Building Is Welding

He's either welding midair or a tiny piece of wire. But he is building something, isn't he?

What's the easiest way to show your characters hard at work fixing/repairing/building something? Show them welding, of course! Also, it will always be showy, sparky, manly welding, using electric arcs or oxyacetylene: Precision soldering irons are for wussies. The manly man pictured is cutting steel, probably before building something.

Compare Magic Tool when it seems like a tool (in this case a welding torch) can be used to do nearly anything.

Can occur in a Creation Sequence, Hard-Work Montage, A-Team Montage, and maybe a Forging Scene.

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Examples:

Comic Books

• Wonder Woman Vol 1: A group of girls are shown welding on a large rocket to show that the scientifically and engineering-inclined Holliday College students were responsible for building the rocket to Venus, which later crashes due to Gell Osey's jealous interference.

Film — Live-Action

• 10 Things I Hate About You has Patrick welding in his metalwork class.
• In Army of Frankensteins, Igor is shown using a miniature high-power arc torch as he finishes constructing Solomon's steampunk Arm Cannon (despite it seemingly being constructed mostly of wood and brass).
• Blade Trilogy:
  • In Blade, Whistler is welding in his first appearance.
  • Similarly in Blade II, Scud is shown welding in his workshop — in both instances, they're making weapons and equipment for Blade.
• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang has Caractacus Potts welding as he's building Chitty.
• E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: Lots of welding is shown when Elliott's home is turned into a high-security zone by the government.
• The Fast and the Furious (2001) has the protagonists welding while building a car.
• Flashdance: Alex Owens works as a welder by day justifying scenes of her doing this.
• In Hobo with a Shotgun Abby breaks into the pawn shop and constructs a bunch of weaponry from the pawn shop inventory to rescue the Hobo. She is shown using both an arc welder and an oxyacetylene torch while doing this.
• Iron Man has a subversion, the only manual work Tony Stark is shown doing on his armor is precision soldering.

• The trailers for the Star Trek (2009) show the USS Enterprise under construction, with lots of welding depicted.

• Makaela in Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen was welding while helping out in her father's workshop. Turns out to be Chekhov's Gun; she later tortures a Decepticon with the blowtorch.

Live-Action TV

• American Chopper of course shows the whole bike building process from start to finish, although the producers still tend to include a lot of manly welding or grinding shots during montages and scene transitions.
• The A-Team would have at least one scene every week of the Team hard at work building something out of scrap metal. Frequently, Mr T's character, B.A. Baracus, would be the one welding it all together.
• As part of the Used Future on Babylon 5, during the Title Sequence we see a worker welding, fixing something on the outside of the station. Every now and then, one or two welding works are seen in the background. This appears a lot in the docking area, moreso in the episode "By Any Means Necessary" when the focus is on a docking guild strike.
• Doctor Who:
  • In "The Woman Who Fell to Earth", the Doctor is shown using a blowtorch to melt down a bunch of spoons to construct her new sonic screwdriver. Not only that, she stops halfway and builds an even bigger blowtorch, with twin torches!
  • Lynn is shown welding while assembling the new casing for the Dalek that's controlling her body in "Resolution".
• The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: John Walker is shown welding a new shield in the fifth episode.
• Firefly: Kaylee is seen welding while she and Wash are building the ambulance for the heist in "Ariel".
• Little Lunch: In "The Nightmare Before Graduation", in the absence of any new homework, Debra Jo is redoing all of her old assignments. Mrs Gonsha is walking past the classroom when she is distracted by the flash of arc welding. Looking inside, she sees Debra Jo in a welding mask who explains that she rebuilding her model solar system with a steel frame (although it turns out Mr Haliotis is the one doing the actual welding).
• The credits montage for MacGyver (1985) includes a shot of Mac welding (a scene taken from the first season episode "Trumbo's World").
• The Mandalorian does this in every sequence involving either building or repairing.
• Often seen in the Hard-Work Montage in Mission: Impossible, with Barney usually being the one doing the welding.
• Scrapheap Challenge (aired in the United States as Junkyard Wars) almost always includes at least a few scenes of the teams welding some part of their machine. In one episode, one team got so enthusiastic about their welding that the sparks started a fire on the set. Lampshaded in one of the "Making Of" special episodes:
  Narrator: Our teams love to weld, and we love to film them doing it.
• Star Trek: Enterprise. Towards the end of the Xindi War arc the NX-01 Enterprise picked up heavy battle damage, so set builders would be put in Starfleet uniform and do welding in the background of the actors.
• Top Gear tends to have sequences where the presenters are modifying a car and there's typically at least one shot of one of them welding.

