Katie Brownlow earned her one-year Southwestern Michigan College welding certificate in April and parlayed her internship into a job with Cotton Gin Smokers, premium, hand-crafted barbecue smokers made on Terminal Road, Niles.

Brownlow, a single mom and veteran who turns 38 in July, plans to continue to her welding associate degree.

“I’ve got that fire in me again,” Brownlow said, “and it’s not burning out. I’m not going backwards anymore.”

A year and a half ago, Brownlow contemplated launching a mobile welding business serving the farming community. Her four months of fabricating smokers revised her plans to incorporate more of her artistic background.

“I made a windchime out of steel and it turned out awesome,” she said. “I could fix broken-down equipment or make excavation buckets stronger. My boyfriend works in excavating. I like making things with my hands.”

She has two sons, 12 and 6. The younger boy’s father owns a body shop. She realized “welding was interesting to me with all of the art you see on Instagram. If only I’d done this stuff 20 years ago, right out of high school. My oldest is doing better in school, including band, which he’s really enjoyed. I thought that’s cool because I played saxophone when I was younger.”

The Buchanan resident graduated from St. Joseph High School in 2003 and served with the military police while stationed at Fort Campbell, an Army installation astride the Kentucky-Tennessee border between Hopkinsville and Clarksville, and home to the 101^st Airborne Division.

“That was from 2009 to 2011,” Brownlow said. She lived in Florida for a few years, “working at a ton of jobs in the Keys, including helping run a bikini shop. It was a whole different scene than what I was used to up here.”

“I dabbled in college a couple of times,”