From the Sept. 1944 issue of Popular Mechanics.  Enjoy!

Interested in saving money while you’re welding this autumn?  Check out this article by Welding Magazine — it lists ten simple ways that you stay thrifty, and that’s just when you’re using your MIG gun!

10 Money-Saving Tips for Semi-Automatic MIG Guns

By DAVID BELLAMY | Jul 1, 2009 12:00 PM

Your welding operation, just like any other portion of your business, offers opportunities to conserve resources.

The economy continues to challenge all of us, and it seems everyone is watching his or her finances (at home and on the job) and looking for innovative ways to save money. Your welding operation, just like any other portion of your business, offers opportunities to conserve resources. Consider these 10 money-saving tips for MIG gun care and maintenance, and don’t be surprised to discover you will improve your welding performance in the effort.

TIP #1: PROTECT YOUR ASSETS

Keep your nozzles, retaining heads (diffusers) and contact tips in the original shipment package until you are ready to use them. This prevents scratches and/or dents where spatter can accumulate and will make them last longer. It also prevents dirt, oil or other debris from adhering to the consumables and inadvertently entering the weld puddle.

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What are you doing this fall to save cash?  Share your best ideas with the rest of us!

It takes a special something to help women to enter the world of welding; many people simply don’t see it as an option.  Therefore, camps for teen girls, like this one in Decatur, Alabama, and free job training like that found at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, are just two ways that we can get women involved in what is primarily perceived as field for men.

Sparking an interest in welding for girls

Summer camp in Alabama provides peer-to-peer mentoring experience for high school students

PLE Staff — Plant Engineering, 6/19/2009 10:55:13 AM CDT

Even in the face of a recession, great careers are currently available in many technical fields, and throughout the nation efforts are under way to grow the workforce in those jobs through greater diversity.

Decatur, AL — A week-long free summer camp offered by Calhoun Community College is sparking the interest of area high school girls in non-traditional, high-tech, high wage careers in welding and electrical technology.

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Did you own any action figures when you were a kid?
Superman?  Jedis?  X-Men?

I didn’t, probably because I never read any comic books until my brothers came along.  What we did have though, were real people action figures.

I’m not even kidding.  There’s a company out there called Accoutrements that makes action figures out of historical characters.

There’s Marie Antoinette with a detachable head, Houdini wrapped up in a straight jacket, Van Gogh with a bandage over his ear, and many more –>

I myself am the proud owner of both a Jane Austen and a DaVinci figurine, and they sit on my bookshelf, keeping each other company whilst I am away, or so I like to think…

But, for the purposes of this blog, I would like to introduce you to the action figure of none other than Rosie the Riveter.  That’s right — our very own pseudo-mascot, doll-size — the perfect desk-top inspiration!

She comes with her very own spring-action rivet gun and a lunchbox, just like in the original Norman Rockwell painting.  Plus, she’s posable!

Original Caption: Line Up of Some of Women Welders Including The Women’s Welding Champion of Ingalls [Shipbuilding Corp., Pascagoula, Ms]., 1943

U.S. National Archives’ Local Identifier: 86-WWT-85-35

Photographer: Beebe, Spencer

Subjects:
World War, 1939-1945
Labor
Women

Persistent URL: http://arcweb.archives.gov/arc/action/ExternalIdSearch?id=522890

Just caught this article over on the NY Times about a Rosie.   The thing that shocked me, its been 60 years!  Not that I was alive then, but I guess because Rosie the Riveter, the icon, is still so prevalent, it seems it can’t have been 60 years ago!  And let me just put a call out to all who know a Rosie the Riveter maybe now is a good time to do an interview, document their story before its too late….

60 Years Later, ‘Rosies’ Have Their Day

By ASHLEY SOUTHALL

Nearly 60 years later, Garnet Kozielec still marvels at the journey that took her from a job wrapping porcelain dishes to doing so-called “man’s work” making bombers and fighter jets and from her home in West Virginia to Michigan and then California.

CONTINUE READING AT THE NY TIMES –>

AND if you need help conducting an interview, check out the StoryCorps National Day of Listening Campaign (its set for November 27, the day after Thanksgiving when all your relatives will be gathered together– what better opportunity). On the site you’ll find a Do-It-Yourself guide and even a question generator…

In grade school, we were told to make a list of rocks and their degrees of hardness.  Talc was soft, diamonds were hard, and quartz was somewhere in the middle.  Then we had to compare them, almost in a rock-paper-scissors way.  ”Diamonds cut quartz.  Quartz cuts talc.”  And so on…

If you had asked my nine-year-old self if water fit in anywhere on that list, I would have said no.  And probably stuck my tongue out at you.  However, that nine year old self would have been wrong.

