Adams Welding

For Tim Adams, owner of Adams Welding and Manufacturing in Stafford, donating steel for a class project at Oakfield-Alabama High School is a chance to help students discover a possible career.

For the students, it's a chance to explore a trade and learn new skills.

For the Genesee County Fair, they'll receive new gate racks.

You might call it a win-win-win.

"Any chance kids have for an opportunity to learn a skill or an opportunity to if something is something they want to do in a future career, whether it be welding, electrical, plumbing, or carpentry, any kind of skilled trade, I don't see that as a bad thing," Adams said. "Perhaps they will fall in love with it and like it."

While not necessarily calling it a career just yet, Cierra Tiede said she went from being fearful of welding to really enjoying it.

"It was pretty cool," Tiede said. "I've done another welding projects before, but this was a bigger scale and it was cool to see it all come together in the end."

Instructor Todd Hofheins said it was a great project for the students to learn how to work together as a team, to divide up their labor, coordinate, and ensure all of the five racks are uniform in size and quality.

"The racks need to hold close to 2,000 pounds so they've got to be done properly," Hofheins said.

Without the donation of steel from Adams, the project wouldn't have been possible, Hofheins said.

Adams Welding & Fabrication hosted a customer appreciate/grand opening/sign unveiling party today at its location in Stafford. Standing with the glistening stainless steel sign are Tim Adams and Steve Foster.

Below, the celebration cake designed to look like a welding machine.

Steve Foster, of Adams Welding, has a new side business -- turning metal left over from commercial jobs, and maybe mixing in some horseshoes they buy, to create lawn art and other household decorative items.

Foster and Tim Adams were in front of their shop on Main Road, Stafford, this afternoon selling the items, though they've also started attending various festivals in the area. They've done two so far.

It was a friend in the Chamber of Commerce who suggested the sideline, Foster said. 

"He said, you have all this extra metal, why don't you start making something out of it," Foster said. "It would go to the scrap yard otherwise."