Learn the great skill of welding
Go back to school and learn something that’s actually really useful and rewarding
When you look back at your school days, you have to wonder what the point was in learning some of the things you were taught. To the best of my knowledge, I have never been called upon to quell an emergency by explaining how a U-shaped valley was formed or found it necessary to draw upon my aptitude with quadratic equations to help me change a light bulb. But being an adult opens the doors to learning some genuinely useful skills through night school, the best of which is undoubtedly
mastering welding! A few years ago, I was driving a Triumph Spitfire that, being British and from the 70s, was rusting away in front of my eyes. It needed major metal structural work, something I neither had the skills to do nor the cash to fund. In an act of desperation, I googled ‘learn to weld’ and was delighted to discover my local college ran a course on that very topic. I contacted them, signed up and after 12 weeks of three-hour lessons one evening a week, I emerged not only with the ability to fix the car, but also a certificate stating I had an EAL Level 1 Award in MIG welding to hang next to my 50m swimming certificate. “The welding course is one of the most popular courses we run,” explains Andy Clark, who teaches Welding and Fabrication at my local college, Tresham in Corby. “We get all ages of students, from 17 to 70 years old, and most have bought a welder and just want to know how to use it. We’ve had guys who have bike or car projects on the go, those who want a change of career and fancy retraining as a welder, people who just like the idea of welding, male and female, everyone really – it’s a very diverse group and the course is always over-subscribed.”
For my part I turned up with the idea of simply gaining the skills required to fix the car, but very quickly I discovered that not only was I learning to weld, I was having a brilliant time while doing it! Night school is a far cry from sitting at the back of a geography class trying to stop your own personal tectonic plate from slipping beneath an oxbow lake.
Every college is set up differently,
‘Not only was I making a load of sparks, I was learning’
but far from some stuffy classroom, generally the course will take place in a workshop containing several welding booths set up for TIG, MIG or MMA ‘stick’ welding. After the usual mandatory health and safety briefing, which if you have ever got arc-eye (effectively a sun burnt eyeball) you will pay attention to, the rest of the course is extremely relaxed and mainly practical. The lecturer will explain a welding technique such as butt joints (snigger) with the help of a whiteboard and physical props and then, armed with a stack of metal and a welder, you spend as much time as you like attempting to recreate the weld. And honestly, I can’t tell you just how much fun it is being given a limitless supply of metal, a welder and permission to attack. But far from just amusing yourself making sparks, it is a genuine learning process. Throughout the course the lecturer will check your welds, give you tips on how to increase your penetration (snigger), set new projects and also explain how to get a welder set up correctly for the thickness of metal you are welding. In short, after 12 weeks you emerge ready to buy a welder and start to weld in your own garage with a high degree of competency. Which is exactly what I did and I now have a Spitfire that’s back on the road and hasn’t fallen apart. Yet. While the sound of going back into education may be daunting for some, gaining a certificate in welding is a very practical-based result and while there are course notes and a test at the end, it isn’t an exam as such, far more an assessment of your competency and requires no swatting up for. And yes, I did pass it!
Going back to night school and learning to weld was one of the best things I have ever done. The 12-week course at Tresham costs £390, which is amazing value for money when you consider that’s 36-hours of learning and all the materials and kit you need. Since completing the course I’ve fixed the car, built a few engine stands, welded a baffle together and done a million and one small jobs on a £250 welder I bought from a machine shop. In fact, I had so much fun doing the MIG course, despite the fact I’m unlikely to ever use it, I’ve already signed up to learn TIG welding. I can’t recommend signing up for a night school strongly enough, it’s brilliant.