2012 Liberty Bell

[Mike Bradbury]

My second job is a welding instructor for a local college here in So. Cal. We enter the Martin Luther King Jr. Parade each year and the school builds a themed float. For years it was the drama club that would build the decor out of paper mache and the like. It usually was pretty embarrassing but the admin staff seemed to be OK with the effort so on it went.

Last year they had an idea to have the am welding students build replica of the Rosa Parks bus. It came out good enough to get a first place ribbon and to really impress the president of the college. Now for some reason there has been a rift between the am and pm welding classes, and we (the pm class) were not invited to join in on any of the fun.

This year they asked the pm class to make the focal point of the parade which was a full scale replica of the Liberty Bell. This was a daunting task being that we are a welding class not a fabrication class. I have years of fab experience but 98% of my class had absolutely no experience in anything other than welding. The lab has limited forming tools which included a 70 ton press a slip roll and a CNC plasma cutter. I had to devise a plan to not only bend the metal in the shape of the Bell but also do it in such a way that students with limited skills could pull it off and the end result represented the school well.

I will stop talking and let the pictures tell the rest.