Labor working

[natkova]

I always wonder why people don't appreciate labor job.Like blacksmith carpenter mason tailor etc.Like job lawyer. I mean in pleace where i live.You only need to have a primary school and if you have bad grades like C or D they will put you in labor job.These job carpenter blacksmith  mechanic primary  require some thinking math, meassuring marking.Here where i live you finnish mid school for these job labor you don't need collage (The collage don't exist).I had a good opportunity to sing job like lawyer or something like that.But instead of these fancy job i pick this labor. My oppinon is the work that dont like lawyer don't show result that can be seen.I dont know might this sound stupid.Example when you make forge axe you use axe and you have feeling that you make that and it show result. I choose plumber school  becasue i really dind know wich kind school to choose. I only wanted something job that you work with your hands. Do you feel like blacksmith, carpenter mason job are underestimated by people.

[Old N Rusty]

I see a change coming,  With nearly one half of the population on government dole , The people who can do ANYTHING will gain respect and be well paid. Their pride and self respect will be obvious, and contagious. 

[natkova]

I mean i finnish plumber school i study 3 years and 8 years elementary (primary). All together i go to school for 11 years, but i reliased that more kids  imagine themselfs in att offices, wich give too much unemployed people.

[Frosty]

Same thing here, we spend 12 years in school to graduate high school but there don't seem to be any trade classes in public schools anymore. To learn a trade you have to attach yourself to a company willing to teach you on the job, attend a trade school or find the rare apprenticeship program. The education system has been pushing college since before I started and they teach kids you can't be anything without a degree. What they NEVER tell students is a college degree doesn't mean you have a marketable skill, just the tools to learn one. Teachers are folk who've spent their entire live in school and have a vested interest in passing that philosophy on.

 

We have to have teachers without them we're nothing, heck today we might not even make it as savages, we'd probably be food.

 

Anyway, I know what you're saying and I don't have a solution. What I do have for you is this. I have NEVER been out of work more than a week longer than I wanted to be. I have marketable skills and am jack of all trades enough to pick up a new trade quickly. As revenge I've enjoyed making almost twice as much as the other guy on the crew who had HIS position based solely on the fact he had the right degrees.

 

The last time the section geologist, (guy who signed my time sheet) told me how lucky HE felt to have A job and I needed to suck up his latest abuse, I walked out his door, across the yard and came back in 15 minutes to sign my resignation. I loved the look on his face when I handed it to him and told him I felt for his occupational insecurity, he should've developed a marketable skill. Half an hour later I blew the truck air horn as I drove past his office on my NEW job.

 

The best revenge on folk is to be GOOD. Over here plumbers are at the high end of the earning scale. Believe me the president isn't going to do it himself if a pipe breaks or backs up, ain't going to tune the car, rewire anything, Couldn't if he wanted to.

 

Frosty The Lucky.

[njanvilman]

Learn a trade or two, and become good with your hands.  And never stop learning from any master.  I taught woodworking and metalworking for 37 years, but learned electrical work, plumbing, and masonry work by watching, then trying.  I always backed up what I learned by reading.

 

When I student taught, the teacher I worked with was a master machinist.  Whenever he took his family on a vacation, he paid for it by finding a local machine shop and offering to work so some of the employees could have time off.  He told me he always funded his family vacation in full for many years.  And he still had weekends and evenings with his family.(He was like me, going stir crazy if I do not work with my hands every day). 

[natkova]

The problem is in society becasue everybody imagin themself as i said some fancy job.It goes like this. Example : I will finish school finish collage too, than the job will throw themself at me. I will be  a doctor or somehing like this have bigg paymant.Bigg house mad car. But when you change this to reality this it is'n like that. And on the other hand some trades youst die for this. LIke there is school that when you sing up to be blacksmith. YOu work in factory and than you get job. But a small amount of people went to this school.And than we said, we don't have job.

[VaughnT]

I doubt society will change any time soon.  Acceptance is about the perception that others have of you.  If they don't know what you do, but always see you sharply dressed, with a fancy watch and polished shoes, they'll think wonderfully of you.  They see the money that your appearance presents and assume that you're well-educated and working at something that pays well.

[natkova]

I get it. IT have something with  uniform.As myself iam really messy. I sometimes step on my tool.And  alway need to wear scrap clothes for working eaven it is woodworking  or cutting a litle metal pipe.I wont reccomend anybodey to mess with silicone cauliknig in good and new clothes one when it is attached you can' remove it .I once tried to use sand paper and remove silicone but i just and up with ruined tracsuit.The fiber get all  busted up and its only for backyard working.

[Frosty]

No, it is NOT society. WE are society, you me and all the other chowderheads walking the planet. Thinking society should  or should not be a certain way is delusional. If it's broken enough fix it. Bemoaning how things SHOULD be just makes a person a "shouldhead."