Puppet Shows

• On Fraggle Rock, the Doozers have sometimes been shown welding while building their constructions.

Video Games

• In Company of Heroes the Engineers use arc welding torches for everything.
• In CyberStorm, some HERCs are shown being worked on. Naturally, you can see the mechanics welding them.
• Dawn of War: While ork gretchin repair things via hammers and wrenches, the Bigmek is seen using his Swiss-Army Weapon to weld things back into shape, lowering his welding mask-helmet for the occasion.
• Fallout 4: idle settlers are often shown doing welding on ruined buildings to show how they are recuperating materials.
• Homeworld 2: The cutscene introducing the Shipyard shows huge mechanical waldos putting ship bulkheads into place and then welding them together to show off its construction. As well, Collector vessels tasked with repair will latch onto the sides of their repair targets and begin welding away with their utility claws.
• Metroid Prime 3: Corruption has Samus use the Plasma Beam (and the Nova Beam once she gets that) to weld the wiring on circuit boards.
• In Space Engineers, all construction is performed by welding torches of varying sizes — from handheld devices up to large arrays mounted on ships.
• In Subnautica, the Repair Tool works by simply being pointed at the damaged object and activating it, which produces welding-like sparks. In-universe, it's apparently a modification of the Fabrication Tool that works by restoring an object to its original structure.
• In Starcraft, if you watch the SCVs closely you'll see that whether they are constructing or repairing, vehicles or buildings, all they ever do is weld. In fact, according to the manual, that's all they can do, since their only tool (or at least, the one that hurts the most when used as a weapon) is a "fusion cutter."
• In Star Wars: Battlefront and Star Wars: Battlefront II, the pilot/engineer class uses an arc welder-like tool called a "fusion cutter" to build or repair anything that can be built or repaired.
• Team Fortress 2: The engineer update video has Engineer welding something in his workshop. The short ends with him hammering it.
• In Theme Park, engineers repair rides seemingly by walking around them and welding in random spots.
• The Blowtorch in Unturned has the power to repair vehicles, fortifications, and structures. Even if they're made of concrete or wood. Using it is guaranteed to create many welding sparks.

Western Animation

• Batman: The Brave and the Bold: In "Chill of the Night!", a flashback to Batman's origin shows him using a welding torch to create his first batarang.
• In one Eek! The Cat episode, Sharky suffers a mishap with a lawnmower and has to go to the vet. He freaks and passes out when Dr. Elmo enters wearing a welder's mask and a huge power drill. It's doubly funny because Elmo had been building cabinets in the adjoining room, and that would be the wrong type of protective gear for woodworking.
• The second intro to Iron Man: The Animated Series shows Stark forging and welding.
• Played for Laughs in The Looney Tunes Show episode "Peel of Fortune". There are flashes of arc welding from the garage and Daffy is shown wearing a welding mask just before he unveils his latest invention... sliced bread!
• Sheldon has a couple welding shots in My Life as a Teenage Robot.
• The Penguins of Madagascar will always include Rico or Kowalski welding if something needs to be fixed.
• Phineas and Ferb: When building a rollercoaster, the titular characters weld the tracks together.
• The Simpsons will frequently show Homer welding while working on a project, especially if it is something that wouldn't need to be welded (such as a wooden go-kart).
  • Once he actually welded something properly requiring such a tool without any mask, burning his eyeballs bright red.
  • Subverted in another episode where he is tasked to make Lisa a costume for a school play. A montage plays of him using various sewing implements and then cutting to him using a torch to weld something on his car. Lisa then walks in and reminds him he needs to finish the costume.

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