Today is the start of the Grand National Roadster Show in Pomona, California.  This weekend, Jim Watson, aka Joe Welder, will be joining more than 40,000 other hot rod aficionados for a weekend of cars, cars, and more cars!

But Jim has a bit more on his mind — he just learned that one Glen Dennee has bought his Uncle Ben’s old racing car and is working on restoring it!
He’ll get a chance to meet up with Glen during the show and and discuss how best to go about restoring Farmer Ben’s V8 60  Midget!

The Grand National Roadster Show
January 29 – 31, 2010

GNRS Supports Haiti Relief

Come to the 2010 Kragen O’Reilly Grand National Roadster Show this weekend and support the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund! We are donating proceeds from the sales of GNRS programs to this fund, and as this year’s theme is “Mardi Gras,” we’ll be having a good time handing out Mardi Gras beads to showgoers in exchange for small donations. Make a difference – come on out and join 40,000 other hot rodders for Haiti!

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Are you free the 20th or 21st of February?

Come join Jim Watson, aka Joe Welder, and Ron Covell of Covell Creative Metalworking at Hot Rods & Custom Stuff in Escondido, CA for Covell’s Beginning and Advanced Steel Workshops!

Ron is one of the preeminent fabricators in the custom automotive industry and has been a good friend to us here at Arc-Zone.com!

You can head over to our webstore to check out a few of his welding DVDs.

If you don’t live in Southern California or can’t make it on this particular weekend, you can head over to Ron’s website and check out a complete list of his workshops in the upcoming year.

Who knows – he just might be coming to your neck of the woods soon!

San Diegans are proud of their local Plumbers and Pipefitters union which has taken on the task of securing jobs for marines being discharged from the base in Camp Pendleton — nearly 750 leave each month.

They are currently offering free accelerated classes in welding to 16 marines at a time, in the hopes that this will provide them with a lasting career upon leaving.

Local Union Hoping To Spark Welding Careers For Former Marines
BY KATIE ORR
December 11, 2009

A local union is offering men and woman leaving the Marine Corps a chance to learn how to become welders.

Organizers are hoping the program might spark some careers.

San Diego’s Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 230 is already into the fourth class of its Veterans in Piping program.

The union is offering Camp Pendleton Marines who are about to be discharged the chance to take part in a free accelerated welding program.

Union Organizer Gary Sallis said many Marines don’t know what they’re going to do when they leave the military.

“Right now 750 Marines a month are leaving the Marines at Camp Pendleton,” Sallis said.

“We’re taking 16 of them every month as we can to try to train them to be welders. And this way, when they get all done, they have a career when they leave the military.”

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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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My first motorcycle was a Mini Bike – a Taco 44 kit that my neighbor and his dad decided was too much of a hassle to build. I traded my electric guitar for it.

My dad and I worked together to collect all the parts needed to build it.

Centrifigal chain drive clutches were popular then but a bit unreliable and noisy, so we engineered a belt drive system with a double pulley jackshaft, and chain drive to the rear sproket.

It was connected to a variable speed clutch, which was installed on a polished and chromed out, performance tuned Briggs & Stratton 5HP engine complete with a Tecumseh down draft carburator and straight pipe exhaust!

We turned the flywheel all the way down to the magnets, milled the head and made our own copper head gasket, as the OEM one was a thick layered sandwich design.

My dad organized a trip to Tijuana Mexico to have our 1969 Dodge Dart reupolstered. I invited two of my grade school buddies, Steve Maxwell and Eddie Fagg from Vista de Valle Elementry School in Claremont CA. Each of us brought our mini bike seats to have them reskined with custom material, button-tucked and finished off with some nice edge piping. The last thing we did before painting the frame gloss black was to redesigned the friction rear brake and custom foot pegs, which we had heliarc welded at Foothill Welding in Claremont, California.

When we picked up the parts from the shop, I was intrigued by the heliarc welds the guy had laid down, so I asked him a couple of questions, and he showed me how to make a few myself!

My friends thought it was all so cool – the bike – the welding. Before long, they had started calling me “Joe Welder”, and I guess it stuck !

I had a lot of fun on that old bike – it was the first time I really learned about engine modifications.

One night my Dad came home and saw me doing a trophy run down the alley behind the workshop. He said there was a long white flame streaming from the exhaust and it smelled like it was burning up.

When I explained how I had added some nitro to the high-octane AvGas, he knew I was ready to move up to a real motorcyle.

The critters in my garden aren’t made of metal, don’t stand perfectly still, and they certainly don’t have a four-foot wing spans.

Jerry Brooks’ critters do.

In his garden, flowers don’t grow; they rust.  Birds don’t cheep — if anything, they squeak as the wind brushes past.  His garden is frozen in time, and all because of a welding torch.

A Metal Menagerie

Blossoms, birds and bugs for the ages

by Pamela Kleibrink Thompson

On a bluff overlooking a tree-studded golf course in Wilder, Idaho, is a rough corrugated work shed where scrap iron and outdated tools are reshaped, welded and transformed into timeless works of art. The artist whose imagination resuscitates the rusty, beautifies the broken and distinguishes the discarded is sculptor Jerry Brooks.

In Brooks’ world, a sunflower blooms eternally with metal petals and leaves welded on wiry stems. A quartet of birds reveals personalities reminiscent of animated cartoons and looks ready to take flight or do the chicken dance. A shovel blade forms the body of a rara avis. Teeth from two rakes become outstretched wings. A giant dragonfly with wings of burnished copper-colored metal soars into the sky.

Dragonflies are not an uncommon sight at Boise’s Parkcenter Pond, but Brooks’ 40-pound metal behemoth that welcomes patrons to the restaurant Barbacoa always draws attention.

“When I see a piece of rusted metal or parts of machinery that have been bent and worn by time and the elements, I sometimes see a picture in my mind of what they could become—how they could become pieces of art,” Brooks says.

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