This summer when National Geographic’s “World of Flavor” television host Big Moe Cason filmed in Louisiana, he experienced a few firsts, including cooking alligator on a rotisserie 3-foot wide by 5-feet long. It was one the size of which he said he’d never used – and the likes of which local welder Kevin John had never made before.

When John got the surprising call from one of the show’s producers, he was asked to make a rotisserie sturdy enough to cook a 300-pound animal over an open fire. The Breaux Bridge native accommodated their request in two days. 

It was a tall order, but John has welded since he was 17, striking his first arc in a high school welding class. After graduating he learned to weld with carbon steel and then made his way to working with aluminum, eventually welding for nearly 30 different companies while challenging himself with exotic metals. “If I heard a company was working with an unusual alloy, I moved there to get the experience,” he says.

It brought him a diverse skill set in the processes of stick, TIG, MIG, sub arc, pulse MIG, pulse TIG and aluminum welding. With a desire to be more creative and “do things the way he wanted them done,” he opened Dragon Welding and Fabrication in 2018. “Growing up I was always fascinated by dragons – and dragons breathe fire,” he says of the catchy name.  

In an unexpected turn of events, the pandemic sent homebound customers his way, at first, needing repairs on their lawn mower decks and trailers. “If it was broken and it was metal, I could fix it,” he says.

The idea of making barbeque pits came by chance, when a customer brought a pit for repair, leading John to build a charcoal grill of 11-gauge carbon steel. “After the first cook on it, I started studying more about pits and experimenting. I worked with the air flow and noticed how the meat changes flavor and texture depending on the timing. After I sold that first pit, the client called me to say it was one of the best he’d cooked on.”

When another customer asked John to turn a pit into a smoker with a firebox attached to the side, it sparked his curiosity about smokers. “The challenge with smokers, he points out, “is that the fireboxes have to be a specific size to supply enough heat efficiently to the pit.” 

Now he’s making offset smokers (cooking starts on the hot side and then moves to the cooler end) and vertical smokers (his preference for a more even smoke). Most recently he’s come up with a hybrid of both that he’ll be debuting towards the end of December. 

Since making the one-of-a-kind rotisserie for Moe Cason there have been plenty of others, bringing John commercial clients. At the time of this printing, he was working on a 1,200-pound rotisserie that could hold 40 pounds of leg quarters, complete with two coal baskets inside the chamber. Just in time for Christmas, he’ll be offering smaller residential rotisseries.

Everything John makes is custom ordered, which he builds while working part-time at Spirit Industries. Every flat piece of metal is cut one at a time. For now it’s just John working in his 20’x20’ shop next to his home – although there are plans to speed production and add another shop.

Like many professional welders, the 41-year-old is a perfectionist and shows passion for his work. “The aesthetics are very important to me,” he shares. “When I weld I use different techniques to leave visible ripples for character. It’s like the stitching on clothes or the signature of an artist.”

John’s story is proof that success can come from loving what you do. “When I think about the physics behind welding, it’s fascinating,” he points out enthusiastically. “You’re controlling liquid metal. There are so many varieties of metals that are meant to do different things, and they flow so differently. I want to master all of them.”