What The World Needs Now

What the world needs now is definitely love and welders. Lots of good welders.

The following is from The View From The Porch:

One of the challenges in ramping up tank production is a shortage of trained welders—a problem that also constrains shipbuilding. Many of these welding jobs are part of the unionized workforce, which makes it harder for manufacturers to grow their workforces quickly. Specifically, unionization inhibits the manufacturers from immediately doubling the salaries of the welders without affecting the wages of others in the factories. Within the defense sector we need to treat welders the same way the private sector treats star programmers: by paying them extremely well. We cannot afford to have trained welders take jobs at Walmart or as forklift supervisors because they can earn more money. If anything, we should be incentivizing more forklift supervisors to become welders. Welding is a key national security manufacturing task.

See this old M103 heavy tank?

It's kind of an extreme example, but it's basically made of three big-ass castings, two of which, welded together, form the hull. The hull is 22 feet long. That's a big casting and a lot of welding; you don't make those from a manufacturing base that's otherwise capable of making only cookware and kitchen appliances.

A couple of things here. First off, the first part of the above is a quote from a quote, so you're missing the lead-in. However, I just wanted to focus on the need for more qualified welders, both to make tanks for the military and ship building. I don't know exactly what the qualifications are for welders on the tank line, but I do have a pretty good idea what the test is for ship building. It's basically the same as the AWS test for structural steel - all position unlimited thickness with whatever process they're using, which would be some type of flux cored wire process.


When I first started teaching, just a few blocks from the school was the Blaw-Knox factory. As the description of the photo states, three big-ass castings were welded together to form the hull. Several of my students worked there after graduation. At that time most of the welding was with the stick welding process using welding rods about the size of small baseball bats. Besides having to pass a welding test, because it was for the military, drug and background checks were required, if I remember correctly. I would assume the same thing still applies. So, in addition to finding skilled people, they have to find people who can pass the background and drug test. And as the quote mentions, they can't give the welders a raise without giving everyone else a raise as well. I'm sure they all could use a raise, so I wouldn't mind my tax dollars being spent for that reason, rather than some of the things the federal government wastes money on.


I don't know how many tanks need to be produced but from what I've been reading, none of the branches of the military are ready to fight a war which might be necessary real soon what with our involvement in the Ukraine versus Russia thing. I don't think those knuckleheads in Washington have any idea what they're doing. If you can't get tanks and ships built due to lack of skilled people during peace time, probably shouldn't be looking for trouble. Especially when you're 31 trillion dollars in debt.