Our very own Joe Welder can boast one very unique claim to fame.  He grew up down the street from Eddie Lawson!  They raced motorcycles together in AMA district 37 when they were little!  (Okay, perhaps not so little…)

And now, they still remain connected, although in a different way: they help to keep each other in business.

In dirt-track racing (how Eddie got started in his career), you need something called a “hot shoe”.  No, they’re not hot.  And no, they’re not really shoes.  They are actually the antithesis of their name – they keep your shoes from getting hot.

On a dirt racetrack, as the rider leans the bike into the turns, he has to stick out his left foot to keep balance and direct the bike through the corner.  And, as you can imagine, direct contact with hard-packed dirt going over a hundred miles an hour might hurt your foot just a little bit.

That’s where the hot shoes come in.  Hot shoes are metal casings that are formed around the bottom of your riding boot.  They are perfectly shaped so that they don’t fall off or let dirt in when you use them to turn that corner at speed.

Iron Cobbler Hot Shoes is a company out of Salinas, Ca that custom makes hot shoes for riders in AMA district 36.  They use the best tungsten carbide hardfacing available to make them and let me tell you, this material is not for the faint of heart.  It’s the same stuff used for mining equipment.  If it can dig into rocks, it can certainly protect your feet from a little wear and tear.

So where do Joe Welder and Arc-Zone.com come into this?  Well, in order to create great hot shoes, you need the proper welding equipment by your side.  And what better place to find it at than Arc-Zone.com?  If you’re interested in welding hot shoes, check out our TIG section, especially the Tungsten Grinders…

Confused?  Bothered?  Bewildered?

These words may not just be strangely reminiscent of a certain song from the 1940 Rodgers and Hart musical Pal Joey.  Instead, they may also be descriptive of your mental state concerning a few welding procedures.

If you are in fact, “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” by either of the following:

Welding Fume Control

Automation System Selection

You’re in luck, for Lincoln Electric, as usual, has just the answer for you.  They have released two different handy-dandy reference guides for your perusal about each of these topics and both can be purchased online at www.lincolnelectric.com or by calling (888) 355-3213.

Happy learning!

Welding Fume Control FAQ booklet

Automation System Selection Guide

Orange County Choppers has built a business out of fabricating themed bikes on t.v. A brilliant cash machine model, they earn cash from the build, and the t.v. show AND any product placements or other affiliate marketing endeavors.

Now they’ve partnered with Northrup Grumman, showcasing the Spirit of Innovation Chopper on the season premiere of Orange County Choppers…

A note about Northrup Grumman– Arc-Zone.com supplies them with a variety of technical welding components — including our popular all-purpose, hybrid ArcTime(TM) tungsten electrodes. They love it!

PALMDALE, Calif. – April 2, 2009 – The B-2 bomber-themed motorcycle commissioned by Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the first flight of the stealthy aircraft is expected to roll into America’s living rooms on Thursday, April 9.

The custom design and build of the B-2 Stealth Bike by Orange County Choppers, Newburgh, N.Y., will be featured on the 2009 season premiere of the cable TV reality series “American Chopper,” which airs on TLC at 9 p.m. ET/PT. Check local listings for show times.

“We named our bike ‘The Spirit of Innovation’ to honor the engineering innovation and the successful Northrop Grumman/Air Force partnership
(more…)

We are huge fans of two of Kyle Busch’s affiliates, it turns out – Lincoln Electric and… M&Ms.

Lincoln is the “exclusive provider of welding equipment and products to Kyle Busch and his team at Joe Gibbs Racing” and M&Ms are one of his official racing sponsors.

The connection?

Here at Arc-Zone.com we deliver high-quality accessories for your Lincoln Electric welding machine and M&Ms – one package of M&Ms for every package we send out. 

Lincoln Electric Helps Power Kyle Busch to Sprint Car Victory in Las Vegas

Welding manufacturer also rewards promotion winners with a VIP trip to the race

Cleveland – Las Vegas native Kyle Busch roared to victory for his first hometown win at the March 1 Shelby^® 427 NASCAR^® Sprint Car Series at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. And Lincoln Electric helped put him there, as the company is the exclusive provider of welding equipment and products to Kyle Busch and his team at Joe Gibbs Racing.

Busch enjoyed a truly sweet victory: Although he won the pole, he started at the rear of the field due to an engine change during Friday’s practice and still came back to claim the hometown win.

CONTINUE READING ONLINE ->

No one’s really sure how you pronounce it.  Is it “one aught” or “one naught”?  And furthermore, is it “one aught” or “one aut”?  Google’s not even sure (gasp!), though “naught” comes in first by popularity.  But the question at hand is not how to pronounce the cable sizes!  It’s to determine which cable size you need for the job, a query even more confusing.

Cables, Tables, Gages and sizes Or, Watts it all about?

