Students from Pontiac High School’s welding program showed off their handiwork on Wednesday in the form of two trucks the students welded together from parts.

Nearly 100 students from grades 8 to 11 have been working since September on two big projects: a semi truck, which students finished around Christmas, and a “rat rod,” a kind of custom vehicle made of rusty scrap parts they finished this semester.

Program instructor Megan Tubman said many of the parts for the trucks were donated by community members, while others were found or scavenged.

“It was just knowing where some old vehicles were in the country, and just dumpster diving on parts and stuff,” she said.

For the semi, students made a number of parts such as the doors and the cab, and welded them onto an existing chassis. Then, students welded on two custom heat shields, as well as a front grill with the Panthers name.

Grade 9 student Frankie Turgeon, who did a lot of work on the semi, said he was proud of the way the project came together despite some challenges.

“I took apart the steering wheel column, that was fun,” he joked. “It worked out pretty good. It took a little while to get together, but it came together.”

For the rat rod, Tubman said she had received some old propane tanks, and so decided to have the students turn them into minion-looking figurines to put on the back and front of the truck. “TikTok is a dangerous thing,” she said of the idea’s origin.

Grade 11 student Dom Micic, who was accepted into Algonquin College’s welding program for the upcoming school year, felt the projects were challenging enough to prepare him for the program.

“Building the cage for the cab was fun, the fabrication part, building something from scratch and just seeing it all go together eventually and seeing it form was a good experience,” he said, adding that learning the mechanical aspect was a good challenge.

Now that the school year is almost over, Tubman said she will once again have to make room in the shop for next year’s projects. “They will probably live at my place,” she said of the trucks, until she can figure out what to do with them.

Tubman said she is thinking through projects the students will work on next year, although she will not know for sure until the fall.

The rat rod was made from scrap parts teacher Megan Tubman received as donations or scavanged herself. Photo: K.C. Jordan

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