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

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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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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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.

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.

Do you still tinker?

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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