Tool and die makers are sometimes known as the aristocrats of the manufacturing workforce. It’s certainly true that they’re probably the most skilled of all of the blue collar jobs out there. Rather than making things, they make the machines, molds and so on that are then used to manufacture those other things. As such their attention to detail has to be much greater than the general production worker in manufacturing.

The training is as complex as the job itself. If you follow this path you’ll expect to spend 3-5 years in an apprenticeship, followed by several more years of gaining experience and skills on the job before you’ll be considered fully trained. There’s no college degrees involved here, although much of the classroom work that is part of the apprentice schemes takes place in community and technical colleges. It is however possible to advance up and away from tool and die making by getting a college degree over and on top of the apprentice schemes. Rather than being a tool maker, there are those who go on to be tool designers, and the two skills, the higher engineering ones from the college degree course, plus the technical ones from the hands on experience, complement each other to a great degree.

Who would be best at this job, judging by the criteria of our EQSQ personality tests? I think it’s prety clear that it’s the male brain types, the systemizers. The tolerances worked to are at minimum one ten thousandth of an inch: that’s detail for you, eh?