My Internship Experience

Week 1

My first week with my mentor Garrett Goodwin has been nothing but a blast. He is an artist and custom fabricator who does all sorts of different things from glass blowing to welding. We have worked on so many different projects already. This week alone I went to my first job site and got to see the start to finish of creating a custom hand railing, we took measurements at the job site and decided on the materials that we were going to use.I was able to blow glass at his home workshop and make myself a few custom glass accessories. I am beginning to learn different methods of thinking that were outside the box and to work efficiently, as well as working with his crew. I have already learned so many new useful skills that I plan on using in my own career.

Week 2

At the start of the week we continued to work on the hand railing

. We brought our materials and all of our tools to the job site. We mocked up what everything was going to look like, next we tack welded everything together on site which took up most of our time. After that we took each railing back to our shop and welded them completely.

Later that week we started on another project, a broken water pump cage. We uninstalled it By cutting it out of the ground and loading it into the truck. Then we took it back to the shop and piece by piece welded it back together. This was the first project that Garrett let me do completely on my own. It was really nice to have the freedom to experiment and try different things.

Week 3

At the beginning of the week We took our finished railing to the powder coaters. Next we started on the wooden hand railing, which consisted of sticking two pieces of wood together. After that we sanded it down to the shape and smoothness that we wanted. Lastly we stained all 3 of the railing to match the color of our clients flooring.

End of Week 3 we finished the cage. I had to cut some new pieces of metal for two of the side posts, as well as an entirely new frame because the original one had been rusted out and need to be replaced. After I got everything assembled and ready to go I repainted it green and set it out to dry. The next day we took it back to the lady’s property and installed it pretty quickly. After this we picked up our railing from the powder coater and prepared for the

install.

Week 4

There was a lot to do in the last week of internship. We had our install day on our railing. We had to drill custom holes in the flooring to fit it, as well as fit the wood handrail on top of it. it didn't go as smoothly as we wanted it so we had to make some modifications. The biggest scare was our railing was too short and wouldn't pass code. so we had to take it back to the shop and weld a small piece to the base to make it a little bit taller.

We were very relieved to finish that install, it was very stressful but it showed me what real hard-working determination looks like. The next project that we worked on was a mural for San Diego State at the new stadium. We made a mold out of foam and wood and prepared to park concrete. We had to find the right ratio of concrete and color to make sure it was what our client wanted. We mixed up a big batch of concrete in a wheelbarrow and poured it into our mold. Lastly, when our mold dried we left space to put in a tile mosaic.