I am a huge fan of my fathers’ history lessons and one of my favorites is the story of Belmont Smith of Eaton, Ohio.  Belmont was from a nice farming community and when he headed off to college,  he met his sweetheart and they became homecoming king and queen.   Upon graduation he asked her to be his wife. They went back to Eaton, Ohio, had a wedding and went off on their honeymoon.  Upon returning she asked him “how are we going to make a living?” and Belmont said there is this new technology called a welding machine and I’m going to go around the countryside calling on the blacksmith trade and sell welding machines.  This is a changing technology that will take the blacksmiths into the modern era with a machine.

Monday morning came and Belmont loaded up his brand new 1921 Ford pickup truck with his welding machines and made his way into the countryside.  After a few months of demonstrating his welding machine, the blacksmiths were not impressed.  To change the methodology, Belmont went past the blacksmith shops and set up his own welding shop in the middle of town.  Business started slow but after a couple of weeks the farmers would come in with their equipment to be welded and Belmont would fulfill the services.  After a couple of weeks a blacksmith showed up and asked Belmont what his plans were.  Belmont replied that he really liked it here and that on Sunday he was going to return with his wife and look for a house to buy.  Belmont went on to say that he thought it would be a great place to raise a family.

The following week business was booming for Belmont and his wife was looking for a house.  On Saturday eleven blacksmiths showed up and asked what it would take for Belmont to NOT set up shop in their town.  Belmont said that if each of the fellas would buy a welding machine he would be on his way.  With that, each of the eleven blacksmiths purchased a new welding machine and that began the slow change from using blacksmiths to forge metal to the new technology of welding.

We all know the welding industry didn’t really take off until WWII and has been a dominant industry for 100 years.  And now we’ve reached a new era of metal joining where instead of using welding we use composites. 

For our October and November newsletters we have a two part series on using Belzona to join metal in lieu of welding.  We hope this is informative for you and trust you will take a look at this no-so-new process that is becoming common in industry.

Stephanie Rumford
srumford@rumfordgroup.com
937-435-4650
RumfordGroup.com