Austin Guderjahn, Gage Jaeger, and Trey Pellett finished fifth out of 39 teams at the 55th annual National Skills USA Leadership and Skills Competition held June 24-28 in Louisville, Ky.

“This was the first time I took a group,” said adviser Ray Helseth, a Minot High welding technology instructor. “Some of the people there had been there three times.”

Helseth was extremely pleased with his team’s performance, though the young men would have liked to have placed even higher.

During the competition, each welding fabrication team was required to build a wood-fired rocket stove out of new plate steel, stainless steel and tubing. They used four different welding techniques, including flux cored arc welding, gas metal arc welding, gas tungsten arc welding, and shielded metal arc welding and an oxygen acetelene torch to cut the parts to size, detailed on blueprints, and to weld the parts of the stove together.

Team members are pictured with a rocket stove at Minot High School-Magic City Campus on Aug. 1. Team members Trey Pellett, Austin Guderjahn, and Gage Jaeger finished fifth in the nation in welding fabrication at the National Skills USA Leadership and Skills Competition in Louisville, Ky., in June by building a rocket stove.

The completed stove self feeds from the front with wood or charcoal fuel and contains plate warmers, a cook top, and a baked potato heater, said Jaeger.

Helseth said some people in Minot have similar portable rocket stoves outside. Others might use them at camp sites.

The young men said that the rocket stoves built by teams during the competition are to be donated to the organization WaterStep, which helps provide safe drinking water at sites around the world, and sent to Africa.

As part of the competition, the young men said they had to create their own blue prints that showed their original design for a shoe collection box, said Jaeger.

Sponsors for the Minot team included North Country Construction and Rentals, Gerdau Metals Recycling, Dakota Pipe and Steel, and Jim’s Welding.

Welding classes are offered at Minot High and Helseth said his students are working towards building a project as complex as the rocket stove in their classes.

Guderjahn, Jaeger, and Pellett all are planning to use their welding skills in their future careers.

Jaeger will attend North Dakota State University in Fargo this fall and study mechanical engineering. Guderjahn will be at Lynnes Welding in Fargo. Pellett plans to evenually attend a welding program at Bismarck State College.

Welding experience will be useful in a large number of career fields, said Helseth, from construction to the oil business to pipeline construction.

“To build anything, you’ve got to use welding,” said Jaeger.