I’ve heard of method actors delving deeply into a part, but method welders?  Could be!  While Joseph Jilbert was welding his latest sculpture, a 16 foot tall crawfish, he ate and studied the crustacean for two weeks straight as preparation!

Boiled, fried or welded

By Jeff Moore • For the Daily World • January 3, 2010

When roving artist Joseph Jilbert landed in the Crawfish Capital of the World, he found an obvious subject for his larger-than-life sculptures.

Jilbert recently unveiled the product of that inspiration —
a 16-foot crawfish made of recycled scrap metal.

Dubbed Le Clarkii, for the crawfish’s scientific name, Procambrus Clarkii, the towering decapod is currently on display at Louisiana Purchases in Breaux Bridge.

Jilbert said the underbelly of the crawfish was made from old tractor parts, while the shell is made of parts from an old sugar-cane factory. The sculpture weighs in at a hefty 4,500 pounds.

“It’s more intense than any sculpture I’ve ever done,” said Jilbert, who ate and studied crawfish for two weeks straight while creating the sculpture. “I’ve gained a lot of respect for crawfish.”

Jilbert plans to eventually sell the crawfish and has several potential buyers lined up.

His next creation? A 45-foot version of the piece to be displayed at the Breaux Bridge exit of Interstate 10.

CONTINUE READING ONLINE ->

In college, if you major in English, you get to write a paper.  A drama major will act in a play.  And a welding major?

Well, he might just get to weld an elephant…

Sculpted elephant shows tradesman’s artistic flair

By Kristi O’Harran
Herald Columnist

The circus is coming to Camano Island.

Well, not the whole ring and tent, just a fanciful retired elephant.

James R. Shields III, who grew up on the island, fabricated the pachyderm at Everett Community College.

She’s a beauty — in metal.

“Elly started with a three-way, 4-inch pipe fitting that looked like the beginnings of a trunk, and grew into a partial head when the body showed up,” Shields said.

The body is a working air compressor tank from the 1940s that was bound for the college scrap pile.

From there, pipe fittings made the legs, thanks, Shields said, to Rick Brydges, who teaches pipefitting. Fittings were also welded to make the legs and trunk.

The spine and tail are fashioned from rebar.

“I got to use 350 pounds of scrap welding wire, and spent more than 200 hours, to make Elly,” he said. “She will be on display at Freedom Park at Terry’s Corner on Camano Island.”

Elly has bright eyes, tusks and a trumpeting trunk on a wrinkled body that truly looks like elephant hide.

Children can climb aboard when they go on safari.

CONTINUE READING ONLINE ->

It appears that wood and plain-old steel just aren’t cutting it any more.  No, for furniture with built-in character, try making it out of your old rusted-out cars!

Furniture from Old Car Parts? Yep.

By Jaime Derringer
Dec 8th 2009

Joel Hester’s love affair with old and vintage metals began two years ago.

A client brought him a small metal beer sign that he wanted to use as a top for a coffee table. Joel, who lives in Dallas, Texas, knew a little something about making furniture from unexpected materials; he was already welding steel into custom bed frames.

So he made the coffee table — and then got an idea. Why not start a business? He’s since developed a passion for making custom furniture out of old cars. He calls it The Weld House.

But why cars? Well, when he received the client’s beer sign, he wondered how he could make it work since the sign wasn’t large enough to wrap the top of the table for a smooth, seamless surface.

So, after over a month of struggling with the process, Joel ended up wandering through a junk yard looking for scrap metal that might work with the beer sign.

“I turned a corner and saw an old Cadillac,” he says. “Its large trunk was the coolest mixture of color and patterns. I knew I could skin the metal off the structure of the trunk and use it to wrap the top of the table.”

Joel instantly forgot about the beer sign and called his client proposing a new, different idea of how to create the table: an old car!

