A $3.5 million training school affiliated with Ironworkers Local 118 has opened in Stead, a place where apprentices learn the trade and journeymen update their skills, including how to build wind turbines.

"We call it the university of iron," said Reggie Brantley, the lead instructor.

The school, talked about since Brantley was an apprentice 30 years ago, provides 160 hours a year of training for four years for apprentices to become journeyman-level iron workers.

Apprentices also work up to 2,000 hours a year for a local contractor in the four-year program of the Field Ironworkers Apprenticeship and Training Program. Once they are certified in welding and reach journeyman status, they can take their union card and "go work anywhere in the country," Brantley said.

"The real learning is out in the field. Out there, you learn the tricks of the trade," said Phil Yesslith of Sutcliffe, a second-year apprentice. "Here, you get the general idea of how basics go."

Yesslith, 31, first completed a special introductory school for Native Americans in Chicago sponsored by its local ironworkers union.

Brantley said the slowdown in construction hit iron workers about six months ago. The center now has 50 apprentices while it can train up to 120 at a time. The program is funded as part of the benefits package covered by construction companies in hiring ironworkers.

One apprentice is hired for every five journeymen. Local 118 now has about 180 members.

The local has a long history in Reno, starting in 1908.

"Every major structure in this valley, we've probably had a hand in building it," Brantley said.

Of their 160 hours in training each year, students spend about half of their time in the classroom and learning hands-on instruction in welding and safety.

Out in the yard, students can practice climbing a 35-foot tall steel beam, walk on a vertical steel beam or climb around a steel structure.

The 10,000-square-foot center, which opened this summer, has a 18-booth welding shop and three classrooms. Instruction also covers scaffolding, safety, math, reinforced concrete and precast concrete work, lead hazards and working with prestressed cable.

Classroom instruction also covers erecting wind turbines. And the center recently picked up a wind turbine from a major project in the Mohave Desert for hands-on training.

A wind farm with up to 44 turbines is planned for the top of the Virginia Range east of Warm Springs Valley. Iron workers would be hired to help erect them and prepare the steel-reinforced concrete foundation.

Iron workers also have been involved in building geothermal energy stations near Fallon, Brantley said. And iron workers could be hired to put up the brackets for solar energy panels while pipe fitters would install the water works.

He anticipates more specialty training for apprentices, as well as journeymen, as these industries pick up in Nevada.

In federal economic recovery stimulus funds, U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., this fall announced $72.4 million in grants for geothermal projects in Nevada.

Those projects are expected to create 1,100 jobs, including ones in construction.