Geography quiz time!  Where is Guernsey?  I’ll give you a hint: it’s one of the Channel Islands (and no, we’re not talking about the ones off the coast of California…)

Give up?  Here you go: Guernsey.  How’s that for an exotic locale?  And what do ya know – there are welders there too!

Challenging the world’s welders

A group of apprentices from the College of Further Education are challenging the best welders in the world.

Three fourth year students hope their welding skills will allow them to reach the world final of the SkillWeld competition in London in 2011.

Guernsey man James Le Lievre was a UK finalist in the contest in 2008.

John Semenowicz, the programme manager for engineering at the college, said: “We’re talking about students in the premier league of welding.”

The Channel Island heat of the SkillWeld competition took place at the College of FE’s workshop in March 2010 as Guernsey’s three entrants became part of the 170 from across the UK who are competing.

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No, we’re not talking about not insects, nor the Protestants.  These are the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) who served during WWII (the first to ever do so) — right alongside the Rosies who helped build the planes in which they flew!

Female WWII aviators honored with gold medal

By KIMBERLY HEFLING, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – A long-overlooked group of women who flew aircraft during World War II were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal on Wednesday.

Known as Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs, they were the first women to fly U.S. military planes.

About 200 of these women aviators, mostly in their late 80s and early 90s and some in wheelchairs, came to the Capitol to accept the medal, the highest civilian honor bestowed by Congress.

In thanking them for their service, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said these women pilots went unrecognized for too long.

“Women Air Force Service Pilots, we are all your daughters, you taught us how to fly,” Pelosi said.

In accepting the award, WASP pilot Deanie Parrish said the women had volunteered to fly the planes without expectation that they would ever be thanked. Their mission was to fly noncombat missions to free up male pilots to fly overseas.

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Nick Coleman is a horseman at heart, but after this latest welding project for an AG class, who knows?  Welding just might have to come first, after all.

CHS sophomore may turn from horse training to welding

By Pete Kendall/reporter@trcle.com
February 12, 2010

It’s understandably spooky mounting a horse that’s never been ridden.

The rider can’t know exactly what the horse is going to do — smile, frown or say, “If you raise your voice to me one more time, I’ll buck you into Bosque County.”

That’s what almost happened to young horseman Nick Coleman.

“At first, I was nervous,” the Cleburne High sophomore said. “When I’d first get on a horse, I’d be holding the saddle horn. But if you do enough ground work on them, they shouldn’t buck. They might, but ground work really pays off.

“I had one last year throw me into a metal pipe fence. The guy who was helping me on the ground let go of the lead rope. My leg wasn’t all the way in the saddle. I came off and flew into a fence. The way Ron [Richmond, boss] and I do it, one of us is on the horse and the other is on the ground with the lead rope. If the horse starts bucking, the one with the lead rope pulls [the horse] around.”

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Who’s to say what jobs are “normal” for women to have and what aren’t?  So what if they’re “non-traditional”?

Once upon it was neither “normal” nor “traditional” for women to even wear pants, and look where that’s got us!  You go girls!

Looking for “non-traditional” work

Posted: Feb 17, 2010 2:42 PM PST
By Heather Sawaski

WAUSAU (WAOW) — Jobs in the trade industry took a hard hit during the economic downturn. But experts predict job creation to pick up soon, especially for workers in “non-traditional” roles.

A program at Northcentral Technical College in Wausau is designed to help get students past the stereotype. The Non-Traditional Occupations Program at NTC helps students achieve success in roles typically filled by the opposite gender.

Brenda Cichon is welding student at NTC. She enrolled in the program with her husband after they were both laid off last year.

“The government is helping us by funding us and paying for us to go back to school,” she explained. “So we were happy to come back to NTC and join a program that was good for both of us.”

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Albert Paley went from designing jewelry to creating sculptures of immense stature, but continued to use the same soft touch, even when creating giants out of steel.

Size, Scale and Detail in Creations of Steel

By BENJAMIN GENOCCHIO
Published: February 5, 2010

It is easy to be impressed by the Albert Paley retrospective at Grounds for Sculpture, the 35-acre sculpture park and museum on the former site of the New Jersey State Fairgrounds in Hamilton. The size and scale of the metal sculptures in this indoor exhibit are mind-blowing; some pieces are around 15 feet high, while others weigh up to a ton. They are monumental.

Born in Philadelphia in 1944, Mr. Paley initially worked in New York City making art jewelry, but in the late 1960s he moved to Rochester, where he is on the faculty of the Rochester Institute of Technology. He is essentially an abstract artist, assembling dynamic, flamboyant structures using wedges, blocks and ribbons of steel.

The artist’s training as a jewelry designer has served him extremely well, for while the scale of his artwork has exploded, his attention to detail has remained steadfast. He is a perfectionist who seems to take delight in challenging himself in terms of execution and concept. He is also the only heavy metal sculptor I know who can make his material seem fragile and delicate.

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The Logan International Airport will soon come alive with an underwater scene straight out of the likes of “Finding Nemo”, and here’s the kicker: it’s all welded!

