Best Movies about Welding

Movies about Welding

Synopse:
A documentary about the gritty beauty of welding. Professors and students from the Northern Virginia Community College arc welding class star in this short movie and help give a brief history of welding (including the grand history of women in welding), their motivations for pursuing a career in welding, and the great assortment of things you can create from metal and heat.

Making the Movie:
It’s been almost a year to the day since I posted something on the Jimbob Movies website and what better way to get back into the swing of things than to premiere a new documentary. Hopefully, this will assuage the fears of the few Jimbob Movies fans out there, if not my own fears, that I have not and will not stop making movies. I just took a hiatus to focus on starting a small farm. I recently bought a 13 acre farm in Fauquier County, Virginia and leading up to that purchase I decided to enhance my on-farm acumen with some needed technical skills like welding. Welding and farming have been a natural match since the early 20th century when tractors slowly started to replace draft animals on the family farm. Farmers were able to using various welding processes to repair and modify their tractors and the attachments that were pulled and pushed by those tractors. Of course, you don’t really need to be a good welder to be a good farmer. You just need to know enough and have a steady hand. In fact, often times people call a bad weld a “farmer’s weld.”

“Confederates in the Attic” describes the city of Manassas a little too accurately

In that grand tradition, I wanted to learn how to weld as a good as a farmer so I enrolled in the Arc Welding class at Northern Virginia Community College (NVCC) during the Spring semester of 2012. The classes were held in my hometown of Manassas, Virginia. A quick profile of Manassas for those of you who don’t know is best summarized by Tony Horwitz in his book Konfederace v podkroví: “Modern Manassas, a fast-growing bedroom community for Washington, was so hideous that some locals called it “Manasshole.” The town had gained modern renown as the place where Lorena Bobbitt hacked off her husband’s penis and tossed it in the grass outside a 7-Eleven. The town’s historic railroad junction, which had caused North and South to clash here twice in the space of thirteen months, was now swaddled by miles of housing tracts, fast-food joints and car dealerships. Civil War entrenchments had been bulldozed to make way for bowling alleys, shops, offices, and access roads, many of them named for the history they’d obliterated: Confederate Trail, Dixie Pawn, Battlefield Ford, Reb Yank Shopping Center.”

I guess Tony Horwitz can get away with saying that stuff about Manassas because he’s an “unbiased” author, but if anyone outside of Manassas said that I’d punch them in the face. I actually lived on a street named “Confederate Trail” at one point in my life. Indeed Manassas is a gritty, blue collar, strip mall kind of place and it was the perfect setting for a welding program. The class cost a little over $300 when the price of the textbook was calculated in. A small price to pay to learn a trade that will last a lifetime. I was excited for my first class to begin; however, when I walked into the classroom on that first day I did have my reservations. Here was a class full of white, blue collar, tobacco-chewing guys, some of whom had the thickest Southern accents I had ever heard in my life. I guess I had grown up in the more northern part of Manassas. Needless to say, I was the only Vietnamese in the class. I had expected at least one hipster/artist in the class who wanted to start a bicycle repair shop or boutique welding shop that built intricate arbors for the McMansions in McLean. Sadly, I was that hipster. For many of the guys in the class, welding was going to be more than a hobby. They wanted to pursue a career in welding and were taking all of the welding courses to earn their Welding Certificate.

Welding Professor Carrie Rossi pounding away at some hot metal

Not to be anti-climatic, but things turned out just fine after the initial stock-taking that happens when a group of guys who don’t know each other get thrown together into a confined space. Maybe I was the oddball at first, but that luster began to fade. People who work with their hands for a living respect hard work more than anything else and you can’t bullshit that. In the end, everyone accepted me as just another Manasshole Man. It also didn’t hurt that the professor was a lovely, petite woman who had a charming laugh. Her name was Carrie Rossi. She was from a family of welders and her dad had taught welding at NVCC. Now she was taking up his legacy as a welding professor. Carrie was patient, encouraging, and balanced the male egos in the shop with her grace and quiet confidence. She had quite a career in welding working on the Hubble Space Telescope, military vehicles, and various welding projects on the estates of the rich and powerful like an unnamed Senator. She made me feel instantly comfortable and at home in the shop.

