We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Addi Welder a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Addi, thanks for joining us today. Can you take us back in time to the first dollar you earned as a creative – how did it happen? What’s the story?
The first dollar I’ve earned was when I was SEVEN years old, it was a six foot wide spider that I welded with an old beat up miller mig welder my dad got me . But I built it while I was learning how to weld not knowing someone would be interested in buying it.
My dad posted on one of the local Facebook marketplaces looking for scrap metal for me to continue to learn how to weld and he used the picture of the spider to get attention and someone offered to buy the spider, now mind you I was 7 years old at that time. I was surprised because I was just training, definitely not knowing that people would be interested in buying anything from a 7 year old welder that just got started a year earlier
The spider itself was made of rebar and some random beat up thin C channel that was just sitting around, I remember it took me a long time to build it because I was barely able to run an okay weld bead. So when my dad told me someone was interested in buying it I was super surprised. And When the lady came to buy the spider it took some angling to get to fit in her Ford Ranger.
I like to think she was more excited with the idea that she was helping inspire me to continue my journey into learning more about welding and I now have still much to learn but I plan to still continue in my little adventure/journey into weld art
Addi, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Hello, my name is Addi I am 11 year old welder and YouTuber but I started learning about welding when I was 5 years old all because I asked my dad one simple question “what is welding?” and He told me about what it is, and I WANTED TO KNOW MORE!!!!
At the present time I make weld art for instance I make flowers out of sheet metal that I cut with my plasma cutter (best thing I ever bought lol ) robots out of steel tube and dogs of steel pipe or coil springs off trucks or cars. But I’m currently building my first bbq pit out of an old 60 gallon air compressor tank so that might be another thing I can build in the future.
What sets me apart from others is having the drive at my age to develop the skills that I have already and in the time I have been doing this I have had a chance to create a lot of great memories like buying my own 20 foot shipping container and turning into a weld shop.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
I make weld art to buy metal so I can train to get better at welding. But my YouTube is to Help inspire women and young ladies to get into the trades. Which is important to me because their are such a small percentage of women in the trades. So what I do to help is I got my local unions/schools to find out what they do as a trade and how to get into them.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
The rewarding part of all of this is I have inspired women to get into the trades.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/welding_with_addi_/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WeldingwithAddi
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@weldingwithaddi4014?si=N1o2ppS3dHeqQkdY
Image Credits
Welding with addi