WORKING -- Steven McManus

HE IS

Welding power

Generating Sparks

Steven McManus spends hours as the man behind the mask -- a welder’s

mask. The 44-year-old has welded since high school.

He has had his own shop, Apollo Diesel, in Costa Mesa since 1982. It

is there that he builds custom diesel generators. McManus orders

industrial motors from Japan and builds around them.

He turns those motors into generators, dive compressors or water

makers, which turns saltwater into freshwater.

“I’m a fabricator,” he said with a laugh. “A big fabricator.”

Around that motor, he builds engine parts, a heat exchange, a mixing

muffler and a frame from scratch.

It takes about a week to make a generator from beginning to end, he

said, and about 20 hours of that is welding.

A Burning Desire

“I get hot and dirty,” McManus said.

In the summer months, he waits until the evening, when the weather

cools, to do much of his welding. But the time of day, the goggles and

the mask don’t keep him from getting burned.

“You burn yourself constantly,” he said. “I burn myself every night

and most every day. You just accidentally touch something, but you get

used to it.”

A Powerful Idea

There is no illusion that McManus has a glamorous job, but it is what

he’s always wanted to do.

After graduating from Sonora High School in La Habra, McManus joined

the Army as a medic mechanic, he said.

“We lived on generators,” he said. “We lived in tents and had all gas

generators. It was dangerous, and we had to have gas trucks come in, and

you have to haul these big gas cans around. So, I thought about what the

government needed.”

With nerves of steel

Since he designed the Apollo Diesel Generator many years ago, the plan

is all in his head. So, he simply sets to work when the motors come in.

Most of the parts he builds are made of steel, and he does what is

called “tungsten inert gas” welding.

Tungsten is what the welding material is made out of, and it is

stronger than steel, he said.

“I come in, and I start getting metal cut so I can start welding,” he

said. “That takes about two days.”

It takes about three days to put the whole unit together before he can

run tests on it and ship it out -- to the tune of more than $7,000.