Welding as a career?

[HarryPotter]

Manual labor is fucking shitty. End of story. 40k a year for serving drinks? And the possibility of getting waffleswaffleswaffleswaffleswaffles every night? I'll take it.

[blefevre]

There is such a huge variety of jobs for welders. While all you will do is fab stuff, the job can be rather different. Example: the sad stories of people welding and getting cancer, 50+ hours a week, harsh environments, etc. The other end is specialty "higher end" welding. Where I work (semiconductor industry), our welders are payed pretty well, only work 40 hours a week, payed per hour not per part/weld, nice buildings and welding booths, etc. Bottom line is you need a bunch of certs and experience though.

[Mike The Bavarian]

pipe welding, underwater welding and gastank welding are where real money is. getting your 6g certification is one of the best things you can do if welding is what you'd like to do

[bramon]

Sorry to threadjack, but what do some of you think of Commercial Diving? It kind of goes along with welding (which is why I didn't want to start another thread) :up:

[blefevre]

I have a good friend that did underwater welding for a bit. He loved it, but it is one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet. He worked at lockheed martin as a weld inspector after that. It's a good start if you are up to it.

[bramon]

I have a good friend that did underwater welding for a bit. He loved it, but it is one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet. He worked at lockheed martin as a weld inspector after that. It's a good start if you are up to it.

Well, we'll find out if I'm up to it or not come September time, I start dive school at the Divers Institute of Technology here in Seattle.
But I should be fine, I have been swimming competitively since I was 10 so hard work and endurance are nothing new to me.

[Mercury[BKM]]

There is such a huge variety of jobs for welders. While all you will do is fab stuff, the job can be rather different. Example: the sad stories of people welding and getting cancer, 50+ hours a week, harsh environments, etc. The other end is specialty "higher end" welding. Where I work (semiconductor industry), our welders are payed pretty well, only work 40 hours a week, payed per hour not per part/weld, nice buildings and welding booths, etc. Bottom line is you need a bunch of certs and experience though.

thats kind of what i was looking at, Im married so i dont really need the ladies every night thing, it does get old after a while lol =).

I was mostly thinking about wanting to do fabrication work with the auto industry, but i imagine that would be a little difficult to step into. (no necessarily big names, but like maybe a shop)

[mrsleeve]

Manual labor is fucking shitty. End of story. 40k a year for serving drinks? And the possibility of getting waffleswaffleswaffleswaffleswaffles every night? I'll take it.

hahahahaha 40k a year your a funny guy too, most welders I know have cleared that in the 1st quarter of the year by a long long ways.


Ok OP: if you want to get into welding, being a fabricator, while a useful skill and all is not where you are going to make any money, your in a fab shop 8 hours a day maybe 10 and 5 days a week or on shift rotations making what ever the contract calls for. Lots of GMAW (mig) and GTAW (tig) you will make a living but its hot, dirty, and just gets really old after a week.

You want to make some money as a welder you have to get into the oil patch and or pipeline work, this is nearly all SMAW (stick) and down hill (all though automated GMAW is getting popular on bigger inch for main line). You live in a good spot but TX is over run with welders. But its a good place to get your foot in the door, and go on from there. You need to find a well pipeline service company looking for welders helpers. Your not going to make a ton of money and your going to get all the grunt work but its necessary to learn the trade, oh and save your money your going to need it. Once you have been doing the helping thing for a year or 2, when you get some time off go to welding school and learn the class room welding theory and get some basic practice. If you are working with a good welder who wants to teach you you will be that much further ahead, but as I have seen most of the welders dont want to teach green hands right away. Oh standard work week is normally 10 hours a day 6 days week. Most jobs I have been on lately have been 7-12's

Ok now that you have some field OJT and some class room and formal instruction comes buying a welding machine, this will be subject to how much cash you have and what you decide you want to do, buy the best you can used and PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE every moment you can. Keep helping and learning the trade from tricks to fitting, and how to make bad line ups work. Then once you have a good handle on things look all over the trade classifieds for a used welding rig put you machine on it and go and cert out and see if you can talk someone into breaking you out. Did I mention Practice Practice Practice

The catch to all this, is to make a substantial living your not going to be home every night or even on the weekends you are going to have to travel and be gone for months at a time (more than likely). You will be outside in all kinds of weather, wallering around in the mud and muck a lot. The place to be right now is PA, WV, WY and ND tx pays like shit in many cases compared to where I mentioned. As a rig welder you can hire out on pipeline and facility work or the drilling rigs, (lots of OT and will make up 200k+ on a good years) building and trades as a junk iron welder (not as much if any OT still make a reasonable living) . There are lots of possibility, but as mentioned earlier its like any other trade it can be tough on the body and some times heath risks involved, thanks to the manganese fumes from the flux. I know many a hard drinking chain smoking welders that are still out there in their 60's though too......


FYI I am a pipeline X-ray hand/welding inspector I keep welders honest

[5Toes]

My local community college is FULL of welders. Granted the biggest shipyard on the westcoast is here..

[HiTheNameIsBJ]

I Like Turtles

[blefevre]

Yeah my dad made triple that. A friend of mine owns a fab company, based out of his garage, works when he wants and makes more than that.

Yes, that is true of any job. You need to look at the averages to give good advice.

[der affe]

get a helmet with on board air supply, we were looking at some paperwork from miller on them and showing the accumlation of the crap that enters your lungs, but never leaves. it was fucking scarry and looked like a salt shaker in the x rays.

i don't even want to think what i have done all these years. i am very seriously concidering getting one now. it also makes it more bearable when you are working in hot dirty enviroments.

automotive fab and welding is fun, but unless you have your own shop or work for a high end race shop the pay is not super great right now since to some extent it is attached to the economy.

when things are good, people have more disposable income to build toys, when things are bad, it slows down.

diversify and don't just do automotive and do general fab work.
get yourself a mill and lathe so you can machine custom parts as part of your fab work. it will save you money since you wont have to outsource machine work, there by putting that money in your pocket.

learn to do sheet metal fab also. find a used shear and a finger brake and start figuring it out.

like i said learn as much as you can so yoiu can do the work in house.

[b*saint]

Welding is cool, its one career I looked into. I wanted to be a tig welder that welding in what looks like a sandblasting cab. I guess its a 100% inert environment welding. I bought my own tig welder at one time. Miller 200. It was sweet but I had to sell it when I changed my day job and had no where to store it.

[samurai pizza cats]

right now im in school for commercial diving, and the instructors say that there isn't much welding in diving much less saturation welding. not saying there's not any welding going on out there, but when there is, they only want the best, and like all trades you have to be someones bitch for a year or two before any real money can be made.

[Restoman]

Come on over to the Haynesville Shale or Eagle Ford Shale, fitters make 100k + and pay nothing out of pocket. Oil field is probably where you will end up. Some where crappy and lonesome.