Welding Podcast Episode 1

Welding Podcast – audio with a Welding Professional about General Welding Concepts

Below you can find a transcription of the above podcast/video about welding concepts, including firearm welding, specialty projects, and day-to day work for a broad based welding services company

The types of jobs a welder is doing in Iowa in the Wintertime

B: “All right so here we are again and we’re going to take off where we left off last time, and I’m going to see here… I think we’re at the point in the discussion where we were talking about some of the things that you do on a regular or at least did on a regular, early on in your career where you were building your business really as a welder and what I’d like to do, is just continue with that and talk about some of the jobs you’re seeing on a regular basis now, and you know, just talk through some of the seasonality of welding jobs in the Iowa area and also just kind of point out for folks that will be listening, or will be reading some transcription you know, what the general range of in the services you would offer at the state border areas because it’s not like you’re going to service every area of Iowa but it’s also not like you’re going to, you know, not service you know across state line if it’s 10 minutes away, you know versus going across the entire state of Iowa. So, maybe just talk through some of the range of jobs where you would drive to, if the job made sense to, or if it was an emergency and you needed to, and then you know just a daily and what you’re doing jobs wise?”

JS: “Okay well as far as distance for traveling, um, I don’t really have a limit on how far out I’m willing to travel, I will travel you know, I will travel or deliver a product pretty much anywhere within the continental United States as long as again, as you stated, as long as it makes sense. Obviously if I have a contact that is closer to a customer that I know can get the job done with the same quality that I would do, I’m going to recommend them to that person, versus me having to drive 4 hours to do a job that’s going to take 15-20 minutes to do. Whereas on the other hand if you’ve… if you’ve got a construction project you’ve got a project that you’re planning on it taking 3 or 4 days and you want somebody good, hey you know feel free to give me a call and we’ll work something out to figure out a way to get it done for you.” 

B: “Along those lines what would you consider to be a job that you would normally travel for like is this something like for instance a large commercial organization needs some of their major infrastructure done or it’s a job where you know you’re going to spend a full weekend or in a 20 plus hours on a job or something what what’s a typical say travel 4 to 6 hours to get to? And, not that you’re doing that typically, right? I mean, you have plenty of work I think, in Iowa, but generally speaking, if you were to travel for work what would that look like?” 

JS: “It’s most likely going to end up being some type of a construction job where they need welds put in on the framework of a building or a project that they’re working on and they don’t have a certified welder on hand. Or, potentially jobs where you’ve got, you know, that you’ve got a company that has a fleet of trucks that needs, you know they need something fabricated and they need six trucks with this fabricated on them. I know that job is going to take me, say 4 or 5 days to get it done, yeah I’m willing to travel and I’m willing to get that done for them.” 

B: “And do you normally, do you normally subsidize that just on an hourly rate or you trying to bid the job in whole, or or how does that normally work – and I realize this is totally out of the scope of normalcy, and normally it’s stuff you’ve either taken from the Pella area or you know within an hour or two of where you’re at. But can you talk a little bit about how somebody might expect to be charged or bid, you know, in a job situation like that.” 

JS: “In a job situation like that it’s typically going to be bid on a per job basis, because I’m not going to go into that with them knowing exactly how many hours without having ‘hands-on’; looking at the job… I’m not going to have a good idea how long it’s going to take me. But at the same time I’m not gonna charge you know, I’m not gonna sit there and tell you hey I’m gonna charge you ten hours and then you know I’m not gonna feel right myself when the job only ends up taking five or six hours at the same time I’m not gonna sit there and underbid the job and say oh yeah hey, you know this should only take me 10 or 12 hours next thing you know I’ve been there for 2 days and not getting paid for it.”

B: “For sure, and obviously, I think anybody that wants to get a quote with any kind of welding service provider is going to have to give more details than just you don’t have the idea. But I think sometimes people get so scared to say: “Oh my gosh I’m going to be paying you know the average wage of let’s say it’s $120 or whatever the shop hour rate is.” And so people freak out and I think I can’t possibly hire a welder, when in reality there’s a lot of opportunities were the presence and understanding and experience of a of a welder’s been doing it for 30 years is a lot less expensive than trying to underbid a job just to see if you can get it done, right? Because it may take you 2 hours to get something that might take their shop guy 7.