CONTINUE READING ONLINE ->

Here at Arc-Zone.com, we love to hear about people recycling their old scrap metal – saving the environment, doing some welding, and most of all – making art!  In Silver City, New Mexico, Stuart Engal of Custom Steelworks is recycling old lightposts.  With a little ingenuity, they are going to become a brand new welcome arch spanning the entrance of Silver City’s historic downtown center.

New gateway to visit visitors to downtown Silver City

By Christine Steele Sun-News Bureau Chief

Posted: 07/31/2009 01:00:00 AM MDT

A local business owner is helping to create a custom-designed archway that will span Broadway and welcome visitors to historic downtown Silver City as part of a long-awaited Silver City MainStreet program.

Tommy Johnson, of Custom Steelworks, 202 Bullard St., welds steel plates joining four recycled Silver City lamp posts... (Sun-News photo by Christine Steele)

Custom Steelworks, 202 S. Bullard St., a local metal fabrication business owned by Stuart Egnal, is fabricating the nearly 20-foot columns that will support a steel sign that will say “Downtown Silver City.”

The Downtown Gateway Arch will be installed on Broadway, on the east end of the bridge near Hudson Street. The project is estimated to cost $100,000, including in-kind   and donated services and materials.

Egnal and employee Tommy Johnson have been working for several weeks on the project, welding together four steel columns that had previously been downtown lightposts. The lightposts date back to 1949. The city had been stockpiling them to use in the project, Egnal said.

CONTINUE READING ONLINE ->

Northland Pioneer College in Arizona had a problem – a good problem.  More students were enrolling in their practical welding classes than ever before, but that also meant a greater output of welding fumes than the school’s homemade ventilation system could put up with.  More kids?  Ditch the fumes please!

Fumes + Weld students = Bad news

Vocational school cleans up air for thriving weld program
March 14, 2009

A welding program in northeastern Arizona, looking to improve the air quality in its welding lab, replaced its fume extraction equipment.

Located in the mountains of northeastern Arizona, Northland Pioneer College provides real-life experiences to high school juniors and seniors in 11 area school districts through its dual enrollment program. In conjunction with Northern Arizona Vocational Institute of Technology (NAVIT), a partner institution, NPC/NAVIT offers courses ranging from cosmetology to welding.

One of the most popular classes at NPC/NAVIT is the welding applications program, which provides students with the skills necessary to become National Center for Construction Education and Research- (NCCER) and American Welding Society- (AWS) certified welders. Led by weld instructor Curtis Casey, NPC/NAVIT’s weld program has taken off, expanding to facilities in Holbrook and St. Johns, and attracting high school, charter school, home-schooled, and college students, as well as tradesmen and hobbyist welders.

“We were the first and are still the only AWS-endorsed educational and testing facility in northeastern Arizona,” Casey said.

CONTINUE READING ONLINE ->

In the past couple of years, companies have come up with green-friendly everythings.  Green-friendly notebooks, paper, pencils, cars, laptops, dishwasher detergent, window cleaner, you name it!  (I’m waiting for them to come up with green trees in a couple of years…)

The point is, we have “green”ed our products, but we have yet to “green” our energy!  Personally, I think we’re going about this a bit backwards, don’t you?

‘Greenergy’—the Next Big Thing

Renewable energy generation renews market, savings opportunities

By Kate Bachman, Editor March 10, 2009

Unless you have been living like a “Lost” survivor or studying stalagmites up close, you’ve witnessed the explosion of green energy generation—”greenergy”—poised to make the dot.com craze look like a blip in comparison.

Harnessing the power of the earth, water, sun, and sky is not new, of course. In fact, some applications date back hundreds, even thousands, of years—think solar tile baking ovens and merchant sail ships. Hydroelectricity is currently the leading renewable-energy source to generate electricity in the U.S. Windmills have been around long enough to be the nostalgic symbol of Holland and the shape of tasty cookies.

CONTINUE READING ONLINE ->

To see a bit about Arc-Zone’s green efforts, have a look at this video about our company–>