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From Shop Helper to Sought-After Certified Welder

from-shop-helper-to-sought-after-certified-welder-1516287366Serendipity got Travis James Kurtzeborn into welding. Patience, persistence, and tenacity made him a success. His story shows the importance of exposing students to the welding craft. Without a lucky encounter, Kurtzeborn wouldn’t be where he is today.

 Already with a few years of welding experience under his belt, Travis James Kurtzeborn attended Georgia Trade School in Kennesaw, Ga. (now in nearby Acworth), several years ago. From his first day, he knew he had a lot to learn.

 

If you visit the Coca-Cola Roxy Theatre in Atlanta, look at the welds on the handrails. The joint between the two coped tubes has even swirls indicative of stick welding at its finest. Most impressive, you can’t tell where the welds begin and end.

The person who laid down the beads doesn’t have decades of welding experience. At 29 he has no gray hair to speak of, and just seven years ago he was at a very different place in his life.

Today he’s a welder who has been certified to AWS D1.1 structural welding standards and is gaining a reputation as one who knows his way around the shielded metal arc (stick) welding process. When he looks at a weld, he scrutinizes it, using a wire brush to check for undercut and clean spatter. And when he sees a weld bead that he feels would pass muster for the most rigorous inspector, he gets that sense of satisfaction that drives the best welders out there.

“This is a funny profession,” he said. “When you’re working a hard job, you cuss in your head, sweat, strain to get the perfect angle. But when you’re finished, you step back and say, ‘Oh man, that looks really nice.’”

For Travis James Kurtzeborn, that moment makes it all worth it.

Over the past seven years Kurtzeborn has gone from working in a small metal shop in Florida to being a certified welder on some high-profile projects in Georgia, including the Coca-Cola Roxy Theatre and the Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the new home for the Falcons in downtown Atlanta. He even met his fiancee through welding; she’s the sister of a classmate at Acworth, Ga.-based Georgia Trade School, where Kurtzeborn went to really learn the welding craft and, ultimately, become a certified welder qualified for those high-profile jobs.

After all this, what has been a career high point? “I have to say, it was when a neighbor in Florida got me that first job in a metal shop. It’s funny how one little thing can change the whole direction of your life. If he hadn’t talked to me, none of what followed would have happened.”

Kurtzeborn comes from a long line of tradespeople. His father was a surveyor, his uncle was a carpenter, and his grandfather was an electrician. “I really wanted to do something with my hands growing up. I didn’t know what. I stumbled upon welding totally by accident.”

In 2007, just after high school, he was living near Pompano Beach, Fla., working in restaurants, landscaping companies, and car washes, sometimes helping his dad on surveying jobs. At the time he recalled people asking him, “So what do you do?” and not knowing how to respond. He bumped around from job to job and had no career to speak of.

Then six years ago, a conversation with his neighbor changed his life. That neighbor was a welder at a metal shop, and he kept asking Kurtzeborn if he wanted a job. He and his boss really needed the help, apparently. Kurtzeborn had no idea what he really meant by “metal shop,” but after several months, he accepted. After all, what did he have to lose?

Kurtzeborn welds a handrail at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium during its construction.

Turns out this company wasn’t a typical job shop, but a company called E-1 Machine, a fabricator of hydraulic stage trailers for use in the entertainment business. The crew fabricated the trailers in-house and then set them up for outdoor concerts for a variety of events, including a reunion tour of Black Sabbath.

“They look really cool, in fact,” Kurtzeborn recalled. “They look like a semitruck, but the sides fold down, the roof raises up, and it makes a stage. I learned a lot from that place. That’s when I finally knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a welder.”

Thing is, the shop had no plans for him to be a welder. Kurtzeborn began, like many shop floor employees do, as a helper and general technician. But during the day he saw one of his friends with a welding gun. “So I asked him, ‘Can you show me how to use the machine over lunch?’”

His welding career began with that question. He started working with the welding machine over lunch break and stayed late after work, basically teaching himself the beginning stages of the welding trade. After one of the other shop welders quit, Kurtzeborn began filling in, tacking things together and doing basic weld prep. “I remember that was the first time I got to use the welding machine and get paid for it.”

Not long after this, the company moved across the state to Fort Myers, and because of family commitments, Kurtzeborn couldn’t relocate. His father had died when he was 19. So he hopped on the internet and started job hunting—but not for just any job. “I would normally just go with the first job that popped up,” he recalled, “but I was determined to find a welding job.”

He did find another job as a welder, and even with his minimal experience, he passed the company’s welding test. He worked there until his mother was old enough to qualify for Social Security benefits. “I was essentially helping to support her, so I couldn’t just leave. But when she was old enough to collect Social Security, I then felt comfortable [to move]. My uncle lived in Georgia, and he said he had a job for me in Cumming, at a company called Pro Fabricators.”

The fabricator had a contract with Publix and Ingles supermarkets in the region. He had welded aluminum in Florida, and it just so happed that Pro Fabricators needed an aluminum welder to fabricate the rails for the guards in the cart areas, which prevent grocery carts from scuffing the walls. This job put Kurtzeborn on the road throughout the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee.

At this point his aunt asked him the question that eventually pushed him to the next level of welding: Is this what you want to do? Kurtzeborn knew it was, and not just for the next few months or years. This was going to be his career. If it was, his aunt insisted he go to school for it. Kurtzeborn Googled “welding school,” and at the top of the list appeared the nearby Georgia Trade School (then in Kennesaw, Ga., now in nearby Acworth).

“I wouldn’t be where I am now if it weren’t for that school,” he said.

