In search of a welding dynasty

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Standing slightly bent over before a welder’s jig, a 220-volt welder pulsating in his hand, 17-year-old Dustin Fogg followed the fiery arc with his eyes as it dribbled and spit molten metal and tiny curling wisps of smoke.

To the naked eye, the arc’s searing glare was a retina-rupturing white. Yet through the reddish-black lens of a welding helmet, the watery metal and flame was a light, though painless, greenish lava that left everything else dark and murky, like a black blanket thrown over a yellow light bulb.

Welding is smelly, grimy work – it sounds like bacon frying over a gas stove – that, on this day, required something of a pointillist’s touch. Fogg was using the welder and a very thin steel rod to lay dripping-hot beads of steel along the connecting edges of two three-eighths-inch thick steel plates.

Each bead Fogg laid joined the plates. When enough beads were down, and cooled, they could be ground smooth or, if the welding student was really good, would be almost flat just by themselves.

“I love the art of it,” Fogg said of welding. “When I first started, I never knew how critical it was to lay each bead in, how to look for minute holes and fill them, how difficult it all is on your eyes and on your body.”

And each bead absolutely needs to meld powerfully enough to the plates to tolerate several hundred pounds of pressure or several thousand degrees of heat commonly found in high-pressure piping or boilers in power plants or refineries.

It might have been a small thing, but Fogg’s teacher, Northern Penobscot Tech Region III welding teacher David Hartley, saw something wrong. Hartley fine-tuned the amperage on Fogg’s welder from 70 amps to 74. Fogg shut down the machine and walked to his instructor, his welding helmet turned up.

“There’s only one thing you have to remember, consistency,” Hartley lectured. “Be consistent. Do the job the same way every time.”

It wasn’t a harsh lecture. Hartley’s brow didn’t furrow too heavily and he didn’t wag the pointing finger he held up to emphasize his point, but Fogg took it gravely nevertheless.

The welding student and Lincoln resident has two goals: to get his American Welding Society certificate next year and to compete eventually in the American Welding Society-Skills USA Open Welding Trial.

Fogg said that if anybody can get him to those heights, it’s Hartley.

“As far as doing what we need to do goes, if we can’t understand something from him, he will find a student who knows what he’s doing and have that person explain it to us,” Fogg said. “He knows how to think and how to get it into our heads.”

Hartley’s greatest student, Joel Stanley II, had just returned from Helsinki, Finland, where the 22-year-old Medway man and Region III adult education student led the United States to a fifth-place finish in what is basically the Olympics for industrial trades and services – the WorldSkills 2005 competition.

As the sole U.S. representative in the welding competition, Stanley finished ahead of competitors from 20 countries, including Ireland, Belgium, Portugal, Canada, Sweden, Malaysia and Japan, and behind first-ranked Korea, Australia, Thailand and Chinese Taipei.

Like an Olympic coach whose inaugural prodigy spawns a bevy of medal-winners, Hartley hopes Stanley will be the first of many. Region III teaches students from Stearns, Schenck and Penobscot Valley high schools and Mattanawcook and Lee academies.

“That,” Hartley said, “is the goal. There’s no reason we can’t do it. We know how he did it.”

Hartley’s classroom instruction mirrors real-life requirements too, said Fogg, who works as a welder for Ramsey’s Welding and Machinery of Enfield, which does welding work on paper rollers and sorters for mills.

Fogg is one of a handful of Region III high school students out of the 32 Hartley teaches that has a good shot at following Stanley, Hartley said.

“He is one of my top welders,” Hartley said. “I have several that have the talent that Joel had when he was in high school, but the question remains whether they have the drive and dedication that he had. Joel has awesome dedication.”

Stanley is a great inspiration and motivator, Fogg said.

“When he won, I couldn’t believe it. I knew he would do decently, but I never thought he would go as far as he did,” Fogg said. “It [Stanley’s success] makes me realize that everybody else here could do this thing. Everyone here is starting out in the same place that Joel was.”

Welding job market info*

. In 2004, there were an estimated 1,820 welders working in Maine. This does not include those who may be self-employed.

. Between 2002 and 2012, the number of welding and related jobs in Maine is projected to stay flat at a growth rate of only 0.6 percent.

. Each year, there are on average 48 welding job openings in Maine resulting from job turnover.

. The average hourly wage for welders in Maine is $16.32, with the middle 50 percent of welders earning between $13.28 and $19.84 an hour. (Twenty-five percent earn less than $13.28 and another 25 percent earn more than $19.84.)

* includes workers classified as welders, cutters, solderers, and brazers.

Statistics provided by Maine Department of Labor, division of Labor Market Information Services.