Kyle McCloskey was born and raised in Southern California and moved to San Antonio with his wife, Svenja, and their dog, Choe, in November 2017. He started metal shop in high school and at age 15 fell in love with metal working. He participated in a specialized welding program and was able to concentrate on welding and machining in his junior and senior year. Out of high school, Kyle took a gap year and worked at a local welding and machine shop which only helped hone his skills.
Furthering his interest in welding, Kyle went to study at the College of Oceaneering in Long Beach where he graduated as a certified commercial diver and underwater welder. After completing his schooling, he started a job in construction focusing on building high end custom houses in the greater Los Angeles area. His time in construction taught him custom home development and interior design. After helping to complete nearly 6 homes in California, Kyle decided to go back to his passion of welding and ended up at a large scale CNC machine shop as a CNC mechanic and technician which helped teach him more about large scale production.
In YEAR, Kyle was given the opportunity to gather experience on the back end of construction management by learning the process of planning, developing, and selling custom homes. During this time, he was in charge of 3D computer modeling using the CAD program and handled all government processing requirements for land developing. After several year in the Civil Engineering world, he decided to once again follow his passion and traded in his suit to once again be a fabricator in a local shop.
After leaving California, Kyle was able to land a welding job at a San Antonio local art shop as head fabricator, where he specialized in custom furniture, public art blacksmithing and metal art repair. Now in October 2019, he had the opportunity to follow his life long dream of starting his on welding and fabrication shop and didn’t hesitate to seize the opportunity, now bringing you the Black Dog Forge.
Throughout Mike’s life, he has lived with a need to create, but never had the proper creative outlet in order to fulfill that yearning. In 2017 his life had changed. In 2017 he discovered metalwork, welding, and blacksmithing. Mike was introduced to these amazing trades by some great people who helped guide him into this line of work. One of those people being Kyle. Since then, Kyle and Mike realized that they both had the passion and knowledge to create something of their own. The starting of Black Dog Forge has definitely been one of the best highlights of Mike’s and can not wait to see what we make next!