Amanda Wikoff
The welding classes at Sandpoint High School give students the opportunity to learn valuable skills and apply those skills on projects in the shop and around the community.

“Welding three first semester is just refreshing the guys on what they learned last year and expanding on that, but all the welding they learned in welding two they get to further in projects and apply it,” the welding teacher, Mr. Stark, said.

“Every student gets one choice project per semester, so they can choose pretty much anything they want within reason as long as they get the material.”

Many of the projects the welding students work on come from the community. “They come up with a design and tell us what they want and we make it happen,” Stark said.

This year the Welding three students will be working on constructing a car trailer to earn money for the shop as well as some softball storage pieces.

“[Building] the truck trailer will occupy about six to eight guys for almost the full second semester. Not too many people can work on it, so right now our late is kind of open. We have a few things planned, but we’ll fill it up quick,” Stark said.

In the past, the Welding three class has done many projects varying from simple to complex, including redoing the welding room’s ventilation system, making the benches in the mezzanine, and building an aluminum drift boat. “Someone came to us last year with plans for the boat and said ‘can you guys do this?’ and we said yeah,” Mr. Stark said. “We just take on bigger projects, like anything the community needs or anything that an outside source comes to us with.”

The Welding two and three classes will work together again to make the Valentine’s Day roses starting shortly after winter break. Each student from the upper welding classes will make two roses — one to keep and one to sell for the class.

“It’s great because we make enough money to buy everybody in our club shirts and enough money to buy tools or whatever equipment we need [with the money from the roses]. We needed new welding helmets, so I just bought a few of those,” Stark said.

“They’re pretty talented. I’ve got some good guys who can do a lot. It’s fun,” Stark said.