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Hard work, persistence pay off for young welder headed to WorldSkills

7 questions with Ryan Fincher, Cedartown, Ga.

Ryan Fincher of Cedartown, Ga., is the welder representing the U.S. at WorldSkills in Kazan, Russia, in August.

Good things come to those who work. They might not come right away, but they come. Just ask Ryan Fincher, 21, of Cedartown, Ga. Three years ago, he was one of the six welders competing in the AWS Pre-Trials vying to represent the U.S. at WorldSkills welding competition. But he fell short, eventually to Chandler Vincent.

He had a couple of choices. He could be content with his top 6 finish and move on with his life, or he could start the whole process over again in an effort to return to the Pre-Trial and win.

In reality, it wasn’t a choice at all. Fincher, a graduate of Georgia Northwestern Technical College (GNTC), chose to compete. In the process he quit his full-time job, became a part-time lab assistant at GNTC, and has spent every available hour under the hood ever since.

Those sacrifices have paid off, and in February 2019 Fincher won the Pre-Trial competition, solidifying his position as the U.S. representative for welding in Kazan, Russia, this coming August.

Fincher talked with The FABRICATOR® about his training regimen, the upcoming WorldSkills competition, and his future plans once he returns home from Russia.

FAB: How did you get into welding?

Fincher: My dad bought me a cheap little $150 welder while I was in middle school. When I got in high school, all my buddies were taking the welding class and they talked me into taking it too. The minute I struck my first arc, I fell in love with it.

FAB: What led you to compete in SkillsUSA?

Fincher: One of my role models, Drew Swafford. He’s a good family friend and he taught me how to play baseball when I was younger. I watched him compete in SkillsUSA when he was in high school. He won the state competition, finished 13th at nationals, and made it to the top 6 in the AWS Pre-Trial competition twice. I looked up to him, and I decided that I might as well try to do what he did and hopefully take it further.

FAB: How are you preparing for WorldSkills in August?

Three years ago, Fincher fell short of winning the AWS Pre-Trial competition. Instead of giving up, he continued training and won the competition earlier this year.

Fincher: I’ve got a lot of practice competitions on my schedule. I went to one in Germany two weeks ago, and two weeks from now I’ll go to another one in China. After I get back, I’ll spend two weeks practicing in St. Louis, and I’ll spend the entire month of July in Utah practicing. And then I’ll get to come home for a week before I leave for Russia.

But leading up to all of this I’ve been practicing six or seven days a week for 12 or 14 hours per day. It’s a big strain and it’s exhausting at times, but it’s worth it in the long run.

FAB: When you first started this process, did you have any idea about how much you’d get to travel?

Fincher: I live in a very small town. I never thought that a small-town boy like me would ever make it outside of Georgia much less the U.S. It’s been interesting to see what the competitors from other countries can do. We all want the same thing—we all want gold—but our biggest goal is to make ourselves better and make the welding industry better.

FAB: Can you explain the projects you have to complete at WorldSkills?

Fincher: We’ll have to weld a couple of different plate and pipe combinations. They provide us with a list of options, but we won’t know for sure what we’ll be doing until we get there.

We’ll have a 4-in. Sch. 80 pipe and they’ll have three different combinations that they’ll draw out of a hat that we’ll have to do. The same goes for the 10-mm plate, the 16-mm plate, and then two ½-in. fillet welds. We’ll have to use either GTAW, SMAW, GMAW, or FCAW on the plate. And then we’ll have eight hours to build a pressure vessel that has to hold 1,000 PSI, and we’ll have to use every weld process to build it.

We’ll also have an aluminum sheet metal project and a stainless steel sheet metal project. On these, all butt and corner joints must have full penetration with a single pass and full-radius corners. On the fillet welds there can’t be any burn-through, and they have to meet a specific weld size for a single pass.

FAB: Who is your go-to person when you need advice or another pair of eyes?

Fincher: Well, there’s a team of guys that do that for me. One is Matt Hayden, my high school instructor, who is also one of my very good friends. And then there’s Ray Connolly, the U.S. expert for WorldSkills, and Chandler Vincent—he’s helped me out a lot, especially when he was working with us when I was with the top 3.

FAB: What are your plans once WorldSkills is over?

Fincher: I plan to go wherever life takes me. I haven’t really thought about it a whole lot, but I do have a couple of different options in mind. I would like to continue my education and get a degree in welding engineering. I’ve also got family pushing me to start my own welding business, which is something that I’ve always wanted to do. And I’ve also got a few decent companies looking to hire me.

I’m just going to wait until everything is over and done with and then weigh my options.

Contributing Editor Amanda Carlson can be reached at amandac@thefabricator.com.

About the Author
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Amanda Carlson

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Amanda Carlson was named as the editor for The WELDER in January 2017. She is responsible for coordinating and writing or editing all of the magazine’s editorial content. Before joining The WELDER, Amanda was a news editor for two years, coordinating and editing all product and industry news items for several publications and thefabricator.com.