JS: “And now there’s a saying amongst welding as well that if you think hiring a good welder is expensive try hiring a cheap one.” 

B: “For sure, absolutely. Yeah so, okay so, let’s talk a little bit about the day-to-day that you’re doing it on a regular right now like what’s what’s pretty normal on a workload as you’ve been ramping up or the last few months you know just with local and other general welding jobs what do you normally seeing jobs wise and then I want to talk a little bit about seasonality too.” 

JS: “Yep and seasonality, going into the winter right now um is actually a pretty good time to talk about day to day because right now living in Iowa; living in the Midwest, and this year particularly most of the country in general we see a lot of… tend to see a lot of snow plows getting broken off of people’s trucks and stuff as they’re plowing their drives and plowing out commercial properties, and they need those…” 

B: “And you’re talking about smaller, mostly hand-driven or stand-upon types of snow plows, not necessarily big huge rigs, or is it across the board?”

JS: “No. Typically it’s truck, pickup-mounted snow plows, those are getting broken, the mounts are getting broken on them you know whatever it may be. I had one here a couple weeks ago. The mount on the back of it was Broken. The blade itself looked like it had been welded if you want to say welded. It had been repaired, we’ll say that it had been repaired by someone a little less experienced in the past and there was quite a bit of real work that needed to be done on that before I was comfortable sending it back out I explained that to the gentleman and he was more than happy to have me fix it.”

B: “So you’re looking at a job like that I am I’m just ignorant in this situation because we we get about ZERO snow where I’m at me we get it on the mountains and the hills around us will get a little bit of snow cap but nothing too crazy I’m in the in the high desert, or really, mid desert here in Southern California but generally, when you have a Snow Plow Mounted to the front of a truck it’s probably mounted to the frame in some way or bolted onto the frame in some way; in some cases may be welded onto the frame or frame extension or something like that, is that correct?” 

JS: “It’s mounted, typically there’s a mount that’s bolted onto the frame and then the plow itself is removable during the spring, summer, and fall season and then they just mount it back up, and bolt it back on in the winter time and go about their business. A lot of them do it as a side job so they’re out plowing multiple drives in one snow fall, and those machines take a lot of wear and tear and they break. And when they break, I’m the guy that gets called to come fix them.” 

B: “For sure, and when you’re doing a repair job on something like that it’s mostly like the bottom of the bucket type of situation where you’re straightening out the edges and repairing the the bevels and welding those types of lips and things on to the snow plower or how does it normally work, what does it look like?” 

JS: “Most of the time what that looks like is they pushed too much snow or the blade itself is old and should have been replaced two or three seasons ago and they broke a mount or they broke a frame mount, they broke a spring mount, whatever it may be a hydraulic mount typically it’s the areas that are under the most amount of pressure of those are those are the spots that tend to those factory welds don’t last forever and these guys push em 20-30 years pushing snow,  and then want to know why their stuff is broken, well if you want the honest truth you should replaced it 3-4 years ago, but we can get that fixed up and get you running for another season or two. 

Generally it’s typically the mounts we do occasionally have you know, we’ll replace the blade at the bottom, we’ll replace a guard, we’ll put a backing on it to give you a little more stability and support but generally it’s the mounts on the plows that are getting broken. This time of year we get kids out playing in the snow too and they’ll get cracks in their frames or they’ll want added suspension on their truck. They’ll go out and buy these you know thousand-dollar lift kits on their trucks and not have any clue how to install them and they’ll say: ‘I went to install this and I guess I need to have a mount welded onto my frame before I can get this put together…’ We’ve had a few of those, but yeah generally this time of year we have repairs on plows, repairs on snow blowers.” 

One-Off-projects, Specialty builds, broad service offerings – what a custom welder can do for you

B: “So, just to be clear for those that may be listening or maybe reading this you’re a metal fabrication shop but you’re not necessarily a specialist in let’s say off road trucks or in mudding trucks or something like that… however if somebody had a specialized job that’s certainly a job you could bid; certainly it’s something that’s within your wheelhouse to be able to perform. Talk to me a little bit about some of those, because I’m sure you get two or three, one-off requests a week at least you know where it’s like I need a 10 and a half inch lift so I can put on these 36 inch tires or whatever it is and I need four brackets built so that I can offset, you know, from my frame to put this mount for these hydraulic shocks or whatever it is. Talk to me a little bit about that because you’re not a specialty shop per se, but certainly your welding experience and the ability to fabricate things in your shop quickly, makes you kind of a dead ringer for stuff like that.” 

