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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It is the best kind of person who takes inspiration from adversity.

When Lee Soucie was laid off from his job with ONG Industries, he decided to start on a project that he’d been waiting years to do: welding a full-size Tin Man, with heart.

Playing Tin Man with heart

Wednesday, January 6, 2010 10:08 PM EST
By SCOTT WHIPPLE
Staff writer

BERLIN — No one would ever confuse Berlin with the Emerald City or 7-year-old Alyssa Watrous for Judy Garland’s character, Dorothy Gale in the classic film, Wizard of Oz.

Then, too, neither Watrous nor her 4-year-old sister, Kirsten have a dog named Toto.

However, what 52-year-old Lower Lane resident Lee Soucie has done with six feet of tubing is more than pure fantasy.

Nothing against the Scarecrow or the Cowardly Lion, but Soucie, a welder with time on his hands, says as a kid he loved this most-watched movie in history. His favorite character was the guy who needed a heart — the Tin Woodman.

“My granddaughters, Alyssa and Kirsten — their mouths dropped open — when they saw what I’d done,” he says.

What Soucie did was a metal sculpture. He says for five years he had wanted to make a welding of the Tin Man.

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How many of you all actually read the instructions upon opening a complicated put-it-together project?  Anyone at all?  I know I don’t…

And how many of you will still be in that same spot, 5 hours later, struggling to fit peg E into hole F with little or no success?  You know, with the family members standing around going, “You need some help with that?”

Unsurprisingly, I’ve done that as well…

But by and large, the spirit of DIY is actually dwindling amongst Americans nowadays.  We don’t often build, we don’t do repairs, and I think, really, we just don’t want to work at it much anymore.

What do you think?

If you build it, you’re unusual; survey finds more in U.S. avoid hands-on projects or repairs

By Rick Barrett
December 17, 2009
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

MILWAUKEE — The United States has become a nation of “non-tinkerers,” a new survey shows, and it has harmed the way we live and work.

In a poll of 1,000 U.S. adults, nearly six in 10 said they had never made or built a toy.

Twenty-seven percent had not made or built even one item from a list of eight common projects, including furniture and a flower box.

Sixty percent avoided doing major household repairs themselves, noted the survey from The Foundation of the Fabricators and Manufacturers Association, based in Rockford, Ill.

It’s worrisome because the “hands off” policy around the house has kept people from learning valuable skills — including ones associated with productive careers, according to the association, which has more than 2,300 members in the metal fabrication industry.

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I got this forwarded to me in an email and immediately knew that we had to post this here on Carmen!

Ron Patrick’s Street-Legal Jet Powered Volkswagen Beetle

This is my street-legal jet car on full afterburner.

The car has two engines: the production gasoline engine in the front driving the front wheels and the jet engine in the back.

The idea is that you drive around legally on the gasoline engine and when you want to have some fun, you spin up the jet and get on the burner (you can start the jet while driving along on the gasoline engine).

The car was built because I wanted the wildest street-legal ride possible.

With this project, I was able to use some stuff I learned while getting my fancy engineering degree (I have a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University) to design a street-legal jet car without the distraction of how other people have done it in the past – because no one has.

I don’t know how fast the car will go and probably never will. The car was built to thrill me, not kill me. That doesn’t stop me from the occasional blast on the highway though.

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Did you know what you wanted to do for a career when you were a freshman in high school?  I didn’t!  I don’t really know anyone who did — isn’t that what college is for?

Lyndsi Tingle did.  She wanted to be a welder, and she and her teachers agree — she’s on the right track to succeed.

Frankfort Face: She makes sparks fly

By Katheran Wasson

Lyndsi Tingle wore men’s welding gloves for three years before she realized they made smaller pairs for women.

The 17-year-old Western Hills High School senior welds, cuts and bends metal alongside the boys at Franklin County Career and Technical Center.

She spends four hours a day in tan Carhartt overalls and a T-shirt, safety goggles propped on her blonde head.

“Most of the guys kind of look at me as mama,” she said, sitting in the workshop before winter break.

“If something needs to be done, they know that I’m going to be on them to do it.”

Lyndsi has known since freshman year that she wanted to make a career out of welding.

After graduation, she and five of her classmates will head to Tulsa Welding School in Jacksonville, Fla., to study the craft.

She hopes to eventually become an inspector, checking the welds on bridges, power plants and pipes to make sure they are secure.

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It’s midnight at a community college in Oregon.  The classroom is brightly lit, and the students are up and about and… welding?

Thanks to a new series of “graveyard” welding classes, this has become a regular feature of several area colleges.

In the Midnight Hour

By David Moltz
December 9, 2009

Midnight classes, once a quirky scheduling option available at only a few institutions, are gaining currency at a growing number of community colleges as student demand for specific courses increases and available classroom space for those courses decreases.

Photo: Carl Graham / Clackamas Community College

Though it is unclear which institutions pioneered the idea, Clackamas Community College, in Oregon, began offering what became known as “graveyard welding classes,” lasting from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m., two nights a week last spring.

The classes were so popular that the college expanded them to four nights a week this fall, and students can now take five different welding courses during the “graveyard shift,” ranging from an introductory section to those focusing on specialized projects.

John Phelps, one of two adjunct welding instructors who lead the late-night courses, said the college’s experiment with these sections was a matter of necessity.

Even with some welding sections available on the weekends, he said, the college reached its capacity for these courses last fall and was forced to turn away a number of students.

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Three women at Butler Community College are working hard to dispel three myths – firstly, that women can’t be welders (obviously not), second, that welding isn’t as viable a tool as other art mediums, and thirdly, that there isn’t help out there for victims of abuse.

All untrue, and they’ve been able to make their stance abundantly clear through this one particular sculpture.

Women weld hope for those of domestic violence

Last Update: 10/21 6:20 pm
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BUTLER COUNTY, Kansas – Mary Coleman, Jessica Davis and Blake Rebholz – together they are helping dispel the notion that welding is a man’s job.

“When I first enrolled in the program I thought I was going to be the only woman,” Coleman said. “So it kind of scared me a little bit, but I was still going to go for it.”

It has been nearly eight years since any women enrolled in the program at Butler Community College – let alone three.

When El Dorado’s police chief heard about the trio, he contacted their instructor, Matthew Galbraith, to see if the ladies would consider working on a project to mark October as Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

“To let woman know that they have other options,” said Rebholz. “Like us, going into welding.”

So for the last few weeks, they’ve been working on a sculpture with a simple message that in another week or so will be permanently placed in front of the El Dorado Police Department.

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