Nick Coleman is a horseman at heart, but after this latest welding project for an AG class, who knows?  Welding just might have to come first, after all.

CHS sophomore may turn from horse training to welding

By Pete Kendall/reporter@trcle.com
February 12, 2010

It’s understandably spooky mounting a horse that’s never been ridden.

The rider can’t know exactly what the horse is going to do — smile, frown or say, “If you raise your voice to me one more time, I’ll buck you into Bosque County.”

That’s what almost happened to young horseman Nick Coleman.

“At first, I was nervous,” the Cleburne High sophomore said. “When I’d first get on a horse, I’d be holding the saddle horn. But if you do enough ground work on them, they shouldn’t buck. They might, but ground work really pays off.

“I had one last year throw me into a metal pipe fence. The guy who was helping me on the ground let go of the lead rope. My leg wasn’t all the way in the saddle. I came off and flew into a fence. The way Ron [Richmond, boss] and I do it, one of us is on the horse and the other is on the ground with the lead rope. If the horse starts bucking, the one with the lead rope pulls [the horse] around.”

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Who’s to say what jobs are “normal” for women to have and what aren’t?  So what if they’re “non-traditional”?

Once upon it was neither “normal” nor “traditional” for women to even wear pants, and look where that’s got us!  You go girls!

Looking for “non-traditional” work

Posted: Feb 17, 2010 2:42 PM PST
By Heather Sawaski

WAUSAU (WAOW) — Jobs in the trade industry took a hard hit during the economic downturn. But experts predict job creation to pick up soon, especially for workers in “non-traditional” roles.

A program at Northcentral Technical College in Wausau is designed to help get students past the stereotype. The Non-Traditional Occupations Program at NTC helps students achieve success in roles typically filled by the opposite gender.

Brenda Cichon is welding student at NTC. She enrolled in the program with her husband after they were both laid off last year.

“The government is helping us by funding us and paying for us to go back to school,” she explained. “So we were happy to come back to NTC and join a program that was good for both of us.”

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I want to steal the name of her blog.  Seriously.

This is a fantastic look into the workings of a women welder’s mind written by Wendy Welder.  Perhaps she is related to our good friend, Joe Welder??

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2010

How it all started.
Even as a little girl, I had dirt under my fingernails and grease smeared across my face. I grew up in the garage, at the shop, out in the yards with my Dad. Dad worked in tire retread and his hobby was cars, so I saw a lot of cars, a lot of trucks and a lot of men in my childhood.

Weekends were spent at the race track or at car shows. Dad raced a 1972 Nova before I was born, and I think everytime we went to the track he wished it was him out there. It wasn’t long before I wished it was me.

My first car was a Chevy Nova. I drove it everywhere, and I loved it like it was my child. But, it was my first car, and I was just learning how to take care of it and how everything worked. My parents always reminded me to check the oil and I always forgot. When the engine blew, Dad made ME replace it. (Of course he helped) And while I had always been around when he worked on cars, seeing the daylight through the hole in the block where the rod had flown through, and the whole process of the replacement, the sense of accomplishment when the car was up and running again, made me love that car even more and made me want to spend the rest of my life around cars.

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It was a fun night for me at the monthly American Welding Society — San Diego Section meeting.  This night’s topic?  Induction heating with a system unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.

Gone are the days of waiting hours and hours for your length of pipe to warm up to the right temperature –

Miller has just released the new ProHeat 35 Induction Heating System, which works by inducing heat electromagnetically, rather than via a conductor, thus saving the operator incredible amounts of time and energy.

Simply wrap the induction coils around whatever piece of metal you’re working on, and in just a few minutes, you’re ready to go!

This picture was taken looking inside the length of pipe that was being heated up by the ProHeat 35 — you can’t see it here, but that tube was glowing red hot on the inside!

And even better, when I tried touching the coils wrapped around it?
Cold as ice! This product is simply amazing!

But perhaps the best part about this whole new system is that you don’t even have to buy it! Red-D-Arc will rent out one of their machines to you for as long as you need!

In Standwood, Washington, they’ve got it a little backwards — here, the students have become the teachers.  The teens are teaching the adults how to weld!!

