For two years, Wyatt Curry has set his sights on the $100,000 prize in “Clash of Trades,” a YouTube reality show that features aspiring machinists and welders racing the clock, and each other, to fabricate complex mechanical parts.

It wasn’t really about the money.

“I wanted to prove something,” said Mr. Curry, a 22-year-old community college student. “I knew I was good at what I did, but I wanted something to show it.”

“Clash of Trades” uses sports-style competitions, big financial prizes and an addiction to reality TV to boost the appeal of the skilled trades as American manufacturers consistently say one of their top challenges is finding capable workers.

At a time when popular shows celebrate bakers who make cakes that look like tennis balls and fashion designers who weep at their sewing machines, the producers of “Clash of Trades” believe that machinists and welders deserve to be celebrated too.

The show is the brainchild of Adele Ratcliff, former director of the Defense Department’s Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment program, who worried that the country was running dangerously low on workers who can build and maintain ships, submarines and planes.

After decades of sending factories overseas — and telling Americans that their role was to design products, while other countries would build them — “Clash of Trades” is part of a wider cultural and political shift focused on bringing manufacturing back to U.S. soil. But convincing young people to dream of being machinists and welders, and not just engineers, isn’t easy.