Sturgeon County students unleashed a metallic monstrosity last weekend to win their school $1,000.
Sturgeon Composite welding students Abigail Kondrat, Rylan Quilichini, and Ashley Verge took first place in the fifth annual CLAC Career Development College Wicked Welding competition held Oct. 28, earning $1,000 for their school’s welding program.
The contest, held for the first time since 2019, brought some 70 people to the CLAC Welding Training Centre in Edmonton to see who could weld the most horrifying Halloween-themed sculpture in six hours.
The contest is meant to encourage students to pursue careers in welding, said Brad Bent, the president of CLAC Career Development College. This year’s contest saw eight teams judged based on safety, teamwork, sportsmanship, presentation, creativity, and welding skills, with the top team taking home welding helmets and $1,000 for their school’s welding program. Past contests have seen students forge spooky skeletons, iron spiders, and other recyclable revenants.
“They’re large creations,” Bent said.
“Some will have to be taken out with a forklift.”
Sturgeon Composite welding teacher Lucas Case said this event was more about creativity than skill compared to events like Skills Canada. It was also more spontaneous, as competitors don’t get to do practice runs.
“They’re thrown right into this.”
Arise, Jack-O-Stein!
Kondrat, Quilichini, and Verge made up one of the two Sturgeon Composite teams in the contest and the only one to finish in the top three. They dubbed their winning sculpture “Jack-O-Stein” — a murderous jack-in-the-box made from springs, bolts, railroad spikes, and twisted metal.
Verge, whose father is a welder, said she sketched the initial concept for the sculpture in about two seconds during English class. In terms of its backstory, Jack-O-Stein was likely the result of some kind of biowarfare experiment gone wrong.
“The head is from The Nightmare before Christmas,” Verge said, while the overall jack-in-the-box shape was just a random idea they had.
“We tried to make it look like it was a creature trying to defend itself,” she continued, so they covered its box with bolts to serve as spikes.
Kondrat said the most difficult part of the sculpture to make was its round head. She used a blowtorch and pliers to craft its jagged teeth, and a lot of hammering to bend its pieces into shape.
The head bobs and weaves atop a large suspension spring, which the team accidentally discovered was covered with a combustible coating.
“At times when me and Rylan, when we tried welding it, some parts caught on fire, so we went, ‘Oh no!’ and had to blow it out,” Verge said.
The second Sturgeon Composite team crafted a mimic, which is a man-eating treasure chest from Dungeons and Dragons. The metal monster featured teeth made from broken files, horns and a tongue made from matrixes of bolts and washers, and some cute, shiny birds to eat.
Other sculptures in the competition included a steel lumberjack, a copper-wire-haired banshee ascending from a well, and a six-foot-tall coffin with LED lighting and a metal skeleton wielding an angle grinder punching through the lid.
Verge said she was shocked her team took first place.
“We’re all very proud of ourselves, that’s for sure,” she said, adding she hoped to take part in the contest again next year.
Case said the two Sturgeon Composite sculptures will go on display at the school.
