Welders carry the torch

Cody Minter's head and shoulders were deep inside a steel barrel Thursday at Yuba College. Smoke billowed around his welding helmet and obscured his view.

But the Lindhurst High School senior and advanced welding student managed to affix one piece of metal to another and move on to his next stage of competition.

Students from Yuba College and Lindhurst, Pleasant Valley, and Gridley High schools — 38 students in all — twisted themselves into all sorts of awkward positions as they negotiated each of several work stations at the second annual Weld Olympics.

Minter and his team from Lindhurst would eventually place first in the advanced high school competition.

The high schools competed in four-person novice teams; advanced high school students competed for their school team and college students competed individually against one another.

Yuba College welding instructor Dan Turner created the competition in an effort to get students as close to real-world work scenarios as possible.

"It expands their comfort zones a lot," he said.

Joe Dena, an advanced welding student at Pleasant Valley High School, crouched inside a pipe, 5 feet in diameter.

The welding station was meant to give students a sense of "confined space welding."

"Welding is not all done in a booth," said Turner of the work stations to which students are accustomed.

Dena craned his neck to examine the subject of his next welding endeavor.

"This is really going to help me," he said of the challenge.

Real opportunities to put different types of welders to use in a variety of situations are scarce in school, he said.

Dena said he wants to pursue a career as an underwater welder. He plans to attend Butte College next year and then head to a commercial diving school in Southern California.

The pipe welding he did Thursday has applications, he said, to his future career.

"But the pipes under the ocean will be a lot bigger," he said.

During the competition, representatives from Lincoln Electric Co. — which sponsored the competition along with Airgas — trained high school and college welding instructors about trends in the industry, and new techniques and equipment.

They also furnished safety equipment and a mobile demonstration unit.

Yuba College became the site last spring of the West Coast Regional Center For Welding Education.

Next week, Turner and fellow welding instructor Gary Lederer will travel to Chicago where they will participate in a National Welding Educators Conference.

They are helping develop material for a series of weld-training seminars to take to schools across the country.

Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter Nancy Pasternack at 749-4712 or at npasternack@appealdemocrat.com.