DIY skills

In article , The Medway Handyman writes

Scary init.

I know you've said that you do a bit of flat pack assembly for the time or skill challenged, not the most demanding work but at least it's clean and straightforward. As you say, not to be sniffed at.

Near Ikeas there's quite a trade in pick, purchase and assemble outfits, it's quite cut-throat round here and I've used them for an office outfitting job. I just couldn't have done it for the money or in the time they did.

Indeed, easy work.

I've been approached by Flat Pack Amigo's who I think have some kinda deal with IKEA. They charge £35 first hour & £25 per hour after. They don't pay their installers anything like that.

I'd charge £45 & £20, so for a full day They are £210 as opposed to my £160.

I need to put my rates up :-)

True!

The real problem is that so few schools nowadays teach woodwork, metalwork and engineering/technical drawing, added to the fact that current kids can't learn the relevant skills from their dad (if he's around!), since even he didn't learn how to design, make or mend things.

Sad.

As somone who cannot do any of these things, this is one thing that I get very annoyed about and frustrated about with my own education. Now I do have an OH who should be able to do it ( and can) but wont. I dont know why.

O learned to cook and sew though. Most girls cant do that either. I think a lot of this is the old health and safety in schools and the turn from making things to technology ( which leaves kids making paper models and computer pretties( cant call them anything else.) Thats why skills are gone. Although I have to say , sometimes even when something looks easy, interpreting the instructions is a nightmare.

I had my daughter applying Loctite to the dome nuts holding her new shelves togther, yesterday. Small thing - but she knows how nuts work, the benefit of domed ones and what Loctite is for :)

She also knows how to do old style woodplugging (too scared to give her the chisle at her age though!)

Sadly most probably will, we don't make much in this country an more. How ever there will always be a need for plumbers, sparks, brickies etc though to build and maintain the homes and work places these people use. But how many plumbers do you need per household? 1 in

The really sad thing with people not knowing how to use tools and how thinks work (even at the very basic level) is that if the support structure they rely on fails they are up s*it creek without a paddle. They can't do simple things to help themselves to be comfortable when things get a bit tough.

Look how many news reports there were last winter of people sat shivering for days with no heating when their (badly) installed condensing boiler condensate drains froze up and all the plumbers were rushed off their feet with burst pipes and frozen condensate drains.

Wrong. The UK is the world's seventh largest manufacturing nation.

And who is above us?

What positions have we held in the past?

Define "manufacturing". My book doesn't include simply assembly of a prebuilt units from other countries into finished products so it can have a "Made in England" stamp and avoid import tariffs.

Irrelevant. You didn't say "We're below ...", you said "We don't make much" - your statement is untrue.

-ditto-

That's a not unreasonable point and the answer is "I don't know." I was quoting Evan Davis from his documentary the other night;

We did metalwork *and* latin at grammar school. I was crap at both, and feel that woodwork would have been more useful.

Shame that. Does sound like he's a lazy SOB. Well, so am I but I will still put up a shelf in exchange for chocolate.

Two more things that should be taught to all children - and ironing too. But I'd say that's more up to the parents than the schools.

Dead right here.

This is not quite true - there was an interesting telly prog Monday evening (part 1 of 3, so watch it next week) by that Evan Davies about just that. Successful manufacturing in this country has *adapted* either by going into niche markets or by innovating.

Latin I have never regretted - it is the basis for much of out language and is the root of all medical terms and the names for all items in nature.

And as for metal work v. woodwork, you're missing the point that once introduced to tools you are introduced to the handling of any other tool and material thereafter. I've never been taught dress making but it is just a slightly different form of engineering, and with that approach in mind any good book will teach you.

Rob

This is of course a very good point. But, nonetheless, in my limited DIYing I fiddle much more with wood than metal.

No latin but did wood work. I would have really liked to have done more metal work. I can do reasonable things with wood but metal bashing is just that, 'it it wiv an 'ammer. Or drill a hole in it.

I think the issue is that while we still are a large manufacturing country, the stuff we manufacture requires a very high skill set, there isn't anything left for the no-A-levels walk-straight-into- the-steelworks-or-pit more, all those jobs are now done in China, as shown on Evan Davies' programme. What sort of jobs are there here for the permanantly angry semi-sozzled unskillable people I see so often at the job centre?

JGH

I didn't do Latin, although have picked quite a lot up through doing a biochemistry degree and a lifelong interest in church music (bit odd for a lifelong atheist, but there we are), but I did do metalwork (well, blacksmithing, anyway), woodwork, cookery and needlework. All of them useful. I learned to ice skate, too.

Mind you, 90% of what they teach you at school is useless crap; unfortunately, you've no way of knowing which 90% it is.

I don't know the answer to that one. But I agree it is a serious question.

I've read similar in the not too distant past. I had to read it twice to be sure (now I can't find the link) but manufacturing in the UK is a lot bigger than a lot of people would have you believe. The reason is that the economy as a whole has grown massively on the back of "service" industries, but manufacturing is still there where it has always been, just as a smaller proprtion of the whole.

MBQ