I thought it would be fun if I scavenged through the internet looking for the most outrageous pictures that involved welding in any way. I narrowed it down to the top 7 welding pics that will make you blush! Please be advised, some of these photos may be slightly NSFW, depending upon where you work.

At NUMBER 7, we have a “pin-up” girl that’s ready to weld with her little pooch at her side. Pin-ups, which became very popular in the 40’s, were meant to be “pinned-up” on walls. Many pin-ups were photographs of celebrities who were considered sex symbols.  Clearly, this pin-up girl is “fully equipped.”

Coming in at NUMBER 6, we have another pin-up girl getting ready to do some serious welding. The gas is ready to go, welding goggles are on, and her last step is lifting up her dress to warm up her buns with that oxy-acetylene torch.

NUMBER 5 is for the ladies out there! Seo Young Deok, a brilliant Korean metal artist, created this piece of art. It’s a sculpture of a man who I HOPE is wearing Speedos, in a very focused Yoga pose. Or maybe he’s is just freaking out about that mouse he’s pointing at on the floor – while wearing Speedos. But seriously folks, Seo Young Deok is amazing; he meticulously creates his nude sculptures by welding metal bicycle chain links piece by piece. I wonder how long it takes to create one of his sculptures, or how he locates each piece of chain to make such compound 3D shapes.  Pretty amazing.

Coming in at NUMBER 4 we have another astonishing piece by Seo Young Deok. It appears to be a naked woman standing under a waterfall. Or if you tilt your head,  it looks as if she’s making a swan dive into the ocean. Or maybe she just baked a mean batch of chocolate chip cookies and she’s trying to get a good whiff of her success. But I’m probably way off, what do you think?

At NUMBER 3 we have a beautiful young lady holding still while a very focused man welds the final touches to her metal swimsuit, circa 1940. A metal bathing suit may seem incredibly inconvenient today, however, back then it was also incredibly inconvenient.

As the countdown is coming to a close we have NUMBER 2! A sexy woman wearing a metal corset. I’m not sure why she has that surprised look on her face but perhaps putting on that corset was considerably cold on her silky-smooth skin, or maybe it’s just a bit too tight on those hips. My final guess is that she had the sudden urge to use the restroom right after squeezing into that corset and said, “uh oh”.

::Drum-roll::

And for the grand finale, we have NUMBER 1! This picture was so caliente that it almost went unpublished! Not that I’m into female metal sculptures, but this is the Scarlett Johansson of metal sculptures. Her Rapunzel-like hair is out of this world; it’s so beautiful that she’s even wearing it on her wrists which is totally normal. I just wish that perhaps one day I have the pleasure of meeting this iron beauty. Just in case opposites really do attract, I’ll be sure to bring my collection of magnets. Never mind, bad joke.

Thanks for indulging me on my journey of the web’s top 7 welding pics that will make you blush.  To weld with such blush-worthy precision requires tools such as the Sharpie Hand-Held Tungsten Grinder and Micro TIG Welding Torches, which allow maximum precision.

-SOURCES

# 1  http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3593/3624922195_4e7ce61934.jpg

# 2  http://pinterest.com/pin/158400111864674409/

# 3  http://pinterest.com/pin/158400111864329335/

# 4  http://www.yatzer.com/seo-young-deok-chain-sculptures

# 5  http://www.yatzer.com/seo-young-deok-chain-sculptures

# 6  http://pinterest.com/pin/158400111864409847/

# 7  http://dotdotdotwithenvy.blogspot.com/2010_05_01_archive.html

Brian Fuller, a metal fabricator who’s a friend of Arc-Zone, recently sent some great photos of the 2012 Red Bull Soapbox Race held in Atlanta, GA. Kudos to Brian for finishing in 1^st place!

The Red Bull Soapbox is a national race for amateur drivers in which they design the most outrageous looking, gravity-powered, yet very effective cars. Welding plays a vital role in designing soapbox cars. When welding the chassis material together, the racer has to make sure each weld is strong.  Any weak joint could potentially break and cost the driver the race, or even worse, endanger the driver.

In the competition, showmanship points are awarded for the creativity of  the cars and costumes.  As you can imagine, some of the designs get pretty wild. Below are some great pictures I captured of the Red Bull Soapbox race in Downtown Los Angeles ranging from a Jurassic Park themed race car to Lady Gaga. Over 115,000 spectators lined up on 5^th Street and Grand Avenue!

So how is each team chosen to participate? A committee reviews each application sent in and picks roughly 40 teams based on applications that display craft creativity, technical feasibility of the craft build, craft safety, and adherence to regulation guidelines. Once the teams are accepted, they are judged on three criteria after the race: speed, creativity, and showmanship. If you’re interested in participating in future Red Bull Soapbox races, visit www.redbullsoapboxusa.com

If you are  going to be in the San Diego area (Arc-Zone.com’s headquarters), there is an annual, more traditional (not as wacky as the Red Bull race), San Diego All-American Soap Box Derby where you can put your skills to the test. Don’t know where to get started on building a soap box derby race car? Click HERE for step-by-step instructions.

Have you or anyone you know ever participated in a soap box race? Please share your experience or any tips with us below!

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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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