Welding the way to a new beginning

Michael Miller went from nonwelder to a SkillsUSA National Champion metal sculptor in a little more than a decade.

Sometimes a person’s true calling isn’t obvious at 22 years old. For Michael Miller of Austin, Texas, it wasn’t until age 37 that he found what he loved and what he was good at.

Looking back, it’s almost comical that Miller didn’t even know how to weld 11 years ago. Now he is a lead welder at EVS Precision Metal Solutions Texas Division, a precision metal fabrication company; he’s working to earn a degree in metal sculpture; and he won the gold medal at the National SkillsUSA competition in Louisville, Ky. in the metal sculpture category earlier this year.

From Odd Jobs to TIG Welder to Metal Sculptor

How does one go from nonwelder to a SkillsUSA gold medalist metal sculptor in a little more than a decade?

It started with an interest in art. He’s always done sketches on his own, mostly just for himself. His professional experience is all over the board. He spent time as a technical writer and a car salesman, among other things, but nothing was ever quite the right fit.

“Roughly 10 or 11 years ago I had one of those

moments in my life where I was starting over again. I had made some bad choices in life and found myself in a position where I didn’t have anything,” Miller explained.

He connected with a guy who had a small welding shop and built custom gates, handrails, and fences. Miller learned how to weld and create designs on the computer, and how to cut them out on the shop’s computer numerically controlled plasma cutting machine.

A few years later he went out on his own as a rig welder, but he found that line of work very inconsistent. So he moved on to building dirt-track cars as an apprentice under Wayne Walker of WS Chassis, which is where he discovered a passion for gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW).

“I fell in love with it. Up until that point, all I had ever done was shielded metal arc welding or gas metal arc welding. The precision of GTAW really fascinated me,” Miller said.

After spending several years working odd welding jobs, he eventually landed at EVS Precision Metal

Miller immediately fell in love with GTAW welding and currently works as a lead welder at EVS Precision Metal Solutions, where he welds mostly on stainless steel.

Solutions, where he works as a full-time GTAW welder.

Throughout all of this, he dabbed in building metal sculptures for family and friends. It was a passion project that he turned out to be very good at.

From Welder to SkillsUSA Competitor

Miller enrolled as a student at Austin Community College in Austin, Texas, to pursue an associate degree in metal sculpture. It was there that one of his welding instructors, Thomas Hinkle, introduced him to SkillsUSA.

The metal sculpture category in the SkillsUSA contest does not put an age limit on participants, which made it perfectly acceptable for the then 46-year-old to compete.

Miller was tasked with building the sculpture in time to show it at the SkillsUSA state competition. He first had to generate a sketch of what he wanted to build, and from there he had to track the time it took him to build it and the materials he used.

“The sculpture can be no larger than 12 by 18 by 18 inches I had a really good mentor, Sarah Stork—a previous gold and silver medal winner at SkillsUSA—and she told me to make the best use of that space as possible.”

He wanted to build something out of mirror-finished stainless steel, similar to the kind of work done by fellow metal artist Chris O’Rourke. Miller had read about O’Rourke in an issue of The FABRICATOR® and reached out to him for advice about working with mirror-finished stainless steel.

The upside to this material is how strikingly beautiful the end product can be. The downside is how easily it scratches.

“I mean, you could breathe on it and scratch it. The build was so nerve-wracking,” Miller exclaimed.

The sides on the body were laser cut, but everything else was hand-cut and hand-formed. The arms on each figure are two pieces of stainless material formed to fit inside of each other, and then welded together. He used a piece of pipe clamped to his table and hand-formed everything.

Taking on a project involving mirror-finished stainless steel was daunting. While Miller didn’t consider the welding portion of the work very difficult, the finishing portion was. He spent more than 30 percent of his time on finishing processes.

“As I was hand-forming, I had to check it constantly for scratches, even with the tape on it to protect it. At one point I was just like, ‘I’m done. It’s going to get scratched.’”

He also had to deal with the heat-affected zone around each weld, so he used a double-bevel groove so that he could deposit enough weld metal to then take the welds down to a nice sharp edge. He then put a grain finish on each of the sculpture’s welds to give them contrast next to the mirror finish.

“The welding part of it wasn’t that bad, because I weld stainless every day, but finishing it was the most nerve-wracking and labor intensive part. I spent like 68 hours building that sculpture, and I spent over 30 percent of my time refinishing it,” Miller said.

To remove the scratches, he used 1,000-grit sand paper and started sanding them down, one by one. From there he used a higher-grit sand paper, rouges, and some half-micron lapping compound to get the final mirror finish back onto it.

The result was a perfectly shiny abstract representation of an embrace between parent and child he titled Adoration.

From Competitor to National Champion

Because the sculpture was not built on-site during the competition, contest rules required Miller to present detailed photos that showed each cut and weld before finishing and provide an accurate portrayal of the entire build process step by step. He also had to include a verification letter from his school confirming he was sole designer and fabricator, how many hours he spent on the build, and how much money the material cost.

“Basically you set up your sculpture, put your book on display, and the judges go through everyone’s build book and they look at the sculpture.”

Judges at the state competition based their score on four criteria: the overall sculpture (25 percent), the build book (25 percent), and the sculptor’s in-person interview (25 percent) and score on a general-knowledge welding test (25 percent).

Miller advanced to the SkillsUSA national competition after winning the state competition and then traveled to Louisville with school advisor Mary Jo Emrick in June to start the whole process again. This time, however, the interview was in front of a panel who asked him pointed questions about his sculpture. He also had to provide an artist’s statement and discuss what inspired him.

Once the interview was complete and the sculpture was on display, a panel of 12 judges evaluated and scored each sculpture and build book. The winner would be revealed at the award’s ceremony.

The end result was Adoration, the sculpture than earned him SkillsUSA state and national championships.

“When they said my name during the awards ceremony, it just happened so fast. Out of the blue they said metal sculpture, and when they said my name, I was in shock.”

Miller followed the advice from SkillsUSA judges, who encouraged competitors to hang on to their sculptures, no matter how much money they were offered to sell. Currently he has entered Adoration into a local juried art exhibition.

From being an odd-jobs enthusiast and nonwelder to a SkillsUSA state and national champion metal sculptor, it’s been quite a ride for Miller.

“What a crazy roller coaster. Eleven years ago I didn’t even know how to weld, and now here I am, doing this art thing and working as a lead welder. Sometimes I’m still in awe at how much has changed.”

It’s been a wild 11 years, but Miller couldn’t be happier with where welding and metal sculpting have taken him in that time. He credits the support of his wife, Alaina, for his success.