Water does fit in on that, list, and fairly high up as well, if only worked with properly.  Water-jet cutting is a fairly new technology and something that still astounds me, even though I’m not nine anymore.

Water can now cut through almost anything — titanium, marble, glass… — although abrasives will be needed to cut through the harder materials.

Cutting more than metal with a waterjet

Glass, stone, rubber are some of the possibilities

By Mike Burns and Dan Davis
December 15, 2008

With waterjet cutting equipment, shops are no longer limited to the world of metal fabrications. They can search for new business in areas that were once considered unrealistic.

Simply put, a waterjet is capable of cutting almost any 2-D material, usually up to 6 to 12 inches thick, but thicker materials are possible if the operator goes slow enough. The waterjet’s small-diameter cutting stream—approximately 0.040 in. to 0.050 in.—allows it to produce tight corners with very high tolerances.

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Do you remember the story of Flashdance?  Well, of course we all do.  Welder by day, “aspiring” dancer by night.  Wait a minute — that story sounds familiar.  In fact, it’s remarkably similar to that of the girl below — so much so, that they even share the same first name…

Dancer-welder’s life is flashback to ‘Flashdance’

19-year-old puts ballet on hold while she practices trade to pay for future

Saturday,  January 26, 2008 3:11 AM

CINCINNATI (AP) — Alexandra Harrill’s life as a dancer is reminiscent of the 1983 movie Flashdance, in which the heroine turned to welding to help support herself while she pursued her dream of becoming a professional ballerina.

Harrill, 19, has wanted to be a dancer since she put on her first pair of ballet shoes when she was 8. But she decided she needed another career that could pay the bills until she can make it as a performer.

“I need to be able to pay for myself, and get everything that I want by myself, so I needed to leave (dance) behind just for a while,” Harrill said, explaining why she chose to temporarily abandon dancing for welding.

Harrill had worked as a restaurant server while pursuing her craft. She spent three years with the Exhale Dance Tribe contemporary dance company and taught at another studio, but she found it difficult to juggle dance and work.

When her mother suggested welding as a backup career, she wasn’t enthusiastic, but she soon decided to trade her pointe shoes for steel-toed welder boots and enrolled in a three-week training course.

“I ended up being really good at it,” Harrill said. “It was pretty exciting, and I caught on pretty quickly.”

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You can read another article about Alex Harrill in Welding Magazine HERE –>

Laura Rose is a hull technician, third class, aboard the USS Ronald Reagan in the Gulf of Oman.  The job, she says, has taught her patience, maturity, and interpersonal skills, qualities that she will bring back to a career in plumbing when she returns to the states in three years.  In the meantime, she hopes to hone her welding skills onboard.

Goddard woman plumbs, welds, fights fires in Navy

BY BILL WILSON
The Wichita Eagle

Goddard native Laura Rose spent part of Labor Day thinking about how her life has changed in the past few years.

Rose, 23, a 2004 Goddard High School graduate, is a U.S. Navy petty officer specializing in plumbing, welding and firefighting on board the USS Ronald Reagan in the Gulf of Oman just off the coast of Pakistan.

In 2012, Rose plans to bring those skills back to the Wichita area to launch the career she didn’t expect as a plumber.

“I didn’t even think I’d be anywhere close to this,” Rose said Monday from the ship. “This definitely wasn’t on my list of things to do eight years ago.”

But two tours on the aircraft carrier backstopping American troops in Afghanistan have provided Rose with a career, in the U.S. Navy and when she returns home.

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Opal Moore is a living legend.  One of our country’s original “Rosies”, she helped make flares as a welder during World War II.

‘Rosie the Riveter’
Moore reminisces about working in factories during war time

POSTED: September 6, 2009
By BRETT DUNLAP

PARKERSBURG – During World War II, Opal Moore was one of many women who entered the work force to do many of the jobs essential to America’s war effort.

Photo by Brett Dunlap

The Parkersburg resident reminisced about her time as one of many women nationwide nicknamed “Rosie the Riveter” for the work they did in factories on the home front.

A number of groups have been working to collect the stories of these women to preserve the memory of what they have done.

“Thanks! Plain and Simple” is a veterans group in West Virginia that has been working to collect the stories of “Rosies” from around the state.

Moore, 87, worked as a welder helping to make flares for the U.S. Navy at the Ames shovel plant in Parkersburg in the 1940s. Having been born in Wirt County, Moore, the former Opal Wright, came to Parkersburg to find work.

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