“Burning the board” depicts a method of quality assurance that can only be performed manually during steel bar production. There is limited equipment available that can read, with accuracy, the shape of pliable, red-hot steel as it’s being run through a rolling mill. Instead, a board is pressed, by hand, against the speeding steel bar as it passes through the stands, burning a divot into the wood. The shape of the burn accurately illustrates the shape of the bar and then adjustments can be made in the machinery if corrections are required. Because of the extremely high temperatures from the red-hot steel, a constant flow of water keeps the equipment cooled. A foreman observes from the catwalk above.

The art of work as works of art.™