we work with because we respect their way of doing business, not just because they offer a lower bottom line. For instance, all our castings are domestically produced. Imported parts are cheaper, but too often this “savings” really represents a faraway company’s willingness to compensate its workers poorly, or even sell cheap knock-offs of a reputable company’s products. We don’t want any part of that kind of business. We think the high quality of our industrial gas equipment reflects not just our attention to detail, but also the pride of skilled craftsman and our abiding respect for the value of those craftsmen’s labor: the Pennsylvania iron workers who cast our burners and furnace parts, the domestic iron producers who make our angle iron and pipe fittings, the local metal shop worker who cuts it to size, the local fab shop worker who rolls the items for us, and our family and employees who weld and brick the end product. The way we do business is not the cheapest way, but we believe it is a better way.

We are an accommodating company to work with. We’ve extended terms to 60 days with 1/3 down, rented furnaces very cheaply as temporary replacements for our local customers while their furnaces were being re-bricked or rebuilt, and have even bartered with customers, receiving lobsters, bagels, pottery, cookies, bread, and even micro-brewed ale as payment for either goods or services!

So why do they call it a BUZZER?
It was late one evening in the early 1900’s, and founder Charles A. Hones had been indulging his passion for testing his newly developed Bunsen burners in the kitchen of his Brooklyn apartment for hours. Now in those days, the gas supply was a far cry from what you’d find in a contemporary kitchen. The old Brooklyn “water gas” was valued at only 440 BTUH/ ft3 compared to the 2500 BTUH/ft3 rating of modern propane and was used more for lighting than heating. It also contained considerable impurities, causing it to sputter, whistle and pop a bit as it burned. Anyhow, it seems the noise was more than great, great grandma Hones could bear to hear coming out of the her kitchen until all hours. Raising her voice above the din, she christened his burners: “Charlie, its late! Turn that buzzer off and come to bed!”