 

When it gets down to issues the only thing we can really change is ourselves, we can influence others but not really change them. If nobody in your society wants to do manual labor the person who will can name the price. The king of the world has a backed up toilet, the plumber is going to get called and that plumber can demand a king's ransom for the repair. Plumbing is a high paying trade, so is electrician, auto mechanic, mason, carpenter, less so but a LOT of guys want to be carpenters, still as long as they don't get too greedy their family never goes hungry, mortgages don't get foreclosed, etc.

 

A person who has good manual skills and isn't afraid to use them never goes hungry or sleeps on a park bench. Heck, thinking about it we ought to be hoping EVERYBODY decides to go to college, earn multiple degrees and never ever learns to take care of the dirty jobs. We'll be rich. And not just have lots of money, we'll be rich in the knowledge we CAN do whatever we need to and not depend on others for the basics.

 

Frosty The Lucky.

[natkova]

Well said.But as yong man i know how thoese kids thinking.I'm somekind strange i don't fit in today boy standard.I start using axe at when i was 5  grade.I mean hewing wood and that stuff.I was in That "society" somekind like stranger and today a litle bit becasue iam starting to grow up and using axe isn't somekind strange for 17 years old boy but for 12 year old boy using axe is somekind strange for that kind. I feel like iam old guy trapped inisde young boy. I dont have need to go out. Iam not intersted in motorcycles or cars. Iam only intersted in making stuff with my hands. And i ussualy break stuff to learn how its made i mean it was curiosity.And allways sniffing around to find and searchin how is this made , how is that made. I once go to blacksmith at my city and i had wish to learn new  skill. But he was somekid selfish. I ask hime can i help you he said " I can do this job alone i do this for 60 years than i can do it now. And i stare like idiot. And if somebodey said old trades die. Everybody blame young people for don't want learn new skill. I understand for this guy blacksmithing is his bread. Might for that he didnt give a try for me on his forge.

[the iron dwarf]

doing work with you hands will always have value, other jobs come and go, at the moment we are undervalued but when their are problems we can sort them out.

 

in the long term things will always need to be made or repaired, most things are made to last less and less but some people will always value quality

[natkova]

doing work with you hands will always have value, other jobs come and go, at the moment we are undervalued but when their are problems we can sort them out.

 

in the long term things will always need to be made or repaired, most things are made to last less and less but some people will always value quality

We need to thank that to Chinese folks  :lol:

[Frosty]

Got it. I'm actually relieved you're so young. I know some "artists" who never get over some pretty unrealistic thinking. Being so young this kind of thinking is normal. NO NO, don't throw things at me! I use "normal" as a purely human psychological development term. I'm no more normal than you are, I've NEVER been part of the regular/normal kids.

 

I grew up in my Father's metal spinning shop I've worked for my spending money since I was 8yrs. old. While the "normal" kids were spending all the money their folks gave them on clothes, dating, cars, whatever, I was paying rent, my for my car, insurance, maintenance, etc. I also had to help pay for the horses and I did get into dirt bikes around your age. What I did for fun was nothing like the "normal" kids, my little group of friends launched balloons with instrument packages, timed release devices and tracked the capsules with home made radio direction devices on horseback. We launched rockets too but that was too expensive with the permits, and how far out in the desert we had to go to launch one. We made movies, comic books more like the modern graphic novels, etc. We were DIFFERENT than the other kids.

 

What we had though was a pretty solid grounding in having to pay our own way thanks to our parents. We lived in a world of our own where we could do whatever we wanted, all we needed to do was earn the money to do them. AND pay any damages we did. some guys here may wonder why I'm so up to speed on air fuel explosions, our big one ended up costing us quite a bit in broken windows.

 

There we were working 40+ hour weeks, making decent money because we were fairly well skilled kids for right out of school. I could've passed the basic pipe and structural welding certification tests but NOBODY would test a kid right out of high school so I had to take a couple trade school classes. Anyway, the four of us were working and doing our odd things on our own time. Other kids we grew up with were convinced my friends and I were just LUCKY we had jobs and had marketable skills. LUCKY!

 

It can be a rough road at times but never NEVER be sorry for being different than the average folks, nothing good comes from setting your sights lower, aim high, be whatever kid of different makes you who and what you are. If other folk have a problem with you, THEY have the problem. What you need to do is learn to not let their aims be your problem. Society and how it's set up is for the average folk, just be who you are and don't let THEM bother you more than you absolutely must.

 

I don't know what the percentage is but there have always been the outsiders, the loaners who went their own way, some are way above average but thinking and doing with a little creative originality looks like genius to the average folk. A number of years ago we had a thread on the old Artmetal list we titled "legion of loaners" devoted to how all of us felt being outside the normal folks normal interests.  There were hundreds of posts from hundreds of folk about how it felt and how we felt when we finally realized being "our" kind of different was a good thing.

 

I hereby welcome you officially to the Legion Of Loaners', honorable rolls. You are now authorized to roll your own.

 

Roll on little brother.

 

Frosty The Lucky.

