Clackamas Community College offers welding classes seven days a week.  Their most popular time slot?  The “graveyard shift”.

Welding school offers night shift to fit busy schedules

Story Published: Feb 3, 2010 at 4:30 AM PST
By Chris Parker for KVAL.com

OREGON CITY, Ore. — The sun isn’t necessary for students welding at midnight: the blinding electric arcs provide enough light at Clackamas Community College metal shop.

John Phelps and David Williams instruct welding classes during the graveyard shift, from 10 p.m. until 2 a.m., to accommodate an enrollment demand that has surged over the last year.

According to Phelps, enrollment increased 60 percent since last fall term, making it difficult for students to take welding classes during normal hours.

“Because the enrollment shot up so high, there was no other way to accommodate these needs,” Phelps said. “We already offer classes seven days a week. The only other time slot we didn’t offer was this late at night, and so we wanted to give it a try.”

At first the graveyard classes were only held two nights a week, but since being offered spring term of 2009, more students have become interested in the late night class. Now, the graveyard class is offered Monday through Thursday.

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College isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  In fact, if you’re looking for a career in welding, a technical school might just be the place to go.

Technical schools give students a leg up on a career

By FARAH TAMIZUDDIN/VOICE CORRESPONDENT
THE STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER
Posted Jan 25, 2010 @ 11:00 PM

Seventeen-year-old Konner Fenwick doesn’t want to go to college.

She isn’t taking any more history or English classes.

The Springfield High School senior doesn’t want to get a job after she graduates in June, either.

Her plan? Attend a technical school.

“School’s never really been my thing,” Konner said. “I think I’ll enjoy this a lot.”

More than half of the country’s high school seniors each year head to college right after graduation, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

However, 30 to 40 percent of seniors find their footing elsewhere.

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Through the wonderful social medium that is Facebook, we have been fortunate enough to meet a variety of dedicated and uniquely talented women welders who are working their way through life with a torch in hand. Here’s what Karine Maynard says about welding, and life:

My name is Karine Maynard, and I live in central Kentucky. I work as a blacksmith who helps to make ornamental & architectural ironwork, mostly custom jobs, like railings and balconies; sometimes we get smaller commissions for tables, fire screens, etc.

Growing up on a tree farm in Wisconsin, my father also had an auto parts store and I’d probably still be there and running the place now, except that when it came time for him to retire he said it was “no business for a girl,” so I went to college and one of the things I studied was art.

I got my introductions to working in metal in jewelry-making classes, and I studied everything including political science, foreign languages and history – but really my early years in the country surrounded by auto shops & farming gave me the taste for things “hands on”. I also traveled a lot internationally in college and that really expanded my ideas as well as introduced me to other cultures and interesting people.

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In one of the most original, sad, and, therefore, daunting tasks I’ve ever heard of, Natascha Whitehurst is using her talent for welding to fabricate her own parents’ tombstones.

Instead of the usual headstones, Natascha is crafting two oak stumps (made from a water heater tank), connected by a root (made from an exhaust pipe), bearing their names and dates etched in the metal.

Welder honors her Mother & Father

By Laura Gutschke
Posted January 2, 2010

TUSCOLA — Rusted metal scrap objects long past their original function are finding new life as art at the hands of Natascha Whitehurst.

One of her current projects also is her most personal. She is crafting out of a discarded water heater’s inner steel tank a double tombstone for her parents. The tombstone looks like two oak stumps connected by a root, to be made out of a vehicle exhaust pipe.

“Instead of buying new, I like using what is already out there,” Whitehurst said.

Rows of small welding beads will run down the side of the tank to resemble bark. On top of the 18-inch tree stump for her mother, Janice Sadler, who died on Jan. 1, 2009, will be a watering can to symbolize her nurturing of the family.

A rifle will be leaning against the stump for her father, Harley Sadler, who continues to work as a truck driver today, to represent his providing for the family and his love of hunting.

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I never thought I’d see the day. Let me repeat that – NEVER.

But the day has indeed arrived, from whence forward, a newbie welder will be able to practice welding, not the old-fashioned way, with torch and electrode, but via virtual reality.

You can thank Lincoln Electric for this new advancement in welding technology — they are the producers of the new VRTEX 360 which enables the wearer to weld via a virtual welding gun and a helmet that is equipped with monitors on the inside.

You can “virtually” weld in a welding booth, on a construction site — even on a base in the desert!

And, it has to be said, this is the greenest welding machine on the market, and it will enable students to learn faster than ever before.

Who knows — this newest welding “video game” could become so popular that instructors will have to pry the virtual torch right out of their students’ unwilling hands.

One can only hope.