Only 5.3% of US welders are women. After years as a professor, I became one

I just bought a gas lens set for my welder and it included cups called the BBW and the FUPA. When I was taking MIG classes, they had a jar of anti-spatter gel called cooter snot tip dip. Can’t imagine why women are so rare in the profession…

I’ve been a tourist in a number of different trades, and welding beats them all for hostility and resistance to safety practices. You get called a pussy for wearing a mask, but of course the manganese fumes from welding steel will give you brain damage. I’ve been advised to run cutoff wheels far above their rated RPM, which risks explosion. It’s sad because welding might as well some combination of knitting and calligraphy but with metal. It’s great.

This was my experience exactly working on a welding crew when I was 19. We worked 12s 6AM-6PM (or 6PM-6AM if on a night shift) and often worked longer. The longest shift I worked was nearly 20hr, which was great because every hour past 8hr was worth 1.5x.

"Safety" was "watch the fuck out and don't get hurt." I didn't have access to a respirator even if I had known enough to want one.

I did have enough sense to listen to the old guys who said your body can't take that kind of work for more than about 15yr without starting to break down, and that I should go to engineering school instead.

There was one (1) female welder that crew of at least 20 and she put up with a ton of overtly horrible stuff. She was also incredibly good at welding, I saw her once burn an entire 7018 rod without looking, no helmet, just by feel, and the slag came off in one piece.