Had a chat with an old-timer at the supply house about the new guys coming up

He was buying some 7018 and said, 'In my experience, they can run a bead off a machine all day, but hand them a torch and a grinder for a fit-up and they're lost.' It hit different because we just had a kid on our crew in Toledo who could weld textbook perfect but froze when we needed a custom bracket cut from scrap. Makes you think about what we're actually teaching versus what the job needs on a Tuesday morning. How are you all handling the hands-on fitting skills gap with apprentices lately?

2 comments

2 Comments

grace_fox35d ago

My foreman was just talking about a welding school in Cincinnati that added a whole week of just cutting and fitting scrap. I mean, they finally realized the test isn't the job. It seems like a step in the right direction to fix this exact thing.

the_julia5d ago

Man, that's so true. It's like they can pass the test but can't read the room, you know? We had a guy who could run a perfect vertical uphill weld on a practice coupon. Then he had to patch a hole in some sheet metal on a real job and just stared at it. Didn't even know where to start cutting the patch piece. Are we just letting them get good at the test instead of the task?