JS: “Oh, absolutely. By no means are we, or do we specialize or our business does not specialize in any one particular product, one particular aspect of welding we are just a full range… if you need it we can build it yeah, if it needs to be welded, we can weld it if you’re sitting there scrolling through your Instagram posts, or Pinterest or whatever you know whatever it is that you’re scrolling through and you see a picture or something like hey you know what, this is really cool I wonder if I can get one of these built, well by golly, yeah – show us the picture and chances are we can do you know we can make you that exact product or something extremely similar to it.”  

B: “For sure, and I think I’ve noticed that with you as well, you know, rapid prototyping and stuff that we’ve been you know walking through some projects that we’re kind of working on for you know, Twin Angel branded products under the Twin Angel brand as far as like safety equipment and things like that so, the rapid prototyping for things that can only or can best be built with welding rather than machining or, you know extrusion or something like that you know welding really is an art that allows you to have that rapid prototyping concept. Do you do you do a lot of that for customers or maybe, are there customers that are maybe trying to improve the viability of a product they’re saying we need you to sign an NDA or you know we need you to build this product but yeah we don’t want it stolen from us so you know here’s what we need you to do – how does that process work?” 

JS: “That process we’ve done that a couple times and it’s yeah it’s pretty much cut and dry it you know and it usually does include the customer requesting in the NDA put out which I don’t have a problem with, at all. Yeah, give us enough of basic general idea, of what you’re looking for we’ll sit down with you help you draw you know pretty general blueprint or drawing of what you’re looking for and then we’ll get to work on building the product for you.”

B: “But somebody could come to you generally with an architectural drawing or something as long as it’s manageable within the, you know, entry and exit of your facility you know you could probably build it on site and and deliver it to them based on a blueprint or an architectural drawing or even a cad drawing if it’s presented to you properly?”

JS: “Right, I’ve gotten drawings there you know shoot looks like somebody’s you know toddler drew it with crayons, As long as I’ve got the general idea of what you’re looking for chances are I can figure out what you’re exactly what you’re looking for and then sit down and discuss it with you and kind of tweak the measurements and everything that needs to go into it but yeah there’s I think I’ve only had one or two projects were somebody’s come by and said I want this prototype built can you do it? I think I’ve only had one or two of them that I’ve turned down and one of them was just off of a safety aspect and the other one was due to a legality issue. Yeah, I had one guy who wanted me to build something that essentially he wanted to hold quite a bit of air pressure but he was wanting it done out of material that would not have held the pressure that he was wanting to do it in. So I turned that one down, because you’re doing that much pressure, what you’re essentially building is a bomb, once you put that much pressure in there, that thing’s going to explode and liability issues for myself… Well, I’m not going to do that and risk getting someone hurt. And then the other one was a legality issue. What the guy was wanting built was essentially a projectile weapon that under federal law would not have been legal.” 

Welding and Firearms – a good fit for gunshop owners and FFL dealers to work with a welding professional

B: “Right, that’s interesting because I had two different topics I wanted to talk about next. One was the welding of firearms and specifically from a commercial perspective because there are some Federal legalities and specifically State legalities as well, that come into play there but I did want to get you kind of on,on the podcast, or on this audio track talking about you know, how possible it might be to work with, specifically an FFL holding dealer or somebody who has the ability to do Gunsmithing or repair work in their facility or through their license maybe bringing it to your shop or you going to their shop to perform specific jobs for them, on a firearms that might need it. Also, if you want to opine on it you if you want to talk about individuals doing such a thing as certainly it’s not something you can ship (a serialized part) to you necessarily and have you do the work because of federal firearm laws but can you talk a little bit about you know the types of it, and maybe you don’t do a ton of it: guns or Gunsmithing type of work, however I think there’s a market there for it specifically in your region and I think if people knew the capabilities you have with a TIG torch it makes a lot more sense to have a guy like you put a couple of beads that they could regrind or could put a couple of welds on a cracked frame or something like that. 

