Our Story
Nearly 30 years of doing it right.
And we're just getting started.
Built One Blade at a Time; Since 1997
Frank's Industrial Sharpening was founded in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1997 by Frank and Carolynn Veltrup. Together, Frank and his wife built the business from the ground up. Carolynn ran the office and the admin side. Frank ran the shop and made the sales. For almost three decades they built it the slow way: one blade, one tool, one customer at a time.
They loved the process of earning a client's trust, and they earned a lot of it. Cabinet shops, wood-processing operations, and industrial cutting operations across Florida and South Georgia learned that when a tool went to Frank's, it came back sharp, true, and ready to run. No surprises. No shortcuts. Over the years, Frank's built a standard and a reputation that very few shops in the industry can come close to.
Frank put in the time, and the experience shows. He is a master of the field, and that made him more than a vendor to his customers. He became an ally, the person they called when they had a question about which blade or bit would give them the best cut for their application and their project. He took it a step further, too. Frank is not only a master of precision sharpening but one of the few in the industry who has mastered custom tooling fabrication. Every tool is a case-by-case job, and Frank's consultative approach is what made the difference in getting the best cut for every client.
Passing the Torch
In 2025, Frank and Carolynn decided it was time to find the right pathway to retirement. After so many years serving Florida and South Georgia, and with so many relationships built along the way, they knew they wanted someone who would carry the legacy forward the right way: someone they could trust to pick up the torch and run the business with the same standard of workmanship and the same customer-first approach they'd built their reputation on.
On January 5, 2026, they sold the business to Gabriel Curry, founder and president of Fuelbox Industrial. Today, Frank's operates as Frank's Industrial Sharpening — A Fuelbox Company.
This wasn't a merger of a bigger company absorbing a smaller one. It was two privately owned companies in closely adjacent industries, operating under the same philosophy, finding each other at a time when alignment fell into place perfectly. Fuelbox Industrial was founded in 2021, manufacturing and supplying specialized bandsaw blades, circular saw blades, and consumable products to pallet and wood-processing plants nationwide, and had built its own resharpening program for customers who wanted more life out of a better circular blade. Frank's had spent even longer perfecting exactly that kind of work.
"Frank's reputation for precision workmanship aligns directly with our values. They've been doing this work the right way for a long time, and this acquisition is a natural extension of how both companies already operate."
Gabriel Curry, Founder & President, Fuelbox Industrial
For the Veltrups, the priority was continuity. Same experienced team. Same Jacksonville shop. Same pickup and delivery route. Same standard of work. Frank and Carolynn have stayed closely involved through the transition process and are still supporting the team in the shop every day to make sure of it, sharing their knowledge and expertise.
What changed is what sits behind the sharpening shop: the infrastructure, tracking systems, and long-term investment of a national industrial supplier that knows how to build processes successfully at scale. That's what lets Frank's protect a 30-year legacy and build on it at the same time.
The Man Behind
the Next Chapter
Gabriel Curry didn't come to Frank's from the outside. He came up through the trades and through industrial supply, and the businesses he runs today are the product of lessons learned over more than 30 years of entrepreneurship, from shop floors and sales routes to leadership in boardrooms and at every level in between.
He started working as a teenager in landscape installation. In 1995, a $1,000 gift became his first business: he spent $300 on supplies, propagated 600 jasmine plants, sold them to his employer, and turned a profit. That side venture became a business still operating and growing today: Green Dynamix.
In 1996, he took a pay cut to join HUB Industrial Supply, a bolt and industrial supply distributor, where he worked in sales. He wanted to learn how a real business worked. The owner, Mark, taught him the lesson that has anchored every company Gabriel has run since: think of the customer as the boss.
Over nine years in sales, Gabriel helped grow HUB from roughly $500,000 in annual revenue to $4 million. In June 2005, he bought the company. Over the next decade, he grew it to approximately $30 million in annual revenue and, in January 2016, he sold the business to Applied Industrial.
Gabriel wanted to return to his roots. He came back to his first love, the nursery business he had started and kept in partnership alongside his brother, who had operated it every day and was ready to move on to other opportunities. Originally called G&S Nursery, operational expansion led Gabriel and his team to rebrand: it officially became Green Dynamix in May of 2021, operating from their 44-acre nursery headquarters and distribution yard in Lake City, Florida, supplying commercial landscapers across the Southeast with a specialized, hassle-free approach that saves them time and soft costs on every project.
That same year, inspired by the people he'd met in the industrial supply industry, he founded Fuelbox Industrial to bring innovation and a service-first mindset to the wood pallet industry, a market that had been treated as an afterthought by most suppliers. Fuelbox's promise was simple: "We are not a vendor; we are a partner." Products like the Butter Blade®, Nail Ninja®, and Pallet Coat® followed, each one built to solve a real problem that customers were living with every day. Today, Fuelbox is a national manufacturer and supplier serving pallet recyclers and manufacturers across the United States.
The Customer Is the Boss
Nursery stock, bandsaw blades, sharpening. On the surface, these businesses might have little in common. Underneath, they run on the same foundation Gabriel has used since day one and carried forward ever since.
The customer is the boss. That's not a slogan on a wall. It's an operating principle: when you build a business around a genuine service-first mindset, when the point of every decision is to make the customer's day and their work easier, that's when you start making a real impact. Growth follows. It always has.
At Frank's, that principle shows up in specific ways. We inspect every tool before we sharpen it, and if resharpening doesn't pencil out against buying new, we tell you and let you decide what happens next with information you can trust. We keep the paperwork clean and the records accurate, so you always know what was done and when. We show up on the route when we say we will. And we give straight answers on what's worth sharpening and what's worth replacing, because we want to help you save money, time and headaches with a sharpening partner you can actually trust.
Where We're Headed
Frank's has always been the shop that industrial operations in the region call when the work has to be done right. Our aim now is to build on the success we've already had with better processes, at scale — with work that's consistent, paperwork that's clean, reliable pickup and delivery routes, and easy national shipping available.
We're expanding what we can do for customers, from tooling and top-brand distribution to expanded resharpening programs, without changing how the work gets done on the bench. Nearly 30 years of craftsmanship, backed by the resources of a national industrial supplier and a leader who has built businesses on a principle that matters for three decades.
That's Frank's Industrial Sharpening. Keep cutting. We'll keep you sharp.