Page 4 - HIWT Spring 2015 World of Welding

The World of Welding

Welding Shop Field Trip

As I look out into the distance, I see the town where I grew up. I fascinating, yet relaxing and this one was no exception. It was
see the memorial bell, the church in the distance as well as the empty at the time and held a certain artistic feeling to it which the
restaurants and shops I had come a custom to over the last decade. sculptures nicely complemented. The installation of the sculptures
It’s autumn now, the once green leafs that covered this little town required much teamwork, which to no surprise was rather easy to
now either wither away or turn beautiful shades of red, yellow and achieve.
brown.
However we did run into a few complications regarding power for
I’m on a school trip, to see the homeless veterans and support them. the grinders and drills. The had not turned on the outlets outside
How we do this it we make a beautiful sculpture made out of metal, and so we could not work, we asked the people inside to turn it on
we do this because of our trade. We train to be metal fabricators, but it took about 10 minutes till we got the power we needed, there
of that title alone falls many skills that involve metal. I was never were other small problems like how level it is and the distance
one for the computers of this age, but neither was I strong; however between them but no matter what we faced we took it head on, as
I did have creativity and the will to make my creations into reality. I was our way of never giving up. We ended the installation with a
love working with metal, it’s a certain art form that requires a little picture of all of us.
bit of everything including; intelligence, strength and creativity.
There have many laughs as well as many hardships during my After we finished installing we found the we had to repaint it as
training at the school, but always with the friends I called my “shop well as the time to do so. We went to Lowes to pick up the paint
mates”. as well as the brushes. On the way back we had a debate over
where we should have lunch, some said five guys, subway and
It was quite the bus ride as we saw the attractions that filled the Dairy Queen but we decided to go to papa Gino’s, chief was really
house on this Halloween day. We made a few stops along the way nice about buying meals for a few of us and it was a nice time for
there and a couple shop mates specifically were really frightened by relaxation.
some of the menacing mechanisms.
Once we got back to the shelter it was a quick job of painting it
Upon arriving we got straight to work, setting up our ladders, even though it was just a few of us doing it. We set off with job
grinders with extension cords to boot as well as the all the done and our heads held high.
wrenches, bolts and sockets. We were in the courtyard of the
veteran’s shelter where we put the sculptures side by side on the It was a nice trip back, we stopped at a gas station but only a
one of the walls of the courtyard. I had always found courtyards couple of us went in, including me. It was quite crazy coming back

Senior class making finishing touches on homeless sculpture.

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