WEST BATH — Two-and-a-half months after flames consumed downtown landmark business RVI, owner Bill King is preparing to sell his business to Bath Industrial Sales.

To the relief of King and his legions of customers, longtime mechanic Roger Love will move with RVI to Bath Industrial Sales, having healed — or almost — from burns sustained in the two alarm November 2011 blaze.

On Thursday, Love and Hal Hammond, who operates Bath Industrial Sales with his father, mother and sister, stood in what within weeks will be Love’s shop at Bath Industrial Sales.

Love, 47, returned to work on Tuesday. He’s eager to get back to repairing snowmobiles, scooters and all-terrain vehicles as he has for King since 1984.

“I’ve been ready to work for a month,” he said, grinning. “I think it’s going to be a big step up. We’re going to be able to do a lot more, and have a lot more space.”

As eager as Love is, so are his customers, who he said stop him in Shaw’s and call his home to see when he’ll be back (so many, in fact, that he’s started a waiting list).

King said making sure Love and his other former employee, Cheryl Oliver, were able to move with the business was key to his agreement with Bath Industrial Sales (although it’s unclear at this point if Oliver, who is out of state currently, will choose to do so, King said).

“That’s what I hoped for,” he said. “I very much wanted to find a home for my employees.”

“It’s a huge transition,” King, of Woolwich, said Tuesday.

“I have just turned octogenarian. It’s time for me to retire. I’ve been in this business for over 50 years.”

The sale is not yet finalized but “is moving very quickly now,” he said.

Bath Industrial Sales will keep the RVI name and phone number for the business. A portion of the showroom will feature former RVI products, with new merchandise added to the undamaged inventory Hammond and Love were able to salvage from the old RVI building.

The Nov. 15 fire that gutted the RVI building at Middle Street and Leeman Highway in Bath apparently ignited while Love was working on an all-terrain vehicle. The fire spread quickly, Bath Fire Chief Steve Hinds said at the time. Although dozens of firefighters from four departments fought the two-alarm blaze, the single-story shop in one of RVI’s two buildings was destroyed.

Love said Thursday that he realized his left leg was burning, and then his gasolinesoaked sock ignited as well. When he pulled his sock off, he burned the palms of both hands, and “melted the skin right off them.”

Love was treated at Mid Coast Hospital’s emergency room for burns to his hands, leg and foot and released that day.

The sale of RVI to Bath Industrial Sales brings RVI sort of full circle, King said.

He started the company in the West Bath building in 1972, as an offshoot of another business he was involved in.

“We were distributors of Polaris snowmobiles, and when we came to West Bath, we were distributing Chaparral snowmobiles … over the years we sold 2,000 snowmobiles,” King said.

But King said RVI dealt with “very romantic” product areas, and snowmobiles, in particular, are “highly sensitive” to unpredictable weather like this year’s lack of snow. Other recent challenges have included competition from the Internet and “ big boxes,” King said, as well as snowmobiles becoming more dependable, thereby needing fewer replacement parts and accessories.

“But as a division of Bath Industrial Sales, it’s going to work very nicely,” he said of the core RVI business. “There’s always people who think they want to get into the business, but … it’s not easy because it’s so seasonal. But Hal has an interest in snowmobiling and ATVs, and he and his (family) thought it might be interesting to explore picking up what was left of RVI.”

Love, who is eager to get to his waiting list of customers, expressed excitement about his new shop and the new venture.

“I think it’s going to be a great thing,” he said.

bbrogan@timesrecord.com