Can you talk a little bit about you know how, that might work out, for that market as you explore it because I know that’s interesting to you, that’s a market you like and a market you’d like to work with people more on, but I think sometimes people don’t don’t realize it can be cost-effective if they’re passing it along to the customer, cost wise, to work through you as a third-party because they don’t have the skills to make it efficient, right? And it’s like the last thing somebody wants to do is ruin a serialized frame or something like that where now, it’s: you have to replace it at the factory you know, and it’s like, well, nobody wants to go through the paperwork and the hassle of doing that but if they’ve got a gun that’s really important to them and it’s got a single bead that needs to be put on it or maybe even you know just something that’s requiring less filler you know and not necessarily putting a ton of Extra metal on it. These are important jobs that someone like you should be doing instead of just a regular gunsmith. 

I say that as a gunsmith. I came up as a gunsmith and so, I’m well aware –  it’s not lost on me, the idea that even though I can weld, I’m not the right guy to weld, on a serialized part. However, and I’ve gotten long winded here, but because of federal firearms licensing laws it’s not necessarily something, you know, the owner of the firearm has to be there in your presence while you’re welding generally if you got a serialized part or it’s got to be a federal firearms licensed dealer. So, I think from the commercial perspective a lot of federal firearms licensed dealers might not realize if they’re willing to get with you and price it out, this is generally what my hourly is going to cost and generally you can expect me to be able to do this in an hour because it takes time to set up jigs and it takes time set up vices, and things like that but let’s say, you know you have 10 jobs and I can come to your shop or that you can come to my shop for 3 hours you know, in one day we can get five or six jobs knocked out as long as I know ahead of time what I’ve got to have ready so that we can get those jigs built so we can get those spacers built out or something like that. Not that that is a major inflow of revenue for you because Iowa is a little more spread out. But for those who live in the surrounding states, where you can make a trip and do 9 hours of welding, it could make sense if they’re taking in jobs and then saying hey you gotta wait a month my welder comes here on this day. But you know they could start taking in jobs and making a lot of revenue doing jobs like that because there are things that happen you know… so talk a little bit about that and what your thoughts are on firearms.” 

JS: “Yeah oh absolutely so I don’t have; I would absolutely not have a problem at all with that setting up an agreement with an FFL dealer to come in and do welding such as you were talking about and you know I think it would be a really good idea would be beneficial both to myself and the dealer and the customer but the other thing that is but I think a lot of people kind of overlook, is welding is not just welding I mean it is metalworking; Fabrication in general is what we do and a lot of that includes if you have you know I just work on one of my own firearms here not too long ago that had been… oh it was aged and it was actually a 1907 piece and it had taken quite a bit of rust…”

B: “You mean like pitting, and things?” 

JS: “Horrible pitting. There are a lot of gunsmiths that do that, but yeah, however as a welder I am well versed in grinding and buffing and sanding down parts to the point where it is you know just a smooth polished appearance again and then, you know then that part and then go back to an FFL dealer or a gunsmith to be reblued…” 

B: “Yeah I think sometimes people don’t realize and really that’s with something of sentimental value or something of extreme value that you still intend to use me 2, 3, $4,000 guns that may have you know, oops, gotten in a flood or something like that and before you could get the insurance settlement or whatever it was you know you had some pitting or something set in. Those are interesting things because it’s not just blued guns it’s not just mild steel or it can be stainless or other, and part of the metal fabrication that you can help with his guns that have been nickel-plated in the past are going to need to be blasted or they’re going to need to be wire wheel stripped, or however you’re doing it you’re going to need to get some of that stuff off. 

This is also important for things that have serializing issues right where it’s like real light markings on the serial you know if you’re talking like a turn-of-the-century gun some of the serial markings are very light and even though they’re past the point you know of a Curio/Relic or whatever, they’re still functioning firearms and you want it to look good; you want them to function well. You want them to be strong so having something that can be flattened and sand-blocked down to a flat or surface ground back or something where you people I don’t think understand you know severe rust damage – that’s a super important thing. Or, even something as simple as if if you got an FFL dealer and I’m doing this more from the marketing perspective because I don’t think people realize as gunsmiths and shop owners and, this is something that I am well versed in; I don’t think people realize how much money you can make on repairs if your customers know that you do that stuff especially stuff like brazing. 