By AUGUST F. MANZ, AWS Fellow | Jan 1, 2009 12:00 PM

The question that welders face on many jobs is : What size welding cable do I need for XX amperes when I am YY feet away from the power source?  This article — and the corrected sizes shown in Table 7 — will help you to select the right size cables for your welding or cutting job.

…

Cable Numbers

Small diameter cables have high gage numbers, and the numbers get smaller as the cables get larger.  After AWG #1 is reached, the next larger size is 0, then 00, then 000, up to 0000.  The 0 to 0000 cables are sometimes referred to as 1/0, 2/0, 3/0 and 4/0, spoken as “one naught” or “one aut”, “two naught” or “two aut” and so on.  After that, larger sizes are described in “circular-mil” areas.  Welding cable sizes usually run from AWG #2 through 4/0. It is interesting to note, that in the AWG system, a change of three sizes will double or halve the resistance. For example, a #6 cable has a cross section of about 0.0206 in2 and a #3 cable has about 0.0413 in2, while a 1/0 cable has 0.0829 in2.

CONTINUE READING ONLINE ->

Every year I hear from my friends about this weekend-long event called Coachella.  It’s this crazy music festival out in the desert (Indio, Ca, to be exact) with a bunch of famous bands, but the thing I remember being most envious about were the sculptures that they described seeing.  Sculptures so high that you had to crane your neck to see them.  Some that lit up, some that you could swing around in, and some that you could trust to spray you with water in the 100 degree plus heat.

It sounded… fascinating.

And then, last night, while we were talking about our plans for this year, they mentioned a tree house – this one Steampunk Tree House, to be exact.

Photo by Zachary Wasserman

It is completely… amazing.  Unluckily, you could not climb up into it (although my friends really wanted to…).

However, there were some amazing special effects attached to the project that made standing on the ground just as enjoyable.

From kineticsteamworks.org:

>STEAM EFFECTS: The tree will be plumbed with steam using 1″ schedule 40 pipe.  The steam lines will run throughout the tree and branches to establish the steam effects at night (see Steam Plumbing Schematic)…

Lights:
>Solar panels on the roof
>Storage batteries hidden in the house
>LED (firefly) lights in the branches, multiple colors
>LED (mood) lighting in the house
>LED floodlighting to illuminate the tree at night
>Back-up generator and charging system

Sound Element:
>Certain pipes throughout the tree will be a part of an open network that will allow people to speak with other people who are in different sections of the Tree. Small steel “megaphones” will be attached to the Tree for communication. The pipes will also pick up the wind on windy days. The Tree may be equipped with a few aluminum organ pipes that will make unusual sounds as the steam is piped through.

The Kinetic Steamworks team of artists used MIG welding and plate steel to create much of the tree’s original structure.  For their full list of materials, click here.

And now, even though I’ve looked at this photo over and over while drafting this post, I am still amazed.  This year, I will be fortunate enough to finally attend a day of Coachella-ness and I’m excited to see what they, and the many other artists have come up with this year.  I can’t hardly wait.

The Boy Scouts, it appears, have a badge for nearly everything.  (Everything except for “Boy Scout cookies”.  In this they are clearly lacking.)  One of these badges, we’ve discovered, is for metalworking.  And this isn’t your kind of “watch and learn but don’t touch” kind of metalworking.  This is down and dirty.

Troop 89 learns metalworking from the pros  

By Staff reports
Tue Mar 03, 2009, 10:53 AM EST

Medfield – When it comes to being prepared, everyone knows that the Boy Scouts of America have cornered the market. It only seemed natural, then, that when the metal working badge was due, the local troops came prepared to learn from some of the area masters ~ Neil Mansfield and the Assabet Valley metal fabrication students. Bright and early on a Saturday morning, Troop 89 Scouts from Medfield, with leaders Richard Sauro, Jeff Bennotti, and Mike McGowan, traveled to Marlborough to spend the day in the shop at Assabet Valley Regional Technical High School, making various projects that would lead to their metal working badge. Three members from the Worcester Troop 9 also joined in, as one of their own, Nick Day, is currently an Assabet Metal Fab student. 

The day’s agenda included learning the safety rules for metal working, watching a safety film, sketching a three dimensional box, making that box out of sheet metal, making a copper feather, and forging at 2,000 degrees to temper and anneal a steel tool. “We really just wanted the kids to learn how to work and get along with fellow scouts and Assabet students, and to learn how to have fun while working with hot metal,”   commented Mansfield, the lead instructor in the program at Assabet. 

CONTINUE READING ONLINE ->

To read the expansive list of requirements to earn this merit badge (which include being either a Tinsmith, Silversmith, Founder, or Blacksmith for a day) click on the Metalwork badge to the right.

As a fabricator, what would YOU add to the list?