Georgia Trade School isn’t a community college and doesn’t receive public funding. Ryan Blythe, who launched the school in 2012, said this approach has worked to the school’s benefit. “Everyone who comes here pays their own way,” Blythe said in a 2014 interview. “This concept has been so successful for us, because everybody has skin in the game. The students we teach have a passion for welding. They’re not being made to do this because their unemployment benefits extension requires them to do a job training program.” Put another way, students attend Georgia Trade School because they want to attend. In 2015 and 2016, one of those students was Travis James Kurtzeborn.

Kurtzeborn practices at the Georgia Trade School.

The school starts most people with stick welding, arguably a more difficult process than wire welding—with a 6010 rod, no less. Mastering this first, before even tackling wire welding, is a bit like swinging with two bats before walking to home plate.

For most it doesn’t come easy, Kurtzeborn included. He had gas metal arc welding experience, even wire welded aluminum. But he had never picked up an SMAW rod.

“It was so annoying. It kept sticking and sticking [after the arc strike]. I remember thinking, ‘I don’t know if this is going to work out if this is what it’s going to be like.’”

If anything, though, Kurtzeborn is stubborn, which works to his benefit and detriment. Instead of asking for help, he’d go home, watch online instructional videos, and try to get it. Recalling this, Kurtzeborn chuckled and shook his head. “I wasn’t going to ask anyone else for help, even though that’s why I was at the dang school. But then I finally asked for help. I remember the first time I got it. I struck the arc, lifted the rod up like a match, and kept the correct drag angle.”

Georgia Trade School has modern welding equipment, including SMAW power sources with hot starting, providing a momentary amperage boost during the arc strike to prevent the rod from sticking. So did Kurtzeborn use it?

“I would always turn it off,” he said. “My instructors told me that a lot of the jobs I’d be going to wouldn’t have fancy new machines, and he was right. I’d always try to make it harder for myself, so when I got on the job I would know what to do.”

Call it swinging with three bats.

“Also, in the weld booths at the school, I saw there was a little stand in there where you could drop your elbow and steady yourself. I would never use it. I’d weld freestanding, not propping my arms on anything. Other students would ask me, ‘Why don’t you prop yourself up?’ So I asked them, ‘Do you think when you get on a job, you’re going to have this nice little welding booth and be able to prop up your arms?’ I’d also weld with both my left hand and right hand, weld in weird positions and weird angles.” He’d practice welding vertical-up, vertical-down, and overhead. He learned to maintain a short arc length and the right travel speed to avoid molten weld metal from dripping.

So he was swinging with four bats, or even more, but doing that helped him eventually become a code-certified welder, passing the test based on the AWS D1.1 structural welding code and getting a job at what essentially was the most high-profile construction job in all of Atlanta: the new Mercedes-Benz Stadium. That job taught Kurtzeborn that although he had attended what has become regarded as a topnotch welding school, and even though he had become a welder certified for structural welding, he had in no way mastered stick welding—not if the stadium job’s welding inspector had anything to say about it.

“We would make five welds, and he would inspect them. I have never seen anyone so stringent,” Kurtzeborn recalled “He was picky, but he taught me to be a better welder. He had his fillet gauges and calipers, and checked for undercut and the correct weld size and incomplete fusion.” He demanded welders use a wire brush and die grinder to clean off the mill scale and ensure the weld toes wetted properly to the base material; if the weld profile curled downward (the “ice cream cone” look), chances are there was undercut. Seeing that, Kurtzeborn knew he needed to control his heat input, altering his drag angle and travel speed to ensure the weld metal from the rod flowed smoothly to the weld joint.

Learning a trade changed Kurtzeborn’s life. He gained a career and even met his wife through welding.

“The inspector would also fail the weld for excess spatter: no spatter on the workpiece, no arc strike [marks] outside the general weld area,” Kurtzeborn said. “He was very nerve-wracking. Many welders who were certified ended up being fired or quitting.

“And I know why he was so picky. If the weld fails, it goes to the inspector who signs off on it. A lot of people got upset, but I was trying to learn from him, learn what he was looking for. And I still think about him when I weld today.

“At the end of the job he told me, ‘You are a very good welder. I can tell you are patient.’”

Kurtzeborn currently works for S.T. Metal Works Inc., a structural fabricator in Marietta, Ga., a job he took for the regular hours and limited travel. It gives him a high variety of challenging work, which he thrives on, and he also welds on-site occasionally.

On-site structural welding on big projects can be a thrill, but it also can be unpredictable. When the projects ended, he had to begin the job hunt again. Skilled welders being in high demand, his hunt was usually short and sweet, but having to hunt for a job continually wasn’t ideal for him.

But he also said that he wouldn’t be where he is today without his experience, especially at the Georgia Trade School and at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium. The trade school taught him the fundamentals of blueprint reading, basic shop practices, and set him on the path to becoming a sought-after structural welder. But he also wouldn’t be where he is today without that scrupulous inspector, the one he still thinks about while laying down beads.

Kurtzeborn is all too aware that industry needs more people like him, and it’s one reason he eventually wants to become a certified welding inspector, a welding instructor, or both. In his relatively short career, he’s seen entry-level welders and general metalworkers quit after getting their first paycheck. People come and go, and few have the patience and persistence to really learn the trade.

The problem may be that they lack the passion. They don’t look at a weld the same way Kurtzeborn does. But he doesn’t judge or point fingers. His youth makes him see the issue differently. Even Kurtzeborn, who came from a family of tradespeople, had never been exposed to welding until after high school. In fact, his high school offered no vocational training of any sort.

Once he saw welding, though, he was hooked. He worked over lunch and stayed late to learn. But if he had never witnessed welding in action, the connection would never have been made. If his friend in Florida hadn’t recommended him for a job—and if that first job hadn’t been as engaging as it was—he’d likely still be bouncing around from job to job, still feeling awkward when people ask, “So what do you do?” He now can say he’s a welder, and in one capacity or another, he likely will stay one for the rest of his life.

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