You know, brazing in iron sights you know fixed iron sights on lever guns or falling block guns that are antique. Those guns are going to look impeccable you know we haven’t even – silver solder you know stuff that you could do really easily that most people can’t do right. It’s like, to ask a gunsmith to silver solder something and then be able to Blue it afterwards without having a ton of silver solder come out of that joint is really a big ask, but asking a guy who does this stuff all day every day with a torch or with a TIG gun or whatever it is that’s a lot easier ask, and so instead of having someone spend 5 hours in Gunsmithing time, you can spend 25 minutes of welding time get it absolutely right. Now if they’ve got 20 of those jobs you both just made quite a quite a decent payday and the customers are happier because it looks better.” 

JS: “Right, yeah and along the same note there is, one of my favorite things you know… I love buying things cheap and selling them high and I think that as a business owner I think that’s pretty much kind of the idea behind pretty much any business. Buy low, sell high. One of my favorite hobbies is to go out and purchase what most people consider as wall-hangers. A non-functioning firearm that just you know, turn of the century or you know even you know 19th century early 20th century but those firearms that don’t work or they don’t look good and I will go out and I will take those things and I will polish them up get them to where they are looking good and I will go and put them back into some functionality so that they’re functional again and a lot of times what I found is you cannot find the parts for those… Well as a fabricator I am able to make most of my own parts, and I have done it multiple times recently, whether it’s something as simple as a hammer spring and it’s okay you can’t find this hammer spring for this particular firearm anywhere online without paying $400 you know or an outrageous amount of money for the thing right? Fabricate that same spring and here I’ve done it in about 10 or 15 minutes and it’s cost me maybe a couple bucks to do it.”

B: “And that’s important to know – you understand metallurgical concepts that a lot of even gunsmith that are that are well-versed in it, aren’t going to understand the effect of heat even if they know how to case harden or they know how to heat treat and have the equipment to do so they’re not going to understand the shock heat values sometimes that you’re dealing with when you’re welding you know heating, quenching and other things that come along with doing it in a professional services setting, in the welding field I don’t think a lot of people I think it’s lost on a lot of people you know, how important it is to understand just what the gut check feel is on a piece of material as you’re working with it, right? 

Of course, you know it’s all: ‘if I heated up to cherry red and then I, you know, let it cool off to just straw and then I quench it…’. 

It’s like those are colors… Right? You’re understanding of it from the voltage input level or the amperage from how much you know, arc you’re putting a lot of things that you get insights to, that maybe someone who has a base level knowledge of case hardening or of heat treatment isn’t going to be able to understand so having a relationship with a welder’s cab be a super important thing for a gunsmith who isn’t also a really highly credible welder right? 

So, I just wanted to put in that plug there, and I think it’s important because you and I both have some background in guns I mean I’ve been doing it since I was, you know, in my early teens – even earlier than that as a gunsmith or working as an apprentice, so, for many years, and I work in that industry a lot now but you also have someone who has repaired and refurbished a lot of guns not only for yourself but for friends and others. There is a real business there that can be built. And in an age where gunsmiths are being paid minimum wage…I mean you can make more money at McDonald’s wearing a uniform, flipping burgers and working the drive-thru than you can as a new brand new gunsmith, which is insane to me because we have a robust market for guns, right? But it’s a little – it’s a little bit weird to think: ‘you know, oh man, I really like guns, I really want to do Gunsmithing I really want to be in the gun business, but, man, I can’t find channels of Revenue’.  

Well, guns break, people do things to guns and they break and it’s not always a modular fit situation. It’s not always replacing the Glock plastic, you know, sight it’s not always: replace the lower receiver on my AR-15. Sometimes it’s” ‘I’ve got to weld a full bead on the back of my Single Action Army trigger because I need to regrind the step so that I can have the half cock back or so that I can have a functional firearm that’s safe. These are things that a gunsmith, while they might be able to do it… if they if they go through looking for a Channel of Revenue they can create one with customers because the jobs are there and the customer going to be like: ‘Yeah it sucks to pay $200 to get my trigger fixed but it it’s either that or I don’t have a gun that’s functional or safe I’m probably going to pay that 200 bucks because I’ve got some, it’s got some sentimental value.’ 

