Corrections

Leonora LaPeter Anton: The man with the ominous tattoos perched on a metal box in a dusty welding booth, sparks spraying on his jeans and white T-shirt as he ground down another mistake.

Moments before, his instructor at the Pinellas Technical Education Center had shone a flashlight inside the pipe and pointed out a shadow the size of a pinprick. If this had been his final welding test — which was just a week away — he would have automatically failed.

Eriks Mackus, 22, had spent two years mastering the tasks to become a pressure pipe welder. Along the way, he'd learned the skills to weld parts on buildings, barges, train cars, even ships. He'd worked hard to achieve what his instructor called…