Stanwood students teach adults welding
By GALE FIEGE
THE DAILY HERALD

STANWOOD, Wash. — When a group of high school welding students decided to offer a class for the community, they never imagined having to turn people away.

“It was amazing to us. We had 25 people on a waiting list right off the bat,” said teacher Darryl Main, adviser for Stanwood High School’s Agricultural Mechanics Club. “The community welding course has been so well-received, we might have to run another one this spring.”

For $60, adult students get 12 hours of instruction focusing on shielded metal and gas metal arc welding. Proceeds from the class help fund the club’s field trips and contest travel expenses.

On a recent Thursday, the garage doors to Stanwood’s ag shop were flung wide open. Twenty adults in protective helmets, coveralls and heavy gloves huddled over metal pieces, torches in hand and sparks flying, while teenagers coached them one-on-one through the welding process.

“It’s great to watch the kids teaching, and the adults enjoying learning from them,” Main said. “There’s no better way to learn than to teach. You can just see the self-esteem of the kids go up. They feel empowered and that’s pretty dang cool.”

Nearly half of the adult students in the class are women.

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Welding and school spirit come together for the students of
Colorado’s Hayden School District.  Each of the schools are welding a mascot — and get this — they’re welding it for one of the other schools!

Hayden welding students design steel pieces depicting school mascots

By Jack Weinstein Sunday, January 31, 2010

Hayden — Kevin Kleckler, director of the Babson-Carpenter Career and Technical Education Center, hopes a project some of his welding students are working on will promote goodwill among the area school districts.

Hayden School District students participating in the welding program at the vocational education facility are designing and creating steel pieces, made from scrap metal, that depict the mascots of the Steamboat Springs, South Routt and Moffat County school districts.

Senior Oscar Rodriguez and junior Chris Zirkle completed Moffat County’s bulldog mascot last week. They had planned to donate the mascot to the school’s student leadership.

A student group in the welding class recently completed the Soroco ram. Another group is nearly finished with the Steamboat Springs sailor.

Rodriguez and Zirkle, having finished the bulldog, began a new project last week. On Tuesday morning, they were piecing together steel that eventually would depict the Denver Broncos logo.

When Rodriguez and Zirkle finish the Bronco in the next few weeks, it will be about 5 feet long and 3 feet tall. They’ll eventually present it to the Broncos through a contact Kleckler has with the team.

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What are you doing this Sunday? Planning on going to church?

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

It 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 am

Western 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.

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Clackamas Community College offers welding classes seven days a week.  Their most popular time slot?  The “graveyard shift”.

Welding school offers night shift to fit busy schedules

Story Published: Feb 3, 2010 at 4:30 AM PST
By Chris Parker for KVAL.com

OREGON CITY, Ore. — The sun isn’t necessary for students welding at midnight: the blinding electric arcs provide enough light at Clackamas Community College metal shop.

John Phelps and David Williams instruct welding classes during the graveyard shift, from 10 p.m. until 2 a.m., to accommodate an enrollment demand that has surged over the last year.

According to Phelps, enrollment increased 60 percent since last fall term, making it difficult for students to take welding classes during normal hours.

“Because the enrollment shot up so high, there was no other way to accommodate these needs,” Phelps said. “We already offer classes seven days a week. The only other time slot we didn’t offer was this late at night, and so we wanted to give it a try.”

At first the graveyard classes were only held two nights a week, but since being offered spring term of 2009, more students have become interested in the late night class. Now, the graveyard class is offered Monday through Thursday.

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I never thought I’d see the day. Let me repeat that – NEVER.

But the day has indeed arrived, from whence forward, a newbie welder will be able to practice welding, not the old-fashioned way, with torch and electrode, but via virtual reality.

You can thank Lincoln Electric for this new advancement in welding technology — they are the producers of the new VRTEX 360 which enables the wearer to weld via a virtual welding gun and a helmet that is equipped with monitors on the inside.

You can “virtually” weld in a welding booth, on a construction site — even on a base in the desert!

And, it has to be said, this is the greenest welding machine on the market, and it will enable students to learn faster than ever before.

Who knows — this newest welding “video game” could become so popular that instructors will have to pry the virtual torch right out of their students’ unwilling hands.

One can only hope.