At an auto show a few months back I got to talking with Pete “Hot Dog” Finlan, the former painter from West Coast Choppers, about custom painting a couple welding helmets for Arc-Zone.  I envisioned a cool old school hot rod theme, with gold leaf, metal flake, and pinstriping.  Pete, who also happens to be the uncle of Sarah, the Shipping Manager here at Arc-Zone, was up for the job.  I gave Pete two Miller Digital Elite  welding helmets with instructions to paint a personalized helmet for me and another helmet that we could give away to a lucky Arc-Zone customer. I chose the Miller helmet shells because of their cool shape, comfort, and lens technology.

Yesterday, Pete dropped off the finished product, and everyone in the office was blown away by how great these helmet shells look.  The level of detail in each of these helmets is mind boggling.  Hot Dog is a master at all the old school styles – flake, gold leaf, pinstriping, lettering, flames, airbrush.  There are custom-look welding helmets for sale, but these are on another level.

Pete, a.k.a. Hot Dog, has been creating world-class custom paint jobs since 1982.  Pete began his career airbrushing surfboards and progressed rapidly to master all the various aspects of custom paint, including airbrush sign paint and pinstriping.  For several years, Pete worked as the in-house painter for West Coast Choppers.  Nowadays, Pete remains busy with various custom painting jobs through his company, Hot Dog Kustoms, and participates in painting competitions at auto and motorcycle shows nationwide.

The darker orange and blue helmet will be the first custom-painted helmet shell I’ve ever had in all my years of welding.  In the past, I have always decorated my helmet with stickers.  I remember back in the day when my dad and I painted our own welding helmets because we wanted a custom look on a shoestring budget.  Having a famous hot rod painter like Hot Dog paint a welding helmet for me was something I only dreamed about back then.  It’s good to be Joe Welder!

As I am sure you are all wondering, we have big plans for one lucky Arc-Zone customer to get their hands on the other Hot Dog Kustoms welding helmet, and we will be making that announcement soon.  Stay tuned!

The helmet is orange with yellow airbrushed flames on the sides, front, and top.  On each side is the Arc-Zone.com logo, and the top reads “Weld Like a Pro”.  In the front, the helmet is signed by Hot Dog Kustoms and dated 2012.

I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard at work before!  This guy has a gift – if not for welding, then definitely for writing!

Attempting to weld in the age of duct tape

Al Batt, Tales from Exit 22
Published Wednesday, March 10, 2010

I don’t like to wear socks.

I wear them but I don’t like it.

I consider socks to be a fire hazard.

I took a welding class at a college that once thrived in Waseca.

It wasn’t my idea. It was my employer’s idea. He felt that the duct tape I used wasn’t as strong as a weld. He was annoyingly conscientious. Welding started during the Bronze Age, and it survives into the Duct Tape Age. I went to college during the day and worked nights. The welding class gave me something to fill those hours that I had been wasting on sleep.

My father had taught me how to weld with a derelict welder he had rescued from a junkyard. It was a serious stapler that performed basic farm welding with little attention paid to aesthetics.

On the farm, I welded broken wagon tongues and tractor hitches. I gave up welding once I quit breaking wagon tongues and tractor hitches.

I would have been happy not knowing anything more about welding. Welding isn’t even an Olympic event. It could be in the Winter Olympics. Replacing the brooms with welders would make curling a little more exciting.

CONTINUE READING ONLINE ->

Crazy Germans and their sausage.  And I fully mean that as a compliment, because we here at Arc-Zone.com were all amazed and highly entertained by what happened next.

German welders + sausage + welding machine = Electric grill for men???

Adventurous Germans Grill Sausages with an Industrial Welder

“Eventually, the tube was so hot that the arc had to be shut down because the fat was on the verge of spontaneous combustion.”

By Vin Marshall  Posted 03.22.2010

Barbecue grills don’t typically require eye protection, but then, they’re typically not made from a giant TIG welder and an industrial sausage positioner either.

That’s something these Germans set out to change with the “Electric Grill For Men.”

What would you do if you needed to endurance-test a large industrial welding power supply?

You’d probably rig up something like the apparatus pictured here, in which a TIG welding torch draws a continuous arc along a slowly rotating piece of aluminum tubing mounted in a work positioner normally used for pipe welding.

As the long weld bead is laid down, the power supply is tested to verify that it can maintain its rated output and duty cycle without melting down. In the process, a great deal of heat is generated.

What would you do if you hated to see all of that heat going to waste? And furthermore, if you loved sausage?

CONTINUE READING ONLINE ->

At Cal State Fullerton, engineering students are getting ready to race, but first, they’ll need get their welding engines fired up!

CSUF students build a race car chassis
By DAMON LOWNEY
Daily Titan Online Editor
Published: February 08, 2010

One inch steel tubes were welded together over winter break to form a race car chassis as Cal State Fullerton engineering students toil to build a race car to compete in the annual Formula Society of Automotive Engineers (FSAE) competition.

By May, the Yamaha R6 powered senior project, built to FSAE’s race car specifications, will be ready to race.

The steel tubular space-frame chassis was finished on Jan. 26, according to CSUF FSAE team director Fred Hogarth.

“During break I saw footage of other teams chassis completed … They finished by mid-January. We finished by late January.” He said he believes CSUF’s car is about even in the build phase with cars from other university FSAE teams.

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Contribute to the economy — buy more motorcycles!!!

Harley Sees Loss, Sales Slump
Kelsey Swanekamp, 01.22.10, 10:30 AM EST

The motorcycle giant was hit hard by the economy, but expects to bounce back by cutting costs.

