2024 National Welding Month

By Ronnie Medlock, P.E, High Steel Vice President, Technical Resources

To launch our celebration of National Welding Month, let's recognize the pioneering effort of Sanford High, founder of High Welding, which eventually became High Steel Structures LLC in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. 

The story begins in 1931 when Sanford bought a bike welding shop because, as his son Dale tells us, Sanford thought welding was cool.

Indeed! Sanford soon saw that welding would bring economy and versatility to steel bridges and pushed for the change from rivets to welding. Imagine the amount of resistance he faced: engineers knew riveted design; DOTs were comfortable with rivets; fabricators knew riveted fabrication; and general contractors knew riveted erection. The community was full of riveters, and riveting equipment, knowledge, skills, and confidence. True - rivets were superb: innumerable bridges and buildings were successfully built using rivets, many of which are in service today after more than 100 years. But good as they were, Sanford knew welding would be better. 

As we see, Sanford was right. Welding is now mainstream, with robust welding practices and bridge steels with preeminent weldability. And, welding brought fundamental change to bridges, facilitating the ease of joining of curved plates that give us curved plate girders, long-span curved ramps, parabolic haunch girders, and other curved elements and details, readily joined by welding.

Sanford High was inducted into the ARTBA Hall of Fame. Let's celebrate his efforts and be inspired to leave our comfort zones to advance proven innovations that, like welding, will make our world better, fulfill our engineering mission, and provide our communities with excellent bridge solutions.