And, then you get to make money as a welder, the gunsmith or the gun purveyor gets to make money as a channel provider, and the customers are happy because they get to have their gun that they’ve known for 20-30 years back in service right? But yes, it is a little bit more expensive to hire a third-party but you’re paying for expertise right? It’s like that’s the whole reason people hire a gunsmith in the first place. I’m sure Joe Schmo down the block can help you with your guns, but does that mean it’s going to be perfect? No, not necessarily, right? But going to someone who’s done 30 years in gunsmithing you can almost guarantee if they haven’t fixed it right, they’re going to fix it right, or they’re going to take the liability upon themselves. So It’s a really interesting concept and I think we’ll talk in the future quite a bit more about guns as I structure something a little better for us to kind of map out.”

JS: “One of my probably favorite things to do; favorite projects that i’ve worked on as far as gunsmithing-meeting-welding, um is i absolutely love when someone comes to me with a bolt action and they want a bent bolt. It’s a gunsmithing thing – a gunsmith can do it but typically it consists of cutting the old bolt off and welding on a new bolt.” 

B: “Yep well that’s it, see, that’s that’s the most uniform and best looking way to do it. You can also do a bent bolt you know but some of those, there’s not enough metal to work with as you heat it up to stretch it properly and make it look right, you know and then you’ve got to grind it. Where, pre-ground you know bolts, or prefabbed cast bolts that you can weld on in 5 seconds and they’re flawless, right? It’s like a $20 bolt handle from Brownells or where is it? I think it’s in Iowa too, isn’t it – I think it is…” 

JS: “Yeah.” 

B: “…and half an hour of your time with a jig, well now all the sudden they’ve got something that would have cost them $300 from any gunsmith, but they’re doing, you know, a gunsmith making money on it by coming to you right? So if it’s a gunsmith that’s doing Mauser conversions or they’re doing, you know chassis built rifles with, custom turned bolts or barrels, or whatever it is, having a relationship with a welder like you going to make a lot of sense because it’s like you can do 20 of those in 2 hours or 3 hours they can only do 20 of those in two months, right? 

See, if they have it they can go to the customer to say ‘you know yeah, wait 2 weeks till my welder can get here and then we’ll have it but it’ll be flawless’, right? You’ve already built jigs that’ll hold these things in place you know with multiple set screws and things like that to keep them in a level and even and your welding work is flawless compared to most gunsmiths, right? So, I think that’s maybe not understood by… and and I say this as you are working with the commercial endeavors on the other side right because it’s like of course you could do a bolt handle for an individual customer, right? 

But it will really make sense; where the rubber hits the road for gun people to everyone; making, you know money, or to make value out of it, is where there’s a bulk amount of intake in those jobs and they and they’re very, or vastly similar to each other where you can knock out 30 of them in 2 hours or 3 hours whereas, you know, one here and there yes you can do it, but it’s not going to make as much fiscal sense as it would if you had a channel set up so you know, from the marketing side, obviously those FFL dealers and those gun shops should know that you can make some money working with a welder like you. But as an individual you can probably save money by going to a dealer that’s working with a welder like you, rather than going to a welder, individually, right?” 

JS: “Correct.”

B: “Not that it’s a bad idea, because if you have a job that you need done, A welder can do it like that, right and it’s like you said if you’ve got a.. and it wouldn’t even necessarily take a chop saw, but, if you got a chop saw you know a band saw or you know even if you’re grinding through it with a wheel on a die grinder or something like that, your level of expertise in using those tools is probably to get them closer than even if it would be if they were taking it off on a mill. And the problem with that is: from Factory you don’t really want to do that it’s not very accurate to do that with a mill and it’s really rough on the end mills or you know whatever using for cutting because they’re hardened almost all the time as a single piece where as you can cut through with a carbide disc or a carbide cutter or a disc and have it done in a couple of minutes whereas, if somebody’s putting cuts on a lathe and Mill to cut it could take forever right? So again, it’s that efficiency that makes so much sense.” 

JS: “Oh yeah.” 

B: “I think you probably agree with all that, and I’ve just been rambling.” 

JS: “You’re Fine.”

This is not the full transciption of this audio track/podcast about welding. You can view this video, or listen to the track at the following URL/LINK or by clicking on the above video player. More of this transcription will be added in the future.