LINCOLN (AP) – Joel Stanley II once welded for an hour straight without noticing that his fiancee was standing next to him.

It’s that kind of intensity that enabled Stanley, 22, of Medway, to beat 12 entrants from six states and six countries and win $40,000 and a pair of gold medals at the American Welding Society/Skills USA Open Welding Trial last week in Dallas.

With the victory, Stanley will go on to represent the United States in a world welding competition May 22 in Helsinki, Finland.

“I’m totally excited about this and anxious to get over there,” said Stanley, the first New Englander to come away as overall winner.

Stanley, a graduate of Schenck High School and Eastern Maine Community College who works as a welder at Fastco Corp. in Lincoln, practiced for a year at Northern Penobscot Tech Region III adult education to prepare.

for the competition.

Welding is the art of using flame or electricity to superheat and graft together pieces of metal. Welders use drops of molten metal, or filler metal, like candle wax to build welds by filling seams between pieces of metal.

He works long hours and he’s very intense about it, said his fiancee, 22-year-old Crystal Strout. “I watched him working one night,” Strout said. “I must have stood there for an hour and he didn’t even notice me.”

From his thousands of hours of work, Stanley knows that there’s no such thing as a perfect weld. Seams in the metal can split or fray. Welds on extreme stress points can crack. Patches can fatigue. Tolerances can be misjudged.

Stanley “has a very detailed understanding of the welding process,” Region III welding teacher David Hartley said. “He really knows how welding works, how amperage and voltage affect the weld puddle and how to apply that knowledge.”

Stanley’s approach is almost scientific, Hartley said. He keeps detailed notebooks of welding techniques that he refers to, and his welds resemble pointillist art for their meticulous placement of welds, like metal beads.

Stanley will travel to a Northrop Grumman Corp. factory in Georgia on Wednesday to begin two weeks’ training for the world competition.

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Information from: Bangor Daily News, http://www.bangornews.com