Welding Student builds dropping ball for New Years Celebration

KWI Lead Instructor Ashley Applegate, left and welding student, Ryder Bray just completed building the ball that will be dropped during the Maysville New Years Celebration. The aluminum sphere is 70 inches in diameter and will be transported to Maysville where the lights will be added by Hedgecock Electric.

When the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve, not only will the passage of time be marked, but a moment in history will be observed as the first ever, New Years Celebration takes place in Maysville. The event, planned by Melissa Greenwell and David Green, is a joint fundraiser for the Maysville Women’s Crisis Center and Comprehend, Inc and will take place in the US Bank Parking lot on the McDonald Parkway.

The crowning moment for this event will be the traditional decent of a time ball lowered from a crane operated by Ranger Steel.

The giant aluminum sphere was built by Ryder Bray, a Structural Welding student under the direction of lead Instructor,Ashley Applegate, at the Kentucky Welding Institute in Flemingsburg.

Both Applegate and Bray agree the project has been an exciting learning experience.

“Although we are very selective on what projects we take on, when Melissa and David came to us and asked if we could produce something similar to the sphere in the picture they presented, I knew this would be the perfect project for Ryder.We chose Ryder for the project because he is in our structural welding program and constructing the sphere would be an awesome opportunity for him to gain even more knowledge in structural welding. Ryder just completed building two trailers for the Lewis County Marching band to haul their equipment,” Applegate said. “After our director, Adam Hinton, and I discussed how this project would go hand- in- hand with skills Ryder has already mastered and would be the perfect opportunity for him to gain even more knowledge in the construction of something so unique, we decided we would take on the challenge. Not only does a student like Ryder benefit from extra knowledge of learning different measurements and calculations, but a project like this helps bring awareness to eastern Kentucky and specifically to Flemingsburg and Maysville.”

Ashley went on to add, “one of the cool things too about the project, is the sixth grade students from Hillsboro Elementary got to turn the machine and roll out one of hoops, so they can look back 20 years from now and say, hey we helped make that.”

Originally from Hawaii, Ryder Bray graduated from Bourbon County High School and currently lives in Nicholas County.

Bray said after he graduated from high school, he woke up one morning and thought to himself, “hey I could be a welder”.

After he checked out other schools in different states Bray chose Kentucky Welding Institute as the best place to get the type of welding certifications he had in mind.

One of the things Bray said made building a sphere more challenging was working with a different material.

“This was my first experience in welding an aluminum structure, it was different, but really neat, and a lot of fun. I have enjoyed working alongside Ashley and the chance to create something so unique,” Bray said.

Hopefully the Maysville New Years Celebration will become an annual event and each year as the “ball drops” Ashely Applegate, Ryder Bray and those sixth grade students from Hillsboro Elementary, can say they each had a hand in such a significant time piece.

The actual notion of a ball “dropping” to signal the passage of time dates back long before New Year’s Eve was ever celebrated in Times Square. The first “time-ball” was installed atop England’s Royal Observatory at Greenwich in 1833. This ball would drop at one o’clock every afternoon, allowing the captains of nearby ships to precisely set their chronometers (a vital navigational instrument).

Around 150 public time-balls are believed to have been installed around the world after the success at Greenwich, though few survive and still work. The tradition is carried on today in places like the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, DC, where a time-ball descends from a flagpole at noon each day – and of course, once a year in Times Square, where it marks the stroke of midnight not for a few ships’ captains, but for over one billion people watching worldwide.