Making A Shank

I used to have this weird urge to learn how to weld things..... I guess it's still kind of there. There was a boy who said he could teach me but that whole thing fizzled out and I forgot about it until I started thinking about making shanks.
Maybe I need to take some kind of metalworks class....
I think sometimes you just have to make something and when I make something it usually involves a junkyard, concrete, or something heavy and/or ruining to clothing. There's so much thought work and moving parts to all of the work in my regular job and while this is satisfying I think there's a big part of me that likes to be able to put 30 hours into something and say "There! There it is, my chunk of concrete."
There's something about that process that just feels good and I suspect a lot of other people get this type of satisfaction from spring cleaning or running a marathon. We need something to point to besides a word document to mark a milestone.