I could swear I felt some of the sparks hit the top of my head. I thought for sure that when I went home and looked at the top of my melon with a mirror that it would resemble Joe Pesci’s after Macaulay Culkin fried it defending his house in “Home Alone” – an angry red martian landscape with only a few smoking patches of hair left.

Fortunately, when I returned home from my I-CAR steel MIG welding training, I found that my follicles were fine. The training, which took place Nov. 24th at Fred Martin Collision Center in Norton, Ohio, was courtesy of I-CAR, who set up the opportunity for me to join the technicians at Fred Martin and production manager/instructor Dave Cottrell in the Welding Training & Certification: Steel (GMA) MIG Welding class (WCS03). I had recently taken an online I-CAR course and had so much fun that I asked I-CAR if they could get me into a live class where I could do some hands-on training, and they were more than happy to oblige.

We did 10 different welds, from open butt welds to plug welds to fillet welds. Each technician’s weld was then put into a vice so Cottrell could hammer away at it and see if it destructed properly.

At first, my welds resembled sad, broken, squiggly earthworms. But they got better and better the more I did.

Thank you to I-CAR, Dave and the crew at Fred Martin for letting me trade a pen for a welder for a night. I gained a better appreciation for what you guys do on a daily basis.