Although this is not related to welding in the least (unless some of these girlz are riding a custom chopper!) a friend of mine is a member of the San Diego Sol Sisters motorcycle club and they’re doing this ride for charity:

On June 21st, 10 women from San Diego will be firing up their motorcycles to make a 15-day trip through 12 states. Our main destination is Graceland and we plan to arrive on 6/25/08 for a 2-day stay. We will have a documentary filmmaker along for the ride, as this trip is about so much more than just getting to Graceland. It’s about our journey as women, a celebration of why we ride, and an homage to the rebels of yesteryear who saw the open road as an escape, a challenge, and a friend. The documentary will be submitted to the Sundance Film Festival in October 2008 for their 2009 season.

When we reach Memphis, we’ll be stopping at Presley Place, a homeless shelter which is supported by Lisa Marie Presley and the Elvis Presley Foundation. While the dozens of parents at the shelter attend a Life Skills class, we’ll be babysitting their children - taking photos on the motorcycles, providing them with biker toys and leading a cooking class on “How to Make a Biker Meal.”

READ MORE ONLINE–>

And if you see them on the road, wish them a safe journey!

A common thread among many women welders is that they were first introduced to welding by a man in their lives. Laura Knight is no exception. “I started welding copper water lines with a plumber and then married an air conditioning technician who welds steel…. and I learned wire feed welding from him,” she says.

Rather than welding as a trade, Laura moved into a more creative endeavor with her new found skill, working with metal to create “paintings” and sculptures. With a painter for a father and a mother who works in jewelry, it was a natural move. “Artistic welding is my career now,” she says, and with over 300 paintings sold has chosen her career well.

She first tried to learn welding when she was in her twenties but found the process frustrating and the helmets uncomfortable. She couldn’t do the designs that she wanted and soon gave up. “I had to wait until the technology caught up with me,” she says, referring to the auto-darkening helmets.

Ideas come to Laura as full-scale, full-color, three-dimensional pictures in her head. She then draws her idea, “Then it’s out to my outdoors-under-the-awning-workshop to put it all together.”

(more…)

We’re glad someone noticed. It’s about time!

As you know I’ve been on the lookout for women welders to interview (more coming later this week) but in the meantime, I found out about this new line of women’s welding wear. Isn’t it amazing how sometimes things just all fall in line?

Out here in California we’d say something like “Must be Mercury is no longer in retrograde…”

Introducing AngelFire™ by the experts at Revco®

Santa Fe Springs, CA – Women are different… Revco noticed. That’s why Revco Industries has launched AngelFire, an innovative series of premium welding protection designed exclusively for women. Finally, women can break free from male attire and work more safely in clothes tailored to fit a woman’s body. No more clumsy gloves. No more oversized jackets. No more sparks down the collar.

AngelFire, launching under the recently released BSX line, features a warm chocolate brown color and smaller sizes to appeal directly to women. Revco predicts this fashionable line of welding products will invigorate enthusiasm among woman welders who, up until now, have been limited to wearing bulky jackets made to fit men.

“Women had no other choice at all. Being a TIG welder, you don’t even bother wearing a jacket because you’d rather be comfortable at work and ruin your own clothing than deal with a bulky man’s welding jacket. It’s a nightmare,” says Pamela Lesemann, a 15 year welder and welding instructor. But now there is the new AngelFire jacket. Lesemann raves, “I love it; I think it’s great. It’s soft, comfortable and it fits. Finally, something different.”

(more…)

I just love the  new site.  It’s so easy for us to update, add new product, and hopefully for our customers it will be easier as well.  Please let us know if there is something on the site that you don’t see….  that you want…   or information that would help you make the right buying decision.

Carlsbad, Calif., —Arc-Zone.com® Inc., the first internet-only company to sell welding and cutting accessories online, launches its new web superstore. The new store carries more products than before, and includes features that make shopping online even easier.

· Detailed photos and custom graphics for easy navigation

· Secure checkout to pay with credit card, PayPal or with your pre-approved Arc-Zone.com account or store credit. Or, choose Google Checkout.

· Easy Sign-In for regular shoppers– save your contact information and multiple shipping addresses, and track your order status.

· Real Time domestic and international shipping quotes from UPS, DHL, FedEx and the US Postal Service.

· Live Chat with customer service representatives from technical sales, shipping and even accounting.

