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!

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It’s midnight at a community college in Oregon.  The classroom is brightly lit, and the students are up and about and… welding?

Thanks to a new series of “graveyard” welding classes, this has become a regular feature of several area colleges.

In the Midnight Hour

By David Moltz
December 9, 2009

Midnight classes, once a quirky scheduling option available at only a few institutions, are gaining currency at a growing number of community colleges as student demand for specific courses increases and available classroom space for those courses decreases.

Photo: Carl Graham / Clackamas Community College

Though it is unclear which institutions pioneered the idea, Clackamas Community College, in Oregon, began offering what became known as “graveyard welding classes,” lasting from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m., two nights a week last spring.

The classes were so popular that the college expanded them to four nights a week this fall, and students can now take five different welding courses during the “graveyard shift,” ranging from an introductory section to those focusing on specialized projects.

John Phelps, one of two adjunct welding instructors who lead the late-night courses, said the college’s experiment with these sections was a matter of necessity.

Even with some welding sections available on the weekends, he said, the college reached its capacity for these courses last fall and was forced to turn away a number of students.

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Students at Norwood District High School are getting into the Christmas spirit by, you guessed it, welding.  This year, the senior class is helping out by manufacturing 22 metal stars that will decorate their town during this holiday season.

NDHS students will make Christmas brighter this year

Posted By Sue Dickens for The Community Press

Norwood – Stars will be shining a little bit brighter over Hastings this Christmas thanks to the talent and hard work of students in the manufacturing program at Norwood District High School (NDHS).

“We can’t thank them enough,” said Stephen Roddy, chair of the Hastings Revitalization Association(HRA), the organization that asked for the school’s help on the project.

For the Grade 12 students it’s all about giving back to their community and testing their metal so to speak as they weld and solder frames for 22 stars that will be placed on hydro poles in Hastings just in time for the holiday season.

“You couldn’t ask for better quality. I’ve been to the school and I am amazed at the workmanship of these students. And their teacher Tim Ellis has been a guiding light in all of this,” Roddy said.

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What are you welding for the holidays?  Share your ideas and pictures with us!

I defy you not to laugh at this video.  Seriously.  This is a short clip about recruiting women to work during WWII from a 1943 propaganda film entitled ”Manpower”.  Some of my favorite quotes were:

“Employers find that women can do many jobs as well as men.  Some jobs, better.”

and

“They discover that factory work is usually no more difficult than housework.”

Take it with a grain of salt, but remember, it just goes to show you how far we have come in the past 60 years!

Robotic welding may be an automated process, but every machine still needs an operator, especially if the “automated” machine needs its parameters to be set.

Robotic pipe welding with a human touch

Keeping the operator involved in the act of automating pipe welding

By Carl Heinrich
September 1, 2009

Automation has emerged as an alternative to manual welding, but these robotic and fixed automation technologies tend to work for specific applications, rather than general pipe fabricating. Automation coupled with the flexibility of a human operator during the welding process, however, represents a new alternative for those companies looking to squeeze more productivity out of the pipe fabricating process.

When it comes to welding pipe, a welder has to be highly skilled and prepared for many variables. No two jobs are exactly alike, even when they are somewhat similar.

The welder has to be skilled enough to perform code-quality, multiple-pass welding and be experienced enough to recognize when the weld joint will require modifications in technique and parameters to achieve success. In some instances, the welder has to be strong enough to work in unusual positions over large and awkward part configurations and be flexible enough to accommodate inconsistent fit-ups and endless varieties of fittings.

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Welding can be punny.  It can.  And just to prove it to you all, I have my handy-dandy-back-pocket-article right here, and it’s all about stud welding.  Just take a look at that title.  Yeah, I told you.  Punny.

Small studs, big impact

Change in stud welding material saves power plant millions

By Chris Hsu

September 1, 2009

Stud welding, an often-overlooked process, can have a significant effect on the life-cycle cost of a product.

Stud welding can be performed with a hand tool that is brought to the material. Photo courtesy of Nelson Stud Welding.

In coal-fired power plants, so much relies on the little things. Smooth, cylindrical studs 3/8 inch in diameter by ¾ in. long are placed in furnaces operating at 1,600 degrees F or more. The studs transfer heat from the hot side (the furnace) into the boiler tube.

A refractory coating, which protects the tubes from erosion, is applied over the studs. As the stud wears, so does the refractory coating. At some point the studs become so short that the furnace has to be shut down, the studs rewelded, and the refractory coating reapplied.

For decades plants have used 430 stainless steel studs, a material that has to be replaced about every 12 months. This can be an expensive endeavor, especially if unplanned.

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That article was “such a stud”.  Just kidding – I don’t think that was grammatically correct.  So, what do you think – stud welding – stud or a dud?

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!

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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The Crucible.  It’s not just a play by Arthur Miller –

The Crucible is an organization based out of Oakland, Ca that that trains people in the industrial and fine arts.

Ever wanted to learn how to weld?  Come to the Crucible.  How about blacksmithing?  Fire eating?  Enameling?  They’ve thought of everything!

My favorite is the Build Your Own Barbecue (BYOB) class.  You get to weld your own monster BBQ out of old scrap metal!

So, whilst I’m planning my move up to to Oakland (just kidding — although…), you too can get to know the Crucible with this video taken of a few of their welding instructors doing their thing at the Bay Area’s Maker Faire.