Sheet Metal Workers
This career also rather surprised me: that there are nearly 200,000 people still doing this work. I had thought (which shows you how well attuned I am to industrial processes) that this was all automated now. Still, as the BLS tells us the job prospects are good and the pay, at $17 an hour on average looks good. The works itself is just as it says on the tin, working with sheet metal to make the things needed in either construction or manufacturing.
The training is almost always by apprenticeship: although some college courses can be included in this, there are no college degrees in the subject. If it’s not purely learning on the job or one of those apprenticeship schemes then the college classes are just that, classes that do not lead to a college degree.
As to those best suited to it (or perhaps who would enjoy the job the most, often very much the same thing) by the standards of our EQSQ personality tests then I think we would have to say the male brain types, the systemisers. It’s not just that it’s heavy physical work (and thus better suited to, although not exclusively, of course, the male physique) the fact that it is dealing with things rather than people edges it that way. It’s also true that the apprenticeship or training can be 5 years long, so it’s obviously a more complex system than simply cutting or hitting a piece of metal.
February 23rd, 2007 at 2:55 am
I once tried to line parts of my house with sheet metal, copper actually - the bathroom, the inside of a built-in cabinet…I had this idea that I could just take the metal, cut it with some kitchen sheers, and bang it up with a hammer for that banged copper look. It didn’t cut with kitchen sheers, hitting with a hammer did make it look banged up, but not in an appealing way. Thankfully, I stopped before I got to the flame torch.
I’ve also tried to make a bowl out of rocks my partner and I retrieved from an Alaskan glacier. It was a great idea: I was going to cement the stones together and add holes to the top layer stones, so I could thread fine copper through the top layer…I got some cement and the right masonry drill bit, had the drill, but had nothing to hold the rock (what’s that called?). The cement wasn’t working so well and in order to make the rocks stick together, I had to cover them up entirely with the cement, so you couldn’t see them anyway. The rocks bounced around the porch a bit, my shoulder starting hurting, and I gave up on the copper idea. My partner received a big gray blob for our anniversary.
Then, months later, I decided to take the bowl apart so I could use the rocks for his Christmas gift. I smashed them in the kitchen sink with a hammer, having to hit them hard to get the cement off. I got most of the cement off some of them and glued them to a copper wine chiller, but only had enough clean rocks to glue to the front (I just couldn’t get that cement off the others). It looked silly, although we do use it for a laugh, and the sink is ruined.
The point: well, I love copper. And rocks. And I think having training with sheet metal (and masonry) would be great.
I won’t even go into my attempts to make clothing…
February 23rd, 2007 at 2:41 pm
Ha, you should have had the intelligence to ask me first! As a pimply youth I actually did some work (like a weekend apprenticeship really) working with copper for fireplaces and so on. The “banged copper” look: the sheets of copper come already banged. That’s a useful tip, don’t you think?
As to the cement: well, yes, I agree. It’s been one of those great bits of intelligence that has been revealed to me as I get older (or as I put it, revel in my increased maturity).
Don’t whatever you do, try to do anything that you can hire someone else to do for you. They’re experts and you’re not.
But then as economists are always banging on about how the division of labor is what makes us all richer, I would say that, wouldn’t I?
February 24th, 2007 at 2:11 am
But hiring someone else (an expert, even; possibly an expert, especially) ruins the creative process, don’t you think?
And why didn’t that guy at Lowe’s tell me about the already banged-up copper? (I suppose I didn’t ask, but instead plowed ahead thinking that anything I could imagine I could physically create - my mantra.)
March 1st, 2007 at 7:48 pm
Well, yes, I agree, using one’s intelligence and hiring the expert does muffle that creativity: however, you might have ended up with something that you really wanted, plus an undamaged sink:-)
It’s also an interesting mantra you have there. It’s something that in my more formal writing I used to believe but no now longer do. Whether this is a matter of intelligence, as in information, or the universe simply telling me that I’m not as intelligent or skilled as I had hoped, I’m not sure. But I simply cannot write fiction at all: I have to stick with factual things. A pity really, as I always wanted to get rich writing a novel.