The man with the welding torch

last updated 8 January 2015

Jesse James is obsessed with welding, says Erik Hedegaard in Maxim. The 40-year-old host of Monster Garage began fusing together pieces of metal to customize bicycles when he was 13, as a form of escape from his broken family in Long Beach, Calif. “Welding validates me,” he says. “If I don’t do it every day, I feel like I’m cheating myself. I could make $10 million and it wouldn’t be as fulfilling to me as making a perfect weld. Nothing replaces that feeling. I mean, when the weld is perfect, it’s an awesome and beautiful thing. It’s soulful.” James turned his art into a livelihood, as the creator of custom-made motorcycles and a cult TV star, which helped lead to his meeting, and subsequent marriage to, actress Sandra Bullock. He’s taught her to weld, too. “She can heliarc-weld aluminum already. I taught her to machine, too. She machined my wedding ring for me out of a piece of bar stock. It was cool.” In return, she takes her tattooed, gruff-spoken husband to the occasional Hollywood A-list party. “It’s kind of bulls---,” he confides. “A lot of actors spend their whole lives trying to be somebody else, trying to fit in. Me, I’m just a welder.”