Difficult roads lie ahead for Harley-Davidson, which reported a wider than expected loss for the fourth quarter on Friday.

Falling motorcycle sales and restructuring costs brought the company to a $147.2 million loss for the quarter. Including discontinued operations, Harley-Davidson ( HOG – news – people ) lost $218.7 million. As the difficult economy kept wallets closed and credit short, sales in the U.S. dropped by 27.9%.

The company recently announced that it would introduce a dozen of its motorcycles to the Indian market. International sales dropped by only 10.3% during the fourth quarter, far less than sales in the U.S.

The motorcycle giant plans to reorganize its York, Pa. manufacturing plant to focus on motorcycle assembly, metal fabrication and paint, having reached a seven-year labor agreement in December. It also consolidated three vehicle test facilities into a single site in Arizona. The company expects that the restructuring will streamline operations and provide essential cost savings on the manufacturing end of the business.

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What are you doing this Sunday?  Planning on going to church?

How about Metal Church, with your favorite preacher, Jesse James?!?

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

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.

CONTINUE READING ONLINE ->

What did you do this semester?  Clone fruit flies?  Learn about logarithms?

Gary Blazek spent it welding a 500 lb. sculpture of Thor, his school’s mascot.  Now, that’s a project you don’t often hear about!

College mascot recreated in metal

Monday, Dec 07, 2009
By Lynne Lynch
Herald staff writer

MOSES LAKE — His horned helmet reaches the height of the highest bookshelf in Shawn McDaniel’s welding classroom at Big Bend Community College.

The helmet wearer is Thor, a metal statue of the college’s Viking mascot, created by student Gary Blazek. Thor weighs between 450 to 500 pounds and is made of a variety of parts.

Thor was quietly standing in the corner of the classroom last week, just a few days before fall quarter’s end.

His creator, Blazek, 55, was laid off from Genie Industries in February. At the company’s Moses Lake plant, he welded swing units and also worked on a new production line.

He started taking welding classes at the college to improve his pipe welding skills and to make himself more marketable to potential employers.

In October, he responded to instructor McDaniel’s request for students to make items benefiting a student scholarship fund.

Using donated scrap metal from his past employer and a plow disc, he started working on Thor.

CONTINUE READING ONLINE ->

What would it take for you to cut off all your hair?  A million bucks?  A week’s paid vacation?

How about some welding supplies?

Hair trade: Student donates ponytail in return for contibutions of steel to welding program

BY TRIBUNE STAFF • NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Scott Stekly lost his ponytail Wednesday.

Stekly got a buzz cut from a classmate in the Construction Trades Building, courtesy of Joe Filipowicz, Salvage Manager of Steel Etc.

Scott Stekly, a welding student at MSU-Great Falls, gets a buzz cut by classmate Rachel Kaiser Wednesday in the welding shop. (TRIBUNE PHOTO/ RION SANDERS)

Filipowicz’ company agreed to contribute metal to the welding program as an added incentive for the hair loss.

Prior to entering the welding program to pursue a second career, Stekly had been a longtime local cosmetologist, where he met Joe Filipowicz and his father Jimmy, owner of Steel Etc.

When Stekly entered the fall semester, he made a challenge to the Filipowiczes. He would allow them to cut his hair in return for donations of steel materials to the MSU-Great Falls Welding Program. Steel Etc. accepted, and the hair cut was scheduled.

The donated steel will consist of pipe and plate that can be used for the college’s welding students to practice various welds and cuts. After being used by the program, the scrap materials will be returned to Steel Etc., which will recycle the metals, sending them to a steel mill for melting and reprocessing.

Look what I found as I was browsing through the wonderful world of the Miller discussion boards!  If you haven’t read these already, you’re in for a treat, and if they’re not already up in your shop, well then… I don’t know what to tell you.

So, without further ado,

The 10 Welding Commandments

1. Thou shalt not weld on an unpurged tank, for the noise will be very loud when the tank explodes and thy friends will console thy widow in ways generally unacceptable to thee.

2. Thou shalt secure thy tanks, lest one fall on thy foot and transform thee into less than a graceful dancer when called upon by thy wife or other female friend.

3. Thou shalt clean thy work carefully, lest thy gaze upon thy work falling apart as it passeth out of thy sight.

4. Thou shalt place thy work in jigs, or other holding fixtures, for the eye is a poor instrument for the measurement of angles and great will be the wrath of thy leader as thou art doing thy task a second time.

5. Thou shalt not weld near batteries, compressed gasses, or flammable materials lest a spark from thy labors would cause thee to continue thy chosen profession in an open field or other such drafty place.

6. Thou shalt take great care of thy tools and equipment, lest thy friend who is in charge of such things smites thee about thy head and shoulders for being a wastrel and a knave.

7. Thou shalt not perform thy art without proper ventilation, for the smell of toxic gasses produced by the heating of primers, and plated or painted sufaces is worse than a bad cigar and will remain with thee until the end of thy days.

8. Thou shalt not weld without goggles, nor shalt thou allow others to gaze upon thy labors, lest thy employment, or the employment of others be changed to sitting on cold and rainy streets while selling pencils.

9. Thou shalt wear sturdy gloves, for burns upon thy hands are a source of great pain when thou art attempting to raise thy bowling average.

10. Thou shalt ground thy work, when thou weldeth with a machine of arcs, for thou art a poor conductor of electricity and the shock which thou shalt receive shall ruin thy plans for thy weekend.