welcome to whale.com today we have a new co-host that i'm going to introduce
hi my name is lynette and i'm glad to be
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here
what's your story in the welding how did you get into it all right well um first
off i love working with my hands i used to work in warehouses about 10 years and then i decided
to do a little different and go in fitness well when i first moved to florida i decided i want
to get a trade that i feel like someone average person couldn't do right you know and i feel like
i wanted to do something i felt was complex and will probably make me more money
so i went to the um library and i ended up seeing a poster about becoming a weld or fabricator and
things of that nature so i decided to go to career source and decided to take a welding course and i
was the only woman there wow but i also became foreign the first a few weeks that i was there
you know and it seemed like it was natural and when i started welding i just loved it i loved the
idea of making things and i guess i just love that idea of how i felt in my hands and i was sold ever
since that's a cool aspect though you know that's really cool especially the trade level you know
what i'm saying so you know a lot of people that get into welding the some of them just want to
they don't know the level that they want to get into but obviously you knew your vision so oh
yeah you know i mean that's great i love the idea that i guess we're building something and that we
build america you know a lot of people don't even know about well well i didn't know about
welding right that's cool so tell me about the show that you wrong okay the toughest nail show
i want to hear this and how you like the show okay so toughest nails uh aired on cbs it's still aries
on cbs going into season three it's a show about blue collar workers it took 12 different blue
collar workers a firefighters iron workers welders uh even airplane techs or mechanics things of that
nature and they put us in a setting where we did other blue-collar jobs that were not of
our own it basically allowed america to see some of the trades that people do that you just don't
even realize like when you walk across the roads or these buildings they don't understand every
aspect of what people are doing and how dangerous they are and how cool they are they are and most
times you don't actually have to have a college degree and get a whole bunch of student loans to
be in these type of fields that's interesting so it was it was actually an awesome situation right
so do you like the experience on the show i gained a family i mean really yeah it was it was cool it
gave you the opportunity to do so many different fields that i mean you don't usually get a chance
to do right i mean go up different uh fire poles and come down buildings and worry about firing
lines it was awesome that's pretty neat though so what's the most rewarding part of your career
um i guess the most rewarding part of my career is me being able to say that i built something
that um right and that things that are being moved or recycled are are being moved because of me i'm
in one of the steps that it goes through to be able to get the work done so i i feel like we
build america right that's really cool then so what's what's been your most exciting product
you ever worked on um i guess it would have to be when i made a water tank it was awesome
to me because you know of course water tanks you don't want the water to come out right you
want to make sure your wells are correctly done and you steal everything correctly to make sure
it's watertight right so just from sheets of metal into this huge uh tank it was awesome i mean from
scratch fabrication straight to uh pouring water in and never having to hold it it's a beautiful
thing especially every time i would see it it's a neat project definitely to see it come you know
come alive really absolutely from nothing to something exactly something they use every
day no you know when people use it they don't think about the idea of how much time it took
my hands and hard work you know and without that then it wouldn't even be that your knowledge and
everything else that goes along with it that's cool so what's been your toughest welding job
oh man they're all tough yeah they are i guess um two of them i guess one was when we were trying
to build a wall um from allowing the metal to recycle metal falling into the tampa bay
so you know sitting on the outside of the wall on on the wood trying to weld you know worried
about following the water yeah yeah was one but i think the other one was going up conveyor belts
uh 60 feet in the air you know holding on right and trying to weld over a belt and it's swaying
because it's so high up and you can see down and yeah you know it's it's all the variables there
absolutely then it's a little cooler up there right so yeah it was i think that one was the
yeah so who's been the most influential person in your career so far um i would have to say um um
it was a co-worker named arnie he took me under his wing he's from sweden and he used to be an
underwater welder he's welded uh so many different continents and he just took me under his wing and
just taught me so much and i mean he didn't see me um he saw him as an equal and i appreciated
that especially in the blue collar uh industry and anything that he knew he was willing to give
me as a as knowledge and knowledge his power so right for this man to take me under his wing and
give me as much power as possible makes you feel a lot more comfortable absolutely absolutely that's
great that y'all jailed like that yes and he because you know he's out in the workforce area oh
absolutely it's challenging and so are the people so so what would you say to someone considering
a career in welding what would you you know someone straight out of high school or another
woman you know considering a career change what would you say to them to like encourage them to
to get in this trade i would say go for it first off as i said you can become a welder even
straight out of high school you don't have to have a college degree you don't have to go into debt
you can take a long-term situation in two years or go as far as having a master's degree in welding
if you like or you can go to career source where it's only six weeks so you can even go
directly to the source and they will teach you because right now they have issues where younger
people aren't coming and the older ones that are there are kind of more set in their ways with the
older ways of things and they weren't always the most safest way to do things so they're
more willing to get someone who's way more open-minded and has a blank mind so they can
feel it with the correct way to do things and the money is great my first year into being
a welder i bought my house and paid all my debt off and i mean it changed my life financially um
more than i could never expect that's great that's really great you know so do you and your children
have any interest in welding or yes my my oldest son thinks he might want to do a little welding i
have a welding machine at home and honestly i feel like even if there's something that my children
decide not to go into permanently it's always great to have a trade that you can always back
come back on exactly welding gives great money and the thing is when things are going left in another
trade you can always go back to welding i have never seen where you can't get a job in welding
if someone says they can't get a job welding then they can't be a good welder yeah they're
not either not a good welder they're not looking right they must be banned or something yeah you're
right though i mean i've never had a problem finding work exactly so it's always something
you can fall back on and you didn't have to go in debt free and that's a trade you can never take
away honestly you know i gotta just try to strike a couple more times and you'll get it back in here
you know we had a great conversation you tell me a little bit about yourself and i hope to see you
more on the channel all right i hope so too and i hope to get to know you more because from what
i understand you'll master weld over here oh yeah yeah i hope you can teach me a lot i'll teach you
everything i know well i see that's great we're gonna be best of friends that's it there you
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