Baffling

The photos show the before and after - actually the after and before - of the baffle on the front of one of the mower decks at the new gig. I'm guessing someone ran into an immoveable object at a fairly good rate of speed and bent/twisted the baffle. The baffle is held on with carriage bolts and lock nuts with no room to get a ratchet on them. Of course that didn't really matter because most of the bolts started turning before I could get the nuts off. I had to cut them off with a cut-off wheel that had just enough diameter to get up in there. Once I got the piece off, I brought it home to straighten it out. Six inch vise welded to a steel column, 36" pipe wrench and a sledge hammer made short work of getting it straightened out. Installing was a bit of a struggle, though. One of the bolts was a pisser to get in due to the limited space but once I got that one in, the rest was a straight forward bolt-up.

The question here is, where would you take this to get it repaired if you didn't have a cracker-jack handyman at your beck and call? Take it to the dealer? Take it to a welding shop? Take it to the dealer and he farms it out to a welding shop. Knowing what would be involved after looking at it, I'd head to the local repair/welding shop even though there would be no welding involved. Out here in farm country there are a few general repair shops that could probably tackle this type of work. However, where do the guys capable of doing this learn their skills?

When I taught at the high school I tried to give the students a wide range of jobs to work on, whether it was a repair such as this one, or fabricating jobs. We rarely did anything close to this at the college even though all of us had the talent and experience to handle it. The biggest impediment to our taking on outside jobs was the lack of time. There was barely enough time to teach the actual welding skills necessary to prepare them for their welding certifications. This is one of the complaints employers have with tech school graduates. They can do OK in the welding booth but throw them out in the field with less than ideal conditions or encounter something that requires repair work or know what to do when the boss says "dog it into place" when there's a bit of miss alignment on a butt joint and they're lost.

There are solutions out there, most of which require more employer input. Serving on advisory committees, offering internships, apprenticeships, part-time after school and summer work, etc. There's definitely a need for people with these skills. Repairing a damaged mower is not very glamorous work, but there's plenty of this type of work out there. Something to think about during this season of graduations.