Metal Church
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010What are you doing this Sunday? Planning on going to church?
How about Metal Church, with your favorite preacher, Jesse James?!?
Archive for the ‘Just for Fun’ Category
Student Bike Build
Monday, March 1st, 2010It must be a dream come true for students at the Western Dakota Technical Institute. I mean, since when do you get to custom build a motorcycle during class, and get credit for it?!?
WDTI students gear up for bike build
Barbara Soderlin Journal staff
Posted: Thursday, January 28, 2010 9:15 amWestern Dakota Technical Institute welding students will be able to add “custom motorcycle builder” to their resumes, thanks to a program announced Wednesday.
A bike, built by a team of WDTI students working under custom builder Michael Prugh of Prugh Design in Black Hawk, will be auctioned at the annual Sturgis motorcycle rally Legends Ride this summer.
“I don’t know bikes, but I’m hoping to learn,” said welding student Don Pyn, a custom hot rod enthusiast. “It’s along the line of what I want to get into when I’m done with school.”
Rod Woodruff, owner of the Buffalo Chip campground, which created the charity ride two years ago, announced the program in the technical college’s welding lab surrounded by welding students.
He said the partnership, called the 2k10 Challenge, would help develop a workforce skilled in motorcycle building, which would benefit the growing number of bike builders in the Black Hills.
DIY Anonymous
Monday, February 8th, 2010How many of you all actually read the instructions upon opening a complicated put-it-together project? Anyone at all? I know I don’t…
And how many of you will still be in that same spot, 5 hours later, struggling to fit peg E into hole F with little or no success? You know, with the family members standing around going, “You need some help with that?”
Unsurprisingly, I’ve done that as well…
But by and large, the spirit of DIY is actually dwindling amongst Americans nowadays. We don’t often build, we don’t do repairs, and I think, really, we just don’t want to work at it much anymore.
What do you think?
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 SentinelMILWAUKEE — 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.
A New Kind of Suit
Friday, February 5th, 2010I’d like to thank Craig Swanson for the following cartoon, which has to be one of the best ones on welding I’ve yet to find:
VW Bug + Jet Engine = ???
Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010I got this forwarded to me in an email and immediately knew that we had to post this here on Carmen!
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.
Very Merry Welding
Monday, February 1st, 2010Now that Christmas is long since past, it’s the perfect time for planning ahead and buying this coming year’s Christmas cards!
And what better cards could you possibly find than those of Santa Clause doing what he does best — welding? That’s right, the jolly ol’ fellow is takin’ off some time to do some long-needed repairs around town.
I’m sure this is the best card I’ve seen of its kind — of which there are very few — and I’m sure you’ll join me in thanking Oliver Chipping for creating this marvelous card!
Respect the Crawfish!
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010I’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.
Join Joe Welder and Ron Covell
Monday, January 25th, 2010Are you free the 20th or 21st of February?
Come join Jim Watson, aka Joe Welder, and Ron Covell of Covell Creative Metalworking at Hot Rods & Custom Stuff in Escondido, CA for Covell’s Beginning and Advanced Steel Workshops!
Ron is one of the preeminent fabricators in the custom automotive industry and has been a good friend to us here at Arc-Zone.com!
You can head over to our webstore to check out a few of his welding DVDs.
If you don’t live in Southern California or can’t make it on this particular weekend, you can head over to Ron’s website and check out a complete list of his workshops in the upcoming year.
Who knows – he just might be coming to your neck of the woods soon!
To Weld a Pachyderm
Friday, January 22nd, 2010In 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 ColumnistThe 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.
As Good as the Boys
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010Did you know what you wanted to do for a career when you were a freshman in high school? I didn’t! I don’t really know anyone who did — isn’t that what college is for?
Lyndsi Tingle did. She wanted to be a welder, and she and her teachers agree — she’s on the right track to succeed.
Frankfort Face: She makes sparks fly
By Katheran Wasson
Lyndsi Tingle wore men’s welding gloves for three years before she realized they made smaller pairs for women.
The 17-year-old Western Hills High School senior welds, cuts and bends metal alongside the boys at Franklin County Career and Technical Center.
She spends four hours a day in tan Carhartt overalls and a T-shirt, safety goggles propped on her blonde head.
“Most of the guys kind of look at me as mama,” she said, sitting in the workshop before winter break.
“If something needs to be done, they know that I’m going to be on them to do it.”
Lyndsi has known since freshman year that she wanted to make a career out of welding.
After graduation, she and five of her classmates will head to Tulsa Welding School in Jacksonville, Fla., to study the craft.
She hopes to eventually become an inspector, checking the welds on bridges, power plants and pipes to make sure they are secure.