An ‘ocean’ for Logan
Essex metal artist crafts major piece for Boston airport

By Jonathan Phelps
Staff Writer

ESSEX — Artist Chris Williams’ studio has been transformed into a coral reef complete with fish, seaweed and octopuses.

Williams, 41, who does metal artwork and operates Chris Williams Sculpture out of his garage on Rocky Hill Road, is currently creating the ocean scene using bronze, steel, and rocks for a project that will soon be on display at Logan International Airport.

The piece is scheduled to be installed in early March and should be there for at least six months, Williams said.

The project was initiated by Williams as a way to advertise his work and to interact with people from all over the world who may pass by the sculpture while in the terminal.

“People see a piece and they call,” said Williams, who has done other projects like this in the past. “To make a living doing this, you have to get your work out there.”

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I want to steal the name of her blog.  Seriously.

This is a fantastic look into the workings of a women welder’s mind written by Wendy Welder.  Perhaps she is related to our good friend, Joe Welder??

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2010

How it all started.
Even as a little girl, I had dirt under my fingernails and grease smeared across my face. I grew up in the garage, at the shop, out in the yards with my Dad. Dad worked in tire retread and his hobby was cars, so I saw a lot of cars, a lot of trucks and a lot of men in my childhood.

Weekends were spent at the race track or at car shows. Dad raced a 1972 Nova before I was born, and I think everytime we went to the track he wished it was him out there. It wasn’t long before I wished it was me.

My first car was a Chevy Nova. I drove it everywhere, and I loved it like it was my child. But, it was my first car, and I was just learning how to take care of it and how everything worked. My parents always reminded me to check the oil and I always forgot. When the engine blew, Dad made ME replace it. (Of course he helped) And while I had always been around when he worked on cars, seeing the daylight through the hole in the block where the rod had flown through, and the whole process of the replacement, the sense of accomplishment when the car was up and running again, made me love that car even more and made me want to spend the rest of my life around cars.

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It was a fun night for me at the monthly American Welding Society — San Diego Section meeting.  This night’s topic?  Induction heating with a system unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.

Gone are the days of waiting hours and hours for your length of pipe to warm up to the right temperature –

Miller has just released the new ProHeat 35 Induction Heating System, which works by inducing heat electromagnetically, rather than via a conductor, thus saving the operator incredible amounts of time and energy.

Simply wrap the induction coils around whatever piece of metal you’re working on, and in just a few minutes, you’re ready to go!

This picture was taken looking inside the length of pipe that was being heated up by the ProHeat 35 — you can’t see it here, but that tube was glowing red hot on the inside!

And even better, when I tried touching the coils wrapped around it?
Cold as ice! This product is simply amazing!

But perhaps the best part about this whole new system is that you don’t even have to buy it! Red-D-Arc will rent out one of their machines to you for as long as you need!

It’s never too late to start welding — that’s the lesson we can learn from Cynthia Daniel, who has a yard full of metal art to prove it!

Dallas welder transforms trash into garden sculptures

Monday, February 15, 2010
By DIANE REISCHEL / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

Cynthia Daniel keeps a gangly old muffler in her carport, a silent lump she communes with, waiting for it to talk.

With age comes patience, says Daniel, a graphic artist for a Dallas publishing firm and a constant dreamer of trash. She’s more than a dreamer.

In recent years, this late-blooming welder has twisted, fired and honed a colony of eye-popping yard mates, some migrating to local sculpture shows, others charming their way into admirers’ back yards.

Her lively characters morph from the lowliest of throwaways, “found metal” she lifts from country lanes, junk yards and on quests through East Dallas for “big trash.”

Scraps speak to her, and she listens.

“I look at them every day in my yard, and they become something,” she says of her procedure for turning tractor springs, grilles or saw teeth into fish, flamingo or duck.

“Lately, I’m into fan blades. They become petals on flowers.”

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In Standwood, Washington, they’ve got it a little backwards — here, the students have become the teachers.  The teens are teaching the adults how to weld!!

Stanwood students teach adults welding
By GALE FIEGE
THE DAILY HERALD

STANWOOD, Wash. — When a group of high school welding students decided to offer a class for the community, they never imagined having to turn people away.

“It was amazing to us. We had 25 people on a waiting list right off the bat,” said teacher Darryl Main, adviser for Stanwood High School’s Agricultural Mechanics Club. “The community welding course has been so well-received, we might have to run another one this spring.”

For $60, adult students get 12 hours of instruction focusing on shielded metal and gas metal arc welding. Proceeds from the class help fund the club’s field trips and contest travel expenses.

On a recent Thursday, the garage doors to Stanwood’s ag shop were flung wide open. Twenty adults in protective helmets, coveralls and heavy gloves huddled over metal pieces, torches in hand and sparks flying, while teenagers coached them one-on-one through the welding process.

“It’s great to watch the kids teaching, and the adults enjoying learning from them,” Main said. “There’s no better way to learn than to teach. You can just see the self-esteem of the kids go up. They feel empowered and that’s pretty dang cool.”

Nearly half of the adult students in the class are women.

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