OT: calling skilled chippys or similar, more work for a young'un

[The Night Tripper]

Hi all

T i m's question about his daughten and the arborists has prompted me to ask a somewhat similar question in the hope of aiding our 23-year-old son.

He left school at 16 under a bit of a cloud with next to no 'levels, and had a few wild years thereafter. However he's sorted himself out a lot in the last few years and these days he is looking to make a career for himself.

Around 18 months ago he found himself work with a local property development company working alongside a 'master carpenter' and loved it. He was taking real pride in the work, learnt a lot and AFAICT was close to being able to build stairs, etc. etc. He was also going to college once a week to get his NVQs. He disliked that part as it was far too slow for him (he may not be academic but he's far from thick), but was sticking it out for the sake of the future.

However his employer (or rather, the bean-counter he took on ;-() worked out that because he was a 'student apprentice' he could be paid the measly sum of twenty quid a day. He (not unreasonably IMO) took exception to this and after very restrained remonstrations left this firm.

He's since got a similar job with a small renovation company, again has been loving it and grafting hard. But not this one is up to what seems to be 'usual' tricks of the bisuness - not paying on time, avoiding commitments re. money, and so on. I appreciate that cashflow can be an issue with these small firms, but they don't seem to deal with it very well, grr...

So ... it seems like he's going to be looking for work once again. He does this all word of mouth at the moment, and I'm keen to expand the resources he has available to him. Has anyone got any suggestions I could pass onto him about where to seek the sort of work I'm trying to describe? We're on the East Sussex coast so if there's anyone local who is after a hard worker with a keen wit and a strong willingness to learn I'd be very pleased to hear about it! But more generally, I'm interested in general thoughts about whre other than property maintainers he might be looking, and what sort of qualifications he might want to think about in the longer run.

Thansk for your thoughts J^n

[A.Lee]

The Night Tripper wrote: snip loads.

If he is pretty sensible, is reliable,does know a bit about general carpentry, and most of all, has common sense, then he should have no problem getting a job with a property manitenance/development Company.

I put an ad in the local paper in January, asking for a bit of work. A property developer called me, and I met him at one of the houses he was doing, he told me that he just couldnt get reliable staff, who could be left on their own to sort problems out themselves. Qualifications didnt come into it, you could either do the job, or not. (as an aside, a mate has an engineering business, a customer came to him to collect a sample. This young chap was the design engineer, who had a masters degree etc. My mate passed him a vernier to check the sizes. He looked aghast - the chap didnt know how to use a vernier, even though he had an engineering degree - apparently all work is done on computers, with no need to use 'proper' tools).

Another chap I know builds houses, and he said the same - just couldnt get reliable staff.

Alternatively, if he is good at fitting doors, floors, stairs etc, then go self employed. I did it last year, and love it. I'm always skint as I charge little, but I am less stressed, and come and go as I please. It has taken a year to get established, but all the bills have been paid in the meantime, and I am fully booked a month in advance now. Alan.

[Doki]

I remember being taught how to use a vernier at school. Something about where the lines match up together. However, if I were working full time as an engineer, I'd probably be using a digital caliper and still not remember how to use a vernier scale, purely through lack of use.

[Andrew Gabriel]

I wanted a set of vernier calipers a couple of years ago, and it's quite difficult to find them now -- everywhere only had digital ones. My dad found them in BHV in Paris eventually.

[dennis]

We were taught how to make them at school. Didn't you do technical drawing or anything useful like that?

[Bob Mannix]

Alternatively he could have gone to Srewfix and got them for £14.99. Not exactly hard to find!!

[Andrew Gabriel]

not very well built (the mechanics probably were up to 0.1mm resolution). (Actually, "then" is probably nearer 3-4 years ago, when the Luton branch opened, which is where I went to look at it.)

That one does look like a 0.02mm resolution one, although it's hard to see in the picture and there's no specification.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember The Night Tripper saying something like:

I'd suggest he tries to finish his NVQ; not so much as for the quali, but for the useful stuff he will learn from a decent instructor. While he's working away at whatever he finds, the course will fill in the blanks.