[petere76]

Old and Rusty,

You are so correct on the observation that much of our country has embraced welfare nation as a viable job option. It's flat out wrong and as either a business or a Social model it is unsustainable. More takers than makers, just can't work.

Before I was trained to be an engineer, a wise man told me that "the future belonged to those willing to get their hands dirty". He was right then and it applies now, a lesson our own welfare nation and their supporters should learn, before it's too late. Blacksmiths and other iron trade workers have always made their way under their own power, been self motivated and capatilized on engunity and hard work. The future for those of like mind still appears prominising.

All the best to my iron working and self sufficient brethren.

Peter

[natkova]

Thank you guys  for support. When i was 12 years old i allways hide axe in pants.I was somekind ashamed becasue it wasn't " fitt in". Iam changing my page in life.

[doc]

Remember this quote from Dr. Seuss  via MACBRUCE

 

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
— Dr. Seuss

[Nobody Special]

First of all, what did you use to track the signals, frosty? The old turnable ring shaped antennas, like in "White Heat" to determine direction and then triangulation?

 

I love looking at things with the top off. I get tired of the "meat comes in plastic packages", "What makes the car go? The key, dummy.", "Electricity? Comes from wires." philosophy that's so pervasive. It amazes me the basic concepts that people are missing, much less the skills.

 

I'm not a real mechanic, but I can usually fix an engine, or replace whatever's ailing. I'm not a real plumber, but God knows I can lay pipe, snake out a drain, or sweat new fittings in. I'm not an electrician, but I can run a new outlet or replace a switch without getting struck by lightening more than five or six times. (Maybe I should hire that one out....) I ain't Rich Hale, but I can make something he might grudgingly admit resembles a knife, if you have a couple of drinks first, and squint at it in the right light. (Come to think of it, that might be how I got married the first time.......)

 

And not only do I get more satisfaction from doing all these things than from my day job, I am constantly amazed at the level of thought and planning that it takes to do them well and safely. It is ridiculous the level of contempt that people have for manual trades they know nothing about. Until something breaks.....and then they don't know anything about the problem, so "obviously" the guy fixing it is using his arcane knowledge to rip them off, right? 

 

With all my kids, I can't afford not to know how stuff works. Everytime something new breaks, gotta pick up a new skill. And if I can't do it, then I have a firm rule of don't xxxx off the person that can. Treat them nicely.

[Steve Sells]

but I can make something he might grudgingly admit resembles a knife, if you have a couple of drinks first, and squint at it in the right light. :) (Come to think of it, that might be how I got married the first time.......)

 

So you are telling us you got your wife to be drunk and hid her glasses in order for her to say I DO ?

[Frosty]

Bad light too Steve. Makes you wonder why he said "first wife" doesn't it?

 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Nobody Special]

B) Just add a white cane. Love is blind. Or blind drunk anyways. Looking back, at least one of us must have been...... B)

[swedefiddle]

Correct answer for "WHAT IS NORMAL??"

 

 

 

It is a setting on "The Clothes Dryer"   :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

 

Neil

[forgemaster]

Before one of our better apprentices was indetured to us, he did some school work experience here, the careers advisor from his school (toffy private school too) had to come and acess his on the job work experience.  Her comment to him was, "why do you want to even come and work in a disgusting filthy hot smoky place like this when you could have a real job with your intellegence".  Must have fallen on deaf ears as William Maguire is now probably one of the better blacksmiths I have come across for a long time and he still comes and works for me. 

What chance does the trade/dirty hands world have when this sort of rubbish is sprouted by the people tasked with matching kids up with their chosen life path.  If a kid wants to make stuff, wants to build the things of the world, don't push him/her into some job/occupation/proffesion that they don't want.  Where would the world be if James Watt, or Brunel or any of the other great engineers of our time had been told, "oh no James you'd be better becoming a bean counter, it is cleaner and easier and you wont need to wear those dirty clothes that the nasty workmen wear.

[Frosty]

Nobody: Yeah we used loo antenna on walki talkis. One of our little group of squints, Ralph was the electronics guru. He not only made tuned loop directional antenna he designed and made the radio beacon for the balloon packages, the capacitor discharge release device and the electronic timer. Everything in the package Ralph built weighed less than the 9v transistor radio battery that powered it all.

 

Modified the walki talkis physically adding a small dia. knob centered on the back cover. We mounted a close detailed contour map on a cardboard backer. We marked the walki talkis with center lines, they pivoted nicely on the knobs and we could mark fixes with  the marks on the ends..

 

WE discovered on the first package recovery we only needed one tracking radio. lay the tracker on the map at your present location, determined accurately by taking sightings on more than one peak or visible feature and mark the compass coordinates. Where the lines crossed is where you was at. We'd tick the little socket centered on the locatin fix lines. the socket was just a knob sized hole in a thin piece of plastic. Then take a radio fix, put a pint on the front arrow and one on the back arrow, lift the tracker and draw a