New Member from Jersey

[jeromevw312]

Hello, just found this site, looking for new ideas and experiences dealing with automotive rust repair. With a strong passion for vintage cars, I began working in body shops in high school and continued for 5 years after graduating, but by then I was sick of putting fenders on Honda's and not working on vintage cars. At that point I was fortunate enough to be accepted into McPherson College's Automotive Restoration Technology Program in McPherson, Kansas. I graduated in 2005 with a college degree in automotive restoration. While in school they taught us all aspects of restoring a vintage automobile, however they encouraged us to specialize our skills. Coming from New Jersey and knowing tht rust was the thing no body shops want to deal with, welding and panel fab, or rust repair was my main focus. I was a leader in my class, as i became shop assistant and student teacher for the metals lab at the college. I became fluent in TIG, english wheel, shrinking/stretching, and general rust repair. My years of body shop experience, MIG, quarter replacement, filler work, etc was a big part of what helped me excel in college.
After graduating in 2005 i did what any recent graduate with the option does and started working in the family business!! After 8 months of managing my fathers cigar and magazine shop, I got the unique opportunity to open a new seasonal store on the beach in the Jersey Shore. Figured run it for a year or two and then sell it to finance my own restoration shop. Fast forward 5 years, a house and a wife latter, and two more store later, Im still spending my summers at the beach, Life, better money than expected and nervousness of opening a new restoration shop in this economy have all gotten in the way of the goal of a specialty shop doing media blasting, powder coating and rust repair (all the stuff body shops hate).
With the seasonal employees filling in at the year round stores, I"ve been able to goof off in the winters and build more stores and what not. Well, this winter is different. I started 6 weeks ago and a restoration shop 30 min from my house as the shops rust repair specialist. This is a great opportunity for me because after 6 years since school and no garage, my skills were quickly diminishing, and my new boss is very understanding that I have to go back to the beach in the spring.
So now Im back to welding, fabbing and "restoring" my skills at restoring. Im joining this site just to look for other ways of doing things, new ideas, follow others projects, etc. As for right now, I don't feel I have a lot to offer as far as ideas, so I appologize if i appear as a lurker with only one post for awile, but i really dont want to one of those people who needs to write "thats cool" on every thread that I find interesting. I kind of get annoyed when im looking at a great thread and have to scroll past 20 posts of "awesome", "sweet" and other useless stuff to get to the original posters next update.
Also, my boss will not allow me to take any of my own pictures of MY work, says any pictures of customers cars are property of the customer, and he is afraid i will open my own shop and use the pictures of examples of MY work. Well, it is MY work, and thats what i want the pictures for, but its his shop and his customers and I really like the opportunity to hone my skills while getting paid for it with someone else's name attached to it. So, this will make it next to impossible to share what im currently working on.

Again, sorry if Im a bit of a lurker, but i really appreciate the chance to learn from others and i will share if i feel i have something useful to add, not just to say sweet, ill leave that to others.

Thank You for all the help this site will give me in advancing my skills.

[Kerry Pinkerton]

Welcome Jerome.

[HEATNBEAT]

Welcome Jerome!
very nice intro. At least with the stores you will have an income when you open your own shop

[jeromevw312]

yea, the goal now is to sell one of the stores to finance a shop while the other stores pay the mortgage.....

[Joe Hartson]

Jerome, welcome to the site and thanks for the great introduction. If you take a look around the site you will find some improvements to equipment used to shape metal. There are some innovative people here that have shared how they do things. Thanks for joining us.