Toolin’ Around Town: A talk with Irv Kvalheim of Petaluma’s KVal, Inc.

Harlan Osborne speaks with some of the people who make Petaluma special|

From the outside, it appears that Kval, Inc. is located in one of Petaluma’s most modest and unassuming manufacturing plants. The sign over its front office simply reads “KVAL.” Next door, housed in a row of interconnected, nondescript charcoal-gray warehouses extending along Petaluma Boulevard South, is the fabrication and assembly portion of the long-standing business.

Unless you’re in the market for an industrial size automatic routing-boring machine, a miter spline trim saw or a specialty machine for edge patterns and surface patterns in plywood - essential tools for the manufacture of high-volume, pre-hung door assembly machines requiring innovative door and jamb equipment - you’re not alone if you’re unfamiliar with Kvalheim’s products.

Kval, Inc., originally Kvalheim Machinery Company, in business more than 75 years and operating at the southern entrance to town more than 70 years, is one of Petaluma’s oldest family-owned and operated businesses, now in its fourth generation.

Irwin “Irv” Kvalheim, 88, together with his brother Andy, has been with the company started by their father, A.A. Kvalheim, for 65 years. The youngest of four children born to Norwegian immigrants A.A. and Marie Kvalheim, Irv was born in Tacoma, Washington, where his father was a custom millworker and cabinetmaker. After the family relocated to Petaluma during the Depression, A.A. Kvalheim started building cabinets in a Kentucky Street garage, which he rented for $10 a month.

Growing up, Irv helped his father in the cabinet shop and worked at various jobs, including delivering prescriptions on his bicycle for Dahlgren’s Drug Store, becoming a champion prune and cherry picker during World War II and working at Kelly’s Shell Service. He remembers his mother making batches of oatmeal, which she’d feed to hungry railroad transients, and when the huge cannon overlooking Hill Plaza Park (Penry Park) was removed and melted down for the war effort.

Along with his woodworking skills, A.A. Kvalheim was an imaginative and creative innovator who designed and built his own machinery. While working as a finish carpenter on the development of Marin City, in 1942, he invented a system for pre-fitting window sash and developed a traveling carriage saw, which he patented. When progress slowed during the war years, he opened his shop in Petaluma, initially on East Washington Street, where he developed and sold machinery to speed up production for mass-produced doors.

“When his business became more active, my dad bought the building on Petaluma Boulevard South and started producing machinery there,” Irv Kvalheim said.

As a teenager, Irv was on an outing with a First Baptist Church youth group to Armstrong Woods when he met the love of his life, Patty Miller, whom he dated for three years before marrying. On December 23rd the couple celebrated their 67th wedding anniversary.

“I’ve changed a lot since high school,” said Irv, a 1948 graduate of Petaluma High. “Patty was more social than I was. She helped bring me out of my shell.”

Irv and his brother were pulled away from the business during the Korean conflict, with Andy joining the Navy and Irv enlisting in the Air Force, where he became an aircraft mechanic. When the conflict ended, Irv returned home and with his uncle Art, built a home near Oak Hill Park. He also enrolled at SRJC, then Heald Engineering College, studying mechanical engineering.

From its beginning, Kval has been a family enterprise.

Both Irv and Andy served as company President and their wives were also long-time employees. Andy’s wife Inge, worked for the firm for 30 years and Patty, known for baking cakes and cookies to celebrate employees’ birthdays, was there for 50 years.

“Through our machinery business, we’ve become a nationally known company and we’ve made a lot of great long-lasting friends,” said Irv. “I never could have imagined the life we’ve led. Thanks to our faith in God, a good outlook on life and living frugally, we’ve lived the American Dream.”

Irv and Pat’s devotion to family and church was paramount.

For the past 20 years, they’ve attended Hessel Community Church. There were plenty of camping trips and family vacations with their children Jerry, Pamela and David some beginning in an old motor home Irv rebuilt, plus numerous outings at Lake Berryessa.

The business has thrived, Irv said, because each generation advanced the company.

“I started out before the age of computers,” he said. “Thanks to our engineering and technology the machinery we make today is well beyond my capabilities. Our early machines were very simple. Today they’re very complex.”

Kval, Inc. is a combination of five separate units involved in the manufacturing process - engineering, machine shop, welding, assembly and electronics. It begins with raw materials and ends with a finished product that’s shipped worldwide. Now in its fourth generation of family leadership, the future looks bright for firmly established business.

“Just imagine,” Irv said, “all this was started by a man with an eighth grade education.”

(Harlan Osborne’s ‘Toolin’ Around Town’ runs every other week. Contact him at harlan@sonic.net)

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