North America's largest metal forming, fabricating, welding and finishing event heads to Orange County Convention Center in October 2024. FABTECH provides a convenient "one stop shop" venue where you can meet with world-class suppliers, see the latest industry products and developments, and find the tools to improve productivity, increase profits and discover new solutions to all of your metal forming, fabricating, welding and finishing needs.
North America's Largest Metal Forming, Fabricating, Welding and Finishing Event
Artist, rock-climber, and welder Jamie Hamilton fabricates his own tightrope supports
By Virginia Hilton, a freelance writer.
Reprinted with permission: The AWS Welding Journal
How confident are you in your work? Would you bet your life on it? That’s what aerial artist and welder Jamie Hamilton does every single day. He builds the support structures for tight ropes that are several hundred feet above the ground, which he then walks across. He also makes the safety nets that catch him in case he falls.
Jamie Hamilton walks on the aerial installation, Amor Fati (2015, steel, aluminum, nylon, neoprene, 70 x 260 x 150 ft), located outside of Santa Fe, N.Mex. Photo courtesy of Hannah Hughes.
For most people, the height alone would be blindingly intimidating, but Hamilton has been rock climbing since he was eight years old. Since then, he’s climbed summits in the Himalayas, Alps, Canadian Rockies, and Yosemite.
He started learning about welding and fabrication in high school. Hamilton said he enjoyed building with metal. “I was fascinated by this material that could become liquid, but was also strong and ductile. I fell in love with the material and the forgery of it.”
He built many practical structures while working as an apprentice for an architectural blacksmith and found that most of them were like works of art. “When structures become totally pragmatic, like a bridge, they become beautiful. They’re not designed to be that way, but in their purpose they have a sense of artistry and grace,” he said.
That beauty motivated him to continue his fabrication work, but with an eye toward the arts. He studied sculpture at Bard College in New York and recently graduated with a masters in fine arts from Transart University in Germany.
Once in his 30s, he decided he wanted to find a way to combine all three of his passions: athletics, fabricating, and art. Soon after, he started working on his first tightrope. “An exploration of possibility and structure has always been a staple in my work, but it becomes much more serious when building aerial structures upon which my life depends. I take a stance of total responsibility when I become engineer, designer, fabricator, and performer,” he explained.
The first thing he does before each project is think about the scale of the build. “I try to figure out how tall it’s going to be. How will it be supported or installed? Will it be across a gorge, natural setting, or supported by trusses?”
Once he determines which support system he is using, Hamilton heads to his shop in Santa Fe to begin fabrication. “I have to start engineering the dimensions and determine what will be needed to support the load,” he explained. In the example of a self-supporting rig, he essentially makes two columns, anchored to the ground, that are supported by lattice trusses that support each end of the tightrope.
Hamilton uses a Hypertherm Powermax85 plasma cutting machine to build many of the customized steel components that are anywhere from ¼ to 1 in. thick. “When building a steel structure like this, you can’t go to a hardware store to buy the parts. I design and build many of them myself with a handheld torch and various cutting jigs,” he said. His aerial structures and sculptures are almost exclusively gas tungsten arc welded. He uses a Miller Dynasty 350 as his primary welding machine. If Hamilton has to make a field or in-situ weld, he will use shielded metal arc welding, but this is very rare as almost all of his field connections are made with bolts and pins. The vast majority of his welding and fabrication takes place in the shop.
In the past, he used grinders with cutting disks to do some of the work but found switching from abrasive to plasma saved him hours of cutting time and money. He also said he felt plasma was a safer option because there wasn’t as much metal or grit debris produced during each cut.
Once he has everything cut and shaped, he welds the components of the truss sections, which will become the high wire’s support columns. The columns are built to sleeve together at the joints. ”When I’m erecting them, I lay them out, bolt them together, then the hinges at the base allow them to pivot upright via a winch and jin pole,” he explained.
Just above the ground he weaves his own safety net made of thousands of sliced nylon ropes. The process can take several months to complete.
Each time he takes the first step, Hamilton said he tries to remain calm. “While it seems totally crazy, even though I am trying hard to focus, sometimes my mind wanders, and I actually think about mundane things like the bills I need to pay.”
Knowing that he made the structure gives him the confidence and composure he needs to make it across. “It gives me a sense of security knowing that I built it myself. I have nobody else to blame if something goes wrong,” said Hamilton. That mentality has carried over into other parts of his life as well. “Real self-responsibility. I don’t wish to blame anyone else for things that go wrong in my life. That has been a great lesson from this.”
For more information about Jamie Hamilton’s work, contact him at arecibo@c1h2.net.
FABTECH 2024
About the Expo
North America's largest metal forming, fabricating, welding and finishing event heads to Orange County Convention Center in October 2024. FABTECH provides a convenient "one stop shop" venue where you can meet with world-class suppliers, see the latest industry products and developments, and find the tools to improve productivity, increase profits and discover new solutions to all of your metal forming, fabricating, welding and finishing needs.
