Round Pond native Steve Masters, president of precision component supplier Masters Machine Co. on the Lower Round Pond Road. Masters has been running the company since 2016. (Johnathan Riley photo)
This big life is made up of little things, and no one knows that better than Steve Masters, a Round Pond native and president of precision component supplier Masters Machine Co. on Lower Round Pond Road.
In an industry where success is reliant on adapting to customer needs, Masters Machine has remained a consistent presence on the Bristol peninsula, supplying millions of precision components, or “little things,” for aerospace, automobile, and commercial uses all over the world.
Masters Machine works with companies like Toyota, GMC, electrical companies, and even Vic Drumsticks, but first, it was for lobstermen, here in Midcoast Maine.
“The lobster measure was one of the first things we made,” Masters said. “We still make them in limited quantities, but that’s where it started.”
The lobster measure can be seen in the Masters Machine logo. According to state law, a lobster has to be at least 3.25 inches long, no more than five, and measured with a regulation lobster gauge in order to be harvested.
Masters values his roles producing precision components and being a lifelong component of the Round Pond community.
In 1957, three years after the Washington School closed in Round Pond, George S. Masters, Steve Masters’ grandfather, bought the building and turned it into the first site of Masters Machine Co.
“That’s where it all started, and my father worked with his father to help push the company to what it is today,” Steve Masters said.
Masters has been the president of Masters Machine Co. since 2016, “plus or minus,” he said, laughing in his office chair.
“He didn’t want to give it up,” Masters about his father, Richard Masters, the previous president of the company. “He had been working here his whole life, and was always looking to the horizon for how he could push the company forward.”
Steve Masters has continued his father’s legacy in Round Pond and in leading the company as it maintains its pliability to meets the evolving needs of its customers. The needs are changing just as rapidly as technology is, according to Masters.
Walking the production floor of the Masters facility, Masters pointed to a few machines that maintain the company’s ability to mass-produce precision components for industry around the world.
“We have parts that will go into planes, we have some that will go into vehicles,” Masters said, pointing to a machine from Italy that can be fixed remotely by technicians in Europe.
According to Masters, the first breakthrough job for Masters Machine was for GTE Sylvania in the 1960s. There were a number of GTE manufacturing facilities around the country, and one of them was in Waldoboro.
Masters, a Round Pond native, has been working off and on at his grandfather’s company since he was in high school.
He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern Maine in industrial engineering and had previously worked at Masters Machine during summers while he was a student at Lincoln Academy in Newcastle.
Masters and the Masters family have been an integral component of Round Pond and the Bristol peninsula for generations. Growing up right in Round Pond village, Masters remembers fondly the close connections being raised in a small town makes and requires.
“My parents lived right in the village just a door down from Georgia and Carol Leeman. Growing up in the village, you knew everyone: from Buddy Poland and Franky Poland’s place, to where Marshall and Adam Russell lived, there were more than 20 guys that grew up within a four- or five-mile spread in this neighborhood. We had a lot of fun,” Masters said.
Masters and his wife, Lisa Masters, live in Round Pond, still, where they raised their three sons, all active members of the community. Tom, Nate, and Jake attended school at BCS and Lincoln Academy.
Masters recently reconnected with an old classmate from his days at the Bristol Consolidated School after going to his 50th high school reunion. Masters said that talking to this old classmate is a testament to the power a connection to Round Pond has.
Masters recounted when he and his dad used to cut trail systems in Round Pond.
“You’d come across old big sawdust piles, where they cut lumber and probably half or more of the houses here in Round Pond, some of that lumber came out of these woods,” he said.
According to Masters, the Upper Round Pond Road was a part of a snowmobile trail network that was not plowed during the winters when he was in high school.
“There wasn’t even power running across there. We were joking the other day that the Rock Schoolhouse road is paved now! That used to be a dirt road,” Masters said, shaking his head and smiling.
“As I’ve aged, it’s just made me more grateful that I’ve been able to live here and that I have all of these decades to draw off of to ground me to the location,” Masters said. “It makes me feel good about it.”
The unexpected lessons along the way at Masters Machine took many turns; Masters said he didn’t know what he was getting into.
“I just knew at the time that I needed a job and I needed a direction, and I knew that I wanted to stay in Maine, so this was an opportunity,” Masters said. “When I came back into it, the second time after college, I had matured, and I was more willing to commit myself to what it was. So the unexpected part of it is the effort that it takes a family to run a privately held company and sustain itself in the state of Maine in this geographical location. That effort is a story in and of itself.”
Not everything Masters has learned was unexpected. Many things came with the territory of being the head of a precision company, but the values he brings to the business may come from growing up in the close Round Pond community.
“You learn that you’ve got to have a high level of compassion for people in what’s going on in their world, and understand that whatever’s going on in their world comes to work with them, generally speaking, every day. How do you manage that and how do you do it in such a way where you’re trying to sustain that relationship?” Masters said.
Masters spoke at length on the development of technology he’s seen in his life working at Masters Machine, but kept coming back to the people of the area.
“I keep using the word ‘connection’ over and over again, but think of it as like infrastructure for everything that makes what we do, in this world we live in, function,” Masters said.
While this life is big, Masters knows that it is not infinite.
“Someday, you’re going to wake up, and you’re going to be 40, and you’re going to wake up 10 years later, and you’re going to be 50, then you’re going to be 60. All of a sudden, you’re going to have, perhaps, like me, these thoughts about well, what does that all mean?” Masters said. “The reality is we’re on a finite schedule. There is a checkout. Then you say, ‘Well, what do I want to do?’”
Masters said that his father never really wanted to give up his position at the company, and while the idea of retiring from the business may briefly feel appealing at times, those are fleeting thoughts that come with doing a job as long as he has.
“If you’re somebody like me, that’s done this for as many years as I’ve done, and like my dad, or my dad’s brother, the idea of separating from it may seem attractive on certain days, but then all of a sudden, it doesn’t feel so good at all,” Masters said.
He said that the future of Masters Machine is one he has ideas about, but is difficult to imagine simply because of the nature of the future: it is almost impossible to know exactly what comes next.
“The company will go forward in ways I can’t imagine, similar to how my grandfather, George S. Masters, couldn’t have imagined in 1957 that we would have a machine tool that would be more automated and less manual in nature. Much less that somebody in Italy can communicate with it from afar and manipulate its data,” Masters said.
Masters said the past, present, and future, of both Round Pond and Masters Machine Company, share a central theme: change.
“You wake up one morning, you’re 60, and you think of all the people, places and things. Some, unfortunately, of these people aren’t around anymore,” Masters said. “But they somehow had an effect on your thoughts and memories and different experiences you had along the way, and it’s just flat-out incredible.”
(Do you have a suggestion for a “Characters of the County” subject? Email info@lcnme.com with the subject line “Characters of the County.”)
