My Introduction into the Field of Welding
Pre-welder years, (aka apprentice) you’re going to be yelled at for being useless, probably because you are, OR you will have somebody that is calm and competent at their job to guide you on your way. I got both early on. First, I had a bass who was an old school pipefitter. He was a very good fitter but not good to his helper and he was not a good teacher at all. Then I got paired with a guy who was a welder that had worked on everything from car bodies to oil derricks and he was very patient and very thorough when answering all of my questions. Two very different kinds of teachers and both can be very useful in their own way.
The first year of being a welder was tremendously difficult, in my opinion. Starting to unlearn bad habits I had been taught by my shop teacher and previous co-workers was difficult alone. But I tried to learn as much as possible to get myself on the right track. I never went to trade school so I never had the same amount of hours as the people who had gone to school. It was hard but it made me push harder and made me push to learn every little thing I could.
My second through fourth year were the times when I was becoming more and more comfortable with the different welding processes. When I finally got to the point where I didn’t have to thing about how I held the stinger in my hand anymore or how close my arc length was when running a 7018, I knew I was becoming a full fledged welder.
Now, at years 5 and up, I’d be considered a journeyman welder by most people in the trades. I’m still trying to learn something new every day within welding but now I am learning more about other trades. There are not a lot of projects that come in to the ship that I’m worried about taking on anymore and that definitely wasn’t the case three years ago! I will say, that in my time, I have found that have a good mentor has been the key to my success and luckily I found that fairly early on with David. (Our fearless leader)
My advice to welders just starting out is to get at least one job in a big shop to learn from as many people as possible and watch all the welders on Youtube and read as many articles as you can stomach. It will pay a huge return on the time invested. Once you have done that, go get a job at the smallest shop you can find, learn about the business side of the industry, if you’re able to. By year five, you should be able to get into most of the different fields of welding. But the most important thing once you have done all of that is fine something that will fit you just right. Do not settle.
