How I Learned To Build With Metal

When my Jeep needed more storage, I learned how to build it with the help of a metalworker.

- Kevin Dupzyk

THROUGH a welding mask, the world is a dim place. A few minutes ago, the sliding door of Nick Wicks’s metal shop outside Portland, Maine, was wide open. Sun streamed in through a light rain. But now, with a MIG welder in my hand and my mask down, all I could see was the outline of two pieces of mild steel tubing.

Wicks was helping me build a roof rack for my Jeep Wrangler— something he’d agreed to do despite my knowing nothing about metalsmithing. (For instance, I called it blacksmithing, which, it turns out, refers only to work done with a forge.) After a quick overview, he handed me the torch, a tool that makes an arc that burns at thousands of degrees. He told me to keep it about half an inch from the workpiece and perpendicular to the surface. I tried, but I was much more concerned with something else Wicks had told me: “The brightness of the welder can basically sunburn your eyes,” he said. “It might feel okay today, but tomorrow you’ll wake up and not be able to see.” That was right before he handed me a mask and warned me against doing anything before his own was in place.

I pulled the trigger of the torch.

A FEW YEARS EARLIER, I’d used the Jeep to take three friends on a camping trip to Maine’s Acadia National Park. It was barely possible to fit four adult humans and camping gear in a Wrangler. That wasn’t the first time I’d run up against the Jeep’s limited carrying capacity, but it was the point at which I decided something had to be done.