Making metal fabricating “cool”

There's nothing cooler than seeing a truly skilled craftsman do his job.

I’m writing this the day that news of Anthony Bourdain’s suicide was announced to the world. The former chef, author, television personality, and raconteur hanged himself in France, where his show, “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown,” was filmed.

I’m kind of bummed about the news. Bourdain has always been a favorite of mine and others. He blew the roof off the restaurant kitchen back in 2000 with the publication of Kitchen Confidential, a recounting of his path to becoming a chef and a transparent look at restaurant life. Didn’t read it? Here’s a synopsis: A great chef is an artist, but he or she also is a pirate, leading a ragtag assortment of immigrants, felons, and other would-be artists on a nightly journey to please and plunder. Oh yeah, Bourdain also offered up some simple hints about commercial cooking, such as thinking twice before enjoying the Sunday brunch.

As he went on to establish his career on television, you couldn’t deny that he was passionate about interesting people and food. He felt just as comfortable chatting with a Michelin-rated chef as he did with a matriarch of a family in a war-torn region, who was making a simple soup. His humility showed in the way he would celebrate a five-star meal just as he would a simple family supper, where he was treated as a foreign dignitary.

He understood the hard work, skill, creativity, and passion required to run a successful kitchen and respected those same traits that helped to keep families together in the most stressful environments. He did for the restaurant trade what Julia Child did for the at-home cook. And he did it against a backdrop of rock ’n’ roll, cold beer, and a love for good company. He was cool.

I ruminated on this very point at lunch the day of Bourdain’s death. Much of what I write about and what our parent organization, FMA, supports is centered around promoting manufacturing as a career choice. With that comes a lot of conversation about making the trades “cool.”

Then I think about several of the characters who have been thrust into the spotlight during my days with FMA attempting to do just that: John Ratzenberger, former sitcom star and Pixar mainstay who wants the trades to be celebrated like they were when he was growing up in Bridgeport, Conn., as a kid; actor Mike Rowe, the longtime host of “Dirty Jobs” who is now a vocal supporter of the trades and vocational education; and motorcycle builder Jesse James, a frequent host of different types of fabricating-reality shows. I’d never doubt the passion these folks have for manufacturing, but I associate them with television first and manufacturing second. They strike me more as stars as opposed to true representatives of the real world. It’s like the difference between Aaron Kaufman and Richard Rawlings on Discovery Channel’s “Fast N’ Loud”; Kaufman was all about the build, and Rawlings was all about the theatrics needed to build an audience.

I truly believe to sell manufacturing as cool you need realism and knowledge. Forgive me for the shameless self-promotion, but our contributing bloggers Josh Welton and Nick Martin are perfect examples. Welton is a welder who has worked in a production environment and a prototyping lab, and he’s got a passion for bad-ass wheels and metal art. His recent takes on life inside the United Auto Workers and trying to be a part of the Detroit revival have been must-reads. He’s even shared the tales of other welders trying to make manufacturing great again. Martin has shared what life is like in a shop, in this case Barnes MetalCrafters in Wilson, N.C. He’s talked about the passing of a former co-worker, having scrap metal stolen from the shop lot, and even trying to decide upon music choices for the shop floor. I just write about metal fabricating. These two folks live it.

Of course, the many people working in metal fabricating shops that want to tell you about the challenge of trying to cut a part to a certain tolerance or the amount of manual welding put into a large fabrication fit the bill. They are in metal fabricating because they are problem solvers with a talent for doing what most can’t. They leave the business—and the accompanying spotlight—to those that seek it out.

Deciding what’s “cool” is subjective, obviously. Committees that create television shows or line up speakers for industry events keep trying to persuade others that they know who can put a modern face on manufacturing. I’m skeptical. I think committees in charge of deciding what is cool are decidedly uncool. (I think Bourdain would have appreciated that last sentence.)