After passing all my weld tests (flat, vertical, horizontal, and a butt joint), I decided that my class project would be to make a documentary of my professor and fellow classmates. Most of my classmates were open to being in the movie and some agreed to be interviewed. They were open and honest and I loved how none of their dreams included spending years in a cubicle staring at a computer. They wanted to work with their hands and they wanted to produce. The b-roll footage turned out crisp and I hope that I was able to capture the arcane beauty of being under that welding helmet and seeing metal burn, crack, and glow at unnaturally high temperatures (over 11,000 degrees F). There is something calming and magical about welding that has drawn me in. Or maybe it was all the hydrocarbons that I was inhaling. Either way, I hope to show off my farmer’s welds along with my farmer’s tan one day.

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Welding in Pop Culture

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When we think of pop culture, chances are we don’t think of welding. Images of sparks flying off of electric arcs, however, have been a part of history and pop culture for a long time. Whenever Hollywood or even the government needs to depict strength, innovation, and industry, they use visuals of welders at work. Following are some prominent welding scenes from film, television, and history.

The Welding Trope in Movies & TV

When Hollywood producers want to portray something being built, they often show welding. 1 If you’ve watched shows like MacGyver, Projekt A-Team, Mission: Impossible, svatojánská muška, Babylon 5, a star Trek, you’re likely to have seen someone welding something. If you’re into reality TV, Top Gear a Bláznivci have often had welding occur somewhere in the program.

When it comes to movies, you’re likely to see welding as part of repair or construction. In Říše se stáhne zpátky, Leia, Han Solo, and Chewbacca are constantly repairing the Millennium Falcon using—you guessed it—welding. What that says is that even “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” they had welding skills. That’s how ubiquitous welding is.

Rosie Riveter

When we talk about historical figures and welding, we have to give a nod to Rosie the Riveter. When it came to women working tough industrial jobs during World War II, Rosie was an icon. She inspired one out of four married women to do their part for the war effort and work in factories. Rosie the Riveter was part of the U.S. government’s campaign to recruit women into the munitions factories while the men were away at war. The factories needed labor, and women were willing to learn welding technology to provide it.

The campaign sparked more than patriotism. Rosie the Riveter made inroads for women into jobs that were once considered for men only. She showed that welding was a skill that men and women were equally capable of doing well.

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Flashdance

If you’re looking for main characters in movies that are welders, consider Flashdance. This 1983 movie depicts a woman applying her welding training during the day and her talent for dancing at night. While dancing won out for the main character, Flashdance showed the rare depiction of a woman in welding.

Odvrhnout

Film Odvrhnout opens with a woman named Bettina Peterson who creates welded metal sculptures. Again, this movie depicts a woman is welding. Currently, there are efforts to recruit more women into the industry.

Mýtus

Pokud jste se někdy dívali MythBusters, you know that Adam Savage and Jamie Hynemen are constantly welding. In fact, they even shared their “workshop wisdom” with the magazine Populární mechanika, offering tips for MIG welding and metal tubing.

Ron Swanson

We couldn’t talk about welders without mentioning the quirky Parks Director and welder, Ron Swanson, from the show Parks and Recreation. In one episode Swanson used the metal from a wall sconce to forge wedding rings in a cast iron waffle maker. Afterward he remarked, “People who buy things are suckers.”

Welding Is Part of the Story

Prevalent in pop culture and history, welding plays an important role in the stories in which it appears. Could you imagine if there wasn’t welding in any of the movies or TV shows mentioned? Could MacGyver have destroyed Murdoc’s flamethrower if he didn’t know how to build an arc welder out of a car battery, some jumper cables, and a radio antenna? Could the Millennium Falcon have been repaired without welding? Whether in fact or fiction, welding is a part of our daily lives whether we are aware or not.

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