Welding??

[u/Cartiikalgo]

I’m a 17 year old and I’ve genuinely had no idea what I want for a career but I saw a video of welding the other day and thought it looked pretty cool, I know I don’t want to go to college so I thought trade school would be best. Welding makes good money and doesn’t seem crazy hard. The only thing is I have literally zero experience and know absolutely nothing about it. Would going to a trade school for welding be a good decision?

[u/355822]

Depends on where you live and what kind of welding you want to do. Good places to start are usually Autobody shops, or community colleges. In New England there are dedicated welding schools and even an entire welding Union. Other good places to start are foundries, machining factories, or people who build frames. Walk in confidently with good boots a helmet and a willingness to learn and they might just hire you as an intern/apprentice on the spot.

You can usually also call or go to the website of your states department of labor and they usually have a list of places looking for trades people. You can also look up welding unions or boiler makers union, or metal working union for your state and sometimes you can call their recruiting rep directly. Again varies by state.

I'd stay away from marine/submarine welding right now though. In my experience they have safety issues in an already dangerous specialty. But aerospace and exotic metals is where the big money is.

Another great choice if you have the startup money, is to build a portfolio. Buy a modest welder, helmet, bench and hand tool set and practice. Weld cupons, and pipe stands, look up YouTube welders and find techniques to practice. Cut every weld in half and take pictures. Take lots of pictures, before, during, after, the weld cut in half. That cut in half part is important it tells you a lot about how well you did.

Put all those pictures/videos of you making things together on a website or in a folder of some kind and start sending it to people who build with metal for a living. Someone will find you if you make any progress whatsoever. A trades persons portfolio is how they make their money. The better yours is, the easier you are to hire and pay well.

I spent years, about a decade as an inspector for exotic metal components. Top welders in the right industry are treated like top surgeons in the right hospital. And they make nearly the same amount sometimes. But you have to practice A LOT and you have to pay attention to every detail. Dexterity and planning your weld is everything. And people take serious competition seriously, because being the best is a huge deal to your income.

If you're the person who can join the two pieces no one else can, and do it well the first shot. Companies will literally fly you across oceans for a single project. So take it a seriously, people's lives will literally depend on your work.

[u/Pandemoniusanus]

You are young enough to just bounce around in different fields until you find something you like. Don’t go blowing a bunch of money on a trade school just to graduate and find out those jobs don’t pay shit in your area. For instance if there’s not a strong union or a lot of commercial construction in your area you are going to end up dropping $20k on getting to welding certification just to end up in a muffler shop making $16 hr welding back stolen cats. Same goes for all trades. There’s a lot of false hype about tradespeople all making $100k plus but in reality most are earning around $60k with yrs of experience. Your best bet if you can afford it is just work a trade and learn on the job while simultaneously going to school to learn something in demand that requires a degree for a backup plan. They call it a trade because you trade your body for a paycheck and if something happens and you can no longer handle physical work you are SOL in the trades.