Students master welding

The story by Josh Potter.

The machinery lining the concrete floors of the COT welding shop loomed with potential energy, even though most of the students had gone home for the day and the oily arms and mechanical rudders were still.

Chris Brown watched classmate Seth Nemitz wheel his son around in a wagon made cozier with blankets and pillows.

Nemitz likes to remind people that the wagon — a paragon of wholesome, childish fun — was once a skeletal frame of metal. Before that, lines on a blueprint.

Most things start out that way, he said.

But it was Nemitz’s ability to fuse form with function, using electrodes to melt two pieces of metal together and form the frame for a child’s wagon, which won him first place in the James F. Lincoln Arc Welding Foundation welding competition.

The foundation has been rewarding welding students for their projects since 1936. It was originally a straightforward essay contest, in which students would submit essays on technical processes. Now, students must submit an essay describing one of their projects, along with blueprints and a photo of it.

“Can they read that paper along with the blueprints and build this?” Nemitz asked.

The $1,000 and the welder the Foundation gave Nemitz proves that, in his case, the Foundation could figure out how he went from blueprint to completed wagon.

“You look around you and there’s not much not made out of metal,” Nemitz says.

But not everything is simple, steel framework. In the best metal work, you can’t even tell where the joints were connected. That’s what makes the difference between an I-beam that holds a building up and a sleek backyard barbeque.

That was Brown’s project.

“I just wanted a barbeque smoker, so I made one,” Brown said.

The Foundation gave Brown $75 for his merit award.

Brown wore a burnt, oil-stained work jacket and heavy-duty work boots, but spoke like a Ph.D.

“I looked at how the metal would react to the embers,” he says. “The heat after a while would corrode it. You have to think about heat distribution around the whole grill.”

He goes on to talk about the difference between stitch welding and flux core, and that stick welding is pretty much the same as spot welding — or was it arc welding? Either way, the blueprint Nemitz worked from looked nothing like a wagon.
He pointed to a few logarithmic lines scattered on the piece of paper and explained exactly what part of the wagon they represent.

“This is the wheel hub assembly,” he said.

“A monkey can squeeze a trigger, but you have to learn to weld,” said welding instructor Mark Raymond.

Students in the welding program at the COT can spend up to eight hours in classes, plus time in the shop to finish up projects.

“You’re learning as you’re going,” Brown said. “It’s just like a job.”

Brown and his classmates show up to the COT building by 6:45 a.m. to start their AutoCAD class where they learn how to use 3D design software. Then they head off to machining, welding, lunch and more welding.

It’s all worth it, though, Brown said.

“Just being in a shop,” he said. “I can’t do anything else, really, but with my hands. I love it.”

Loving the work was the only way Nemitz said it was possible to spend nearly 50 hours of work building his wagon.

About a year ago, Nemitz and his son were picking pumpkins with a rickety old wagon when he was inspired to build his project wagon, which converts to a sled with ski attachments.

“My son, he’s the whole reason behind it,” Nemitz says.

So, since last fall up until the beginning of this semester, Nemitz, Brown and other COT students worked on their projects to compete in the national competition.

The wagon looks like something out of a cheery Norman Rockwell paining – if Norman Rockwell knew anything about steel reinforcements, studded wheels and all-terrain capabilities. It’s something Calvin and Hobbes could have thought up in their most creative fantasies.

It’s a scientific process turning two sheets of metal into a children’s all-terrain transport vehicle. It’s an artistic process to make metal meet a picky child’s specifications.

Welding, Raymond said, is a little bit of both.

“I think most of it’s Zen, getting lost in the focus,” he said.