[AT] Welding & School

[Greg Hass]

About 20 years ago myself, 2 cousins and a neighbor took an adult 
welding class at a high school 10 miles from me. It was offered at 
night, one evening a week, 4 hours a night for 6 weeks.  The instructor 
was also the schools welding instructor. He was a long time farmer 
turned teacher. In Michigan, he was not a regular teacher as he had no 
degree; however if you have a certain number of hours in your technical 
field you are allowed to teach in that field ( 15 years later, my 
brother took a college class in welding as required by his employer and 
this same person was the instructor, unfortunately, by this time he had 
suffered a stroke and although he could still teach and show techniques 
he was unable to weld because of his shaking hands.) I already had been 
welding for years but wanted to know different things and some of the 
finer points. Many of the things he taught us seemed far out at the time 
but I listened well and over the years have tried almost every thing he 
taught us and it actually works. Because he had been a farmer his ideas 
were slanted in that direction. If you had auger where some of the 
flighting got damaged, he showed us how to make it one turn at a time; 
later I had a grinder mixer where the one auger had the bottom foot 
damaged and we could not get a new one for over 2 weeks; I used his 
method and it worked so well I never did order a new one. He showed us 
how to use a welder to remove a broken stud without drilling and how to 
use a piece of copper to weld in a hole just to mention a few. In all I 
learned a lot from that class. Just to show how down to earth he was, 
the shop had some wire welders and some expensive stick welders; it also 
had 10 buzz boxes,ie CHEAP welders. He was asked with such good welders 
available, why have all those cheap welders; his answer was that when 
the kids went home and talked their dad into getting a welder, what was 
he going to buy, CHEAP. The instructor said if that was the case, he was 
going to teach them how to best use what they had available.
     Greg Hass