Welding Tips and Tricks

WTFH here, Welding Teacher From Hell not What The #^%$ Harold. A student gave me that name some years ago drew a picture of me with horns and everything! Anyway everybody likes pictures right? Well I though I post picture of the Laboratory of the Damned. I teach welding to high school juniors and seniors. Program enrollment is capped at 21 for each class and I currently have 21 juniors and 17 seniors.

The school is Penta Career Center located in Perrysbury Ohio just outside Toledo. The building is approximately 525,000 square feet and is seven years old but Penta has been around since 1965. Penta offers 31, I think, vocational programs. The carpentry class builds a house every year, the masonry class does the concrete and brick work and the electrical class wires it. The culinary classes have a restaurant, cosmetology takes outside customers etc., it’s a cool place.

Since Twitter seems to be all the rage with and administration I thought I would start a Twitter page for my class. Pentawelding is the name, I am trying to post pictures of my student work on a daily basis should you care to follow.







John

I will say it first , that is one clean shop!! Good for you teaching responsiblility to the students in the form of cleaning up after theirselves. I will have to sneak up there one day for sure. Very well equipped shop as well. The third pic down, what are the blue stands with the short walls?
-Jonathan

I am guessing those short blue stands are gas welding/ cutting stations. That is one heck of a nice welding shop. And clean as Pin. I could mess the whole place up in a day or two. Lol


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Thanks guys. Oh we can make quite a mess of the place but it generally gets cleaned up and once a week a couple students will blow the machines off and give it a good cleaning. The short walled area is the TIG welding area. No time for gas welding anymore Jody the state has seen to that. Years ago we had 3 hours in the shop and an hour and a half in the classroom and two teachers. These days we have three hours total because of state academic requirements and one teacher....

Jonathan please come up you are always welcome. I love to have welders from industry come in and give demos and talk to the students.

John

John,
I would be more than happy to come up sometime. I think it would be fun! Can I get better pics of those tig stations? That seems like a interesting concept. Personally have never seen a configuration like that.
-Jonathan

Superiorwelding wrote:John,
I would be more than happy to come up sometime. I think it would be fun! Can I get better pics of those tig stations? That seems like a interesting concept. Personally have never seen a configuration like that.
-Jonathan

Here is one of the tables, nothing fancy. Those things are ancient, probably 35+ years old.

Man that's a good looking shop, wish we'd of had something like that. One day I for see myself teaching. I must say training is one thing I love to do, a couple people I've helped when first starting are doing quite well and it's a good feeling knowing you helped, even if its just a little. Would love to stop at a place like that.

That is a nice looking shop. Shame about the gas welding. I got into the welding thing via O/A and that's how I developed a taste for it. All on ancient WW2 era stuff, too. When I got to school, They had us do half a semester on O/A, to get the right hand / left hand thing down for TIG. It was nice to have a leg up on the other students, the O/A experience I had breezed me through that 101 class.

Not to mention it's still the only way to do it if you're in the middle of nowhere in the wind with no 208/230 power on tap.

More power to you man. Getting people into something that works for them and that they enjoy at a high school level is really important. Even in the face of budget cuts and all that other BS, if you can get a kid into something he likes and that pays a living wage, that's a big deal.

Wes917 wrote:Man that's a good looking shop, wish we'd of had something like that. One day I for see myself teaching. I must say training is one thing I love to do, a couple people I've helped when first starting are doing quite well and it's a good feeling knowing you helped, even if its just a little. Would love to stop at a place like that.

Wes, I hope you get the opportunity to teach some day. Check around your area and see who is teaching welding and get to know them they may need subs from time to time. I have seen quite a few teachers at our place get into teaching that way.
I consider myself pretty lucky to have such a nice shop.

John

newschoppafowah wrote:That is a nice looking shop. Shame about the gas welding. I got into the welding thing via O/A and that's how I developed a taste for it. All on ancient WW2 era stuff, too. When I got to school, They had us do half a semester on O/A, to get the right hand / left hand thing down for TIG. It was nice to have a leg up on the other students, the O/A experience I had breezed me through that 101 class.

Not to mention it's still the only way to do it if you're in the middle of nowhere in the wind with no 208/230 power on tap.

More power to you man. Getting people into something that works for them and that they enjoy at a high school level is really important. Even in the face of budget cuts and all that other BS, if you can get a kid into something he likes and that pays a living wage, that's a big deal.

Other than not learning OFW I'm not sure how detrimental not having it in the curriculum is. Meaning the manipulative skills learned with OFW are easily replaced. When I have had students show an interest in OFW they pick it up pretty fast, brazing too. Ultimately I have to prepare students for jobs in the welding industry and since no one in our area is doing it dropping it for the lack of time to teach it was pretty easy decision.
I don't have an exact figure but a very large percentage of my former students are still welding or they got to their current jobs by way of welding.
John

Wes917 wrote:Man that's a good looking shop, wish we'd of had something like that. One day I for see myself teaching. I must say training is one thing I love to do, a couple people I've helped when first starting are doing quite well and it's a good feeling knowing you helped, even if its just a little. Would love to stop at a place like that.

Wes,

By participating here, you're already teaching, whether you know it or not. The sharing of ideas and perspectives, suggestions and warnings, successes and failures help us all learn from each other.

I've only recently began to appreciate Jody's reach; We have two new-hires who are still in school that immediately recognized my WTT tee-shirt and began talking about how Jody's videos helped them. One is a member on our unofficial FB forum, in fact, and I'm trying to get them both to join here.

Steve S