Behind-the-scenes the new Arc-Zone.com store offers many features so that Arc-Zone can continue providing quality products, superior technical consultation and unsurpassed service and support.

The streamlined content management system allows product to be added easily. “Welding is such a diverse industry,” says Jim Watson, Arc-Zone.com’s president and founder. “Discovering new products that improve weld quality, lower costs or minimize variables is one of the things I enjoy most about this business. Now once I’ve identified a high-quality, reliable source we’ll be able to get these products to the market quickly.”

Another feature that will benefit Arc-Zone’s online shoppers is that account managers can add store credit to a customer’s account or offer special pricing such as in the case of a school, distributor or reseller.

The entire store was developed using Zen Cart, by Arc-Zone’s web developer Jon Wade. “Zen Cart is a well supported open source e-commerce solution with a diverse user / developer community that will allow us to continually modify the store to best serve our customers,” says Wade.

Founded in June 1998, Arc-Zone delivers proprietary, brand name and OEM replacement parts and accessories for GMAW, GTAW and Plasma Arc Welding and Cutting applications to customers worldwide.

For more information, visit the Arc-Zone.com web site at www.arc-zone.com, call 800. 944.2243 (Tollfree US) or 1.760.931.1500 (worldwide)

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One of my favorite songs is the one that Kermit The Frog sang on the Muppets show:

It’s not that easy being green;
Having to spend each day the color of the leaves.
When I think it could be nicer being red, or
yellow or gold-
or something much more colorful like that.
It’s not easy being green.

–more–

You may not think a company like Arc-Zone.com, a welding supplier, would be environmentally conscious, but we are. Not in a big splashy way, but it’s part of our corporate culture. Maybe its because we’re a California company, or maybe its because our company founder Jim Watson has really taken the lead in that area of our business.

Jim doesn’t like to brag, but he’s a pretty cool guy. And, he backs up his beliefs with action.

Take this environmental thing… at Arc-Zone we take our paper “trash” and turn it into packing materials. Sure, sometimes we use styrofoam popcorn, but that comes from the Salon where Jim’s wife Gina works. Instead of throwing it away, Gina brings it home, and Jim brings it to the office.

And even though Carlsbad does not require– or even offer– recycling for businesses, we recycle. Jim takes all the recycling home and puts in his curbside bin.

These are small things, and Jim doesn’t like to brag about it, but we did convince him to let us make a video and submit it to Current TV. Look for that video on this blog soon. Or check out JoeWelder.com.

One of the cool things about working at Arc-Zone is the fact that Jim Watson, aka Joe Welder™, knows a lot about cars, and about the racing history in Southern California, having participated in a lot of it himself!

Makes me interested in motorsports!

So yesterday, I mention to Jim that the TLC channel will be premiering ANOTHER show which will feature metal fabrication… “Hard Shine” filmed out at So-Cal Speed, and Jim’s all like, “Oh yeah, Jimmy Shine. Great shop…”

and I’m left shaking my head, thinking Does Jim know about everyone in the welding world? It sure seems like it sometimes. It IS a small world, and Jim’s been around motorsports and metal since he was kid....

The show will premiere at 10 pm this July 12 on TLC channel (cable). Jim and I will both be watching so expect some commentary and a review. I’m curious to know if the guys at So-Cal Speed are as lax with safety as the guys are on American Choppers…. we’re sure to see some awesome hotrods.

And maybe I’ll even apply for the next round of Shine… I’m excited that they have two women on the show this time around! an artist named Jezebelle and Sarah, a hot rod junkie.

OK, it’s a stretch to connect Arc-Zone.com to the world’s biggest ferris wheel, but we do have the absolute coolest customers doing the most interesting projects.

One of our newest customers is Robert Bosch, LLC.

Bosch was recently awarded a contract to power the 682-foot high ferris wheel that is being built in Beijing China in time for the 2008 Olympics!

Since the debut of the Ferris Wheel in 1893 at the Chicago World’s Fair, these engineering marvels have been getting larger and larger. But the monster wheel now on the drawing boards at the Great Wheel Corp. in China is in a league of its own, with a diameter of more than two football fields. READ ALL ABOUT IT…

Now it would be awesome if I could tell you that Arc-Zone.com was supplying all the welding accessories needed to put together that ferris wheel, but I can’t. I still think it’s and incredible project, and an awesome engineering feat, and I’m sure there’s some impressive welding that is going on in the construction.

What projects are you working on?