Do any of you know anything about the Tulsa Welding School. Good/bad or information.

Go be a helper on a pipeline and get paid while you learn

Go work with some mill wrights or at a quarry for a year or two and you'll be able to weld anywhere.

I live near there. All I know is that they advertise all the damn time! I haven't heard anything bad about it though.

Schools are good and may teach you basics, but you won't learn how to weld until you do it. There's no substitution for experience.

about a year or so ago i was thinkin about playing around with welding and wasnt sure where to start. do your research online and figure out weither ya wanna MIG, TIG, or Stick weld. this will depend on what your looking to weld. next get ya a machine, id recommend finding a lincoln or miller, a pile of cheap scrap you may even have laying around and start playing with it. Personally i learned to TIG weld on an old lawnmower deck i had. i cut a bunch of slits all over and welded em back together trying different things till i found what worked. theres a guy on youtube that has some videos with great info in em. search " Welding Tips and Tricks " and check out his uploads. If your looking to make a career out of it id definitely recommend a school that offers training and Certification upon completion. That certification is usually the key to getting yourself a decent paying job.

We looked into it for our son, seemed to be excellent setup (we have a small welding shop)
You actually weld for an average of 35 to 40 hours a week then do classwork, a lot different than the way local trade schools do

They have people contacting them for graduates all the time, supposedly you are trained on most everything at some level when you finish

Make sure they teach all processes and teach pipe welding. You don't want to be limited to just one process.

Stick and tig is really all you need, I've only been on a few mig jobs and it was flux core.

If you wanna weld pipe you need to learn
6010
7010
8010
7018
8018 rods

Most of the time it's 6010 root and fill it up with 8010

Then on the plant side it's gunna be 70 or 80 wire root and hot pass with 70/8018 the rest of the way out most of the time (don't do much)


School will teach you how to weld a pipe, but it wont teach you to weld with a bad fitter, won't teach you how to pass a branch and a bellhole test (99% of the time that's what the test is) wont teach you how and what to do to stay alive on a live line/hot weld, in school the weld will be nice and fit up perfect! That's not how it is in real life lol

Go to a local contractor and get a helper job, do everything the welder tells you to and in a few jobs you might find a welder you can stay with, bring your hood and watch as much as you can ask questions too. School won't even come close to what a good welder can teach you!

^^this


and i weld for a living.

I looked into going up there after high school. I researched the curriculum they have compared to community colleges. Lots of good community college programs out there but I chose Tyler Junior College.

Back then (6 years ago) TJC was pretty much the same curriculum just a little longer but cheaper. I'm very satisfied with the education I got from there and now fortunate enough to work there as an instructor.

I have friends that went to Tulsa and they learned the exact same processes but spent a lot more money. The length of time is shorter so they didn't get as much time for each process as they would have preferred to.

Since I went to work at TJC 4 years ago we have people on waiting lists in case someone drops every semester.

And I agree that school doesn't teach you a lot of those things yall are talking about because I've learned a lot watching guys and learning on my own.

But at the same time there are a lot of fair welders that think they are hot shit and have a lot of bad habits that if you did what they taught you then will get you run off of a lot of good jobs which then gives you a bad rep.

There's advantages and disadvantages to everything we choose

Another thing to remember, and I'm a welder so I can say this. No welder is as good as he thinks he is. It's the truth,you will find out once you get on a job with some people that claim to be "jam up".

Being a helper is the best way to learn any trade. Go in a few jobs and bust your ass do everything they tell you to do, someone will pick you up if your a good hand. Don't go to school!!! Make money. You gotta no what's going on around you on the pipeline or you will get hurt

I'm new here but I'm not new to welding. Been doing it for 33+ years now. I got my training in the USAF and don't regret one day of it. Back in 1979 they taught you Oxy/Acetylene welding and brazing, SMAW, GTAW and Cryogenic Soldering, as well as heat Treating and Electro Plating.

They have added GMAW some time ago and rolled the welding into Machinist/Welder training.

You get trained, housed, clothed and fed as well as getting a paycheck. You weld in Manned Flight hardware as well as Support Equipment. There are many different alloys in a jet engine and you will learn to weld on all of them. Titanium, Hastelloy, Inconel, Waspalloy, Magnesium, and aluminum.

The military isn't for everybody, I understand that, but it wouldn't hurt to give it a look.

If you get the chance to learn DCEN on aluminum, take it. Aerospace uses it almost exclusively in it's fusion welding process. I welded with that process quite a bit as well as Variable Pulse Plasma Arc (automated) when I was on the Space Shuttle program for the N,A.S.A. and The Boeing Delta rockets programs.

Now I mostly weld Friction Stir process For Boeing at a N.A.S.A. facility.

Good luck with your training, no matter which path you take.