Welder turns hobby into business

Carl Jenkins has been welding since he was in junior high school.
"I was hooked on welding when I made a rod-iron lamp in the seventh-grade industrial arts class," recalled Jenkins, 60, who grew up in Ohio but moved to Canton three years ago.

Now, nearly 50 years later, he has turned that passion into a unique craft business.With the help of technology and his girlfriend, Mary Ann Sanderson, Jenkins has started Carl's Mobile Welding and Metal Craft Fabrication Creations.

Jenkins and Sanderson use a computer program and a plasma cutter to create custom-made works of art out of steel.They started their part-time business in 2003 with the purchase of a TorchMate CNC plasma cutter. A plasma cutter works by sending an electric arc through a gas that is passing through a constricted opening. That elevates the temperature of the gas to the point it becomes plasma, which is used to make clean, precise cuts.

Read the article - are you interested in turning welding into your career, if it isn't already? I suspec that there is a good niche for this kind of service...