ARC MAGAZINE

The Practical Dimensions of Metal

Sometimes getting an education in welding isn’t necessarily about AWS certification or a two-year degree from a trade school. Sometimes the first lessons need to be baby steps: how to fix your fence, how to build a functional corner table, how to craft a decorative sculpture for your garden.

That’s where Molten Metal Works comes in. Since 2009, the converted warehouse space in Los Angeles has provided welding instruction and shop access to students from all over the region. MMW offers one-on-one instruction and group classes seven days a week year-round, ranging from one- and two-day sessions focusing on specific techniques to six-week project based courses.

“The thing I try to do most is demystify the process and show people that it’s not hard,” says MMW owner and founder Matt Jones, who teaches kinetic sculpture, a course that counterbalances some of the more technical skills covered by the shop’s other three instructors. “There are definitely aspects of welding that are difficult — like if you’re working at the certification level, doing pipeline or overhead. But we’re not doing that kind of stuff. We’re building furniture and sculpture. That kind of welding doesn’t have to be that scary, and it doesn’t have to be that difficult. Anybody can really do it.”

Jones himself started welding in 2000, during his undergraduate years at Dartmouth College, where he double majored in studio art and psychology. After some coursework in welding and electronics at Central New Mexico Community College, he earned an MFA from Stanford University, then worked a couple amusement park sculpting gigs at Universal Orlando and Disneyland.

MMW’s earliest course offerings were at an L.A. art gallery called Machine Project. After the first year, Jones moved the operation to its current location. Seven years later, he finds that his open shop sessions are just as popular as the courses themselves.

“That’s especially true in Los Angeles, where not everybody has a garage or other space where they can weld,” says Jones. “We’re providing a space for them to use the tools and get whatever they need to do the work.”

Jim Dawson, a semi-retired political science professor, drives from one end of L.A. to the other — sometimes an hour and a half one-way — to get to MMW, where he’s taken several courses from Jones and other instructors over the past three years, including introductory MIG and TIG welding, intermediate MIG welding and oxyacetylene sculpting.

“Metal and steel might seem kind of intimidating to some people,” says Dawson. “Something impossible or unforgiving, almost unapproachable. But I’ve learned from Matt and the rest of the instructors that you can take metal and make it into something interesting. It’s more fluid than people might think. It’s adaptable, you can customize it to your will, and you can make it into something that reflects your aesthetic sense.”

But the gratification comes not just from the metal or the project at hand, says Dawson. “It’s also the positive reinforcement you get when you realize you can try something, you can do it, and you can have fun doing it,” he adds. “It becomes almost addictive, not just because of the material itself, but because of the sense of empowerment it gives you.