At Fincantieri Bay Shipbuilding employees work around the clock to create and repair these massive floating vessels. To understand how it all works, I met supervisor of skilled trades, Joel Kaczmarowski. Shipbuilding is an ancient trade that we now do with modern techniques, modern equipment. The science that goes into welding and metallurgy and steel fitting is pretty intense. It's fun to see that every day. There's a lot of moving pieces. We receive raw steel from the mill. Comes in on trucks.
We start by
all the plate steel that comes in, it all gets blasted and primed. After that, it moves through our factory where parts are cut out of that plate. They're formed, they're made. After that, it moves to assembly. We sometimes take thousands of parts and move them and build them into sections. We take those sections, move them out to our graving dock where we might put two, sometimes three of them together. Modular parts of our ships that we build. We set those down on the dock. After that process, after they're all-welded, fit up, painted, that floats out of there almost a complete vessel. Exciting to be a part of! Exciting does describe the atmosphere throughout the yard including in the building where I met welder Gabriel Host-Jablonski. The entire nature of my job is to take two pieces of metal and make them one, which is really great because even when we mess up "a lot," we just cut them apart and make them one again. Oh, nice! - It is actually very satisfying. With that, it was time for sparks to fly.
welding gun's electric arc sizzles
We start by
Oh, wow! Is the metal still solidifying, or is it still kind of in a liquid state? No, it's going to be rock solid now, but it's very, very hot. What we've done is just pumped a whole lot of energy into it through the metal, essentially fusing it all together. From welders to steel fitters, satisfaction in the work is something I hear throughout the shipyard including from Kylie Owens. I am a steel fitter. I tack, torch, a little bit of everything for the welders, put the boat together, before you get full...
Angela
Full assemblage?
Kylie
Full like that, yeah. I kind of do all that stuff so. Nice!
birds call "mew, keow"
Kylie
So, how long have you been doing steel fitting? Two years. - Two years. How did you get into it? Believe it or not, I was working at McDonald's, and I was kind of bored and wanted to learn something new. And a buddy of mine told me to apply here. And I did, and I've been here ever since. So, how has it been? It's a lot different. It takes a lot of physical differences to do this job compared to others. No matter how tough the job may get, one thing everyone has in common is a love for what they do. Some of the ships we work on, they were built long before I started my career. And the ships we're building now, they'll be sailing the Great Lakes long after I retire. So, it's cool to be a part of that. I love working here. For me, as a welder, I get a variety of different work and what I can say is most of us really enjoy this work because it's physical, it's honest, and very proud of this work. We show up, work hard every day, and we do like the whistle at the end of the day to let us know it's time to go home sometimes, too. But I think for most of us the grandiose nature of our job, to create something so big makes us feel like little kids playing on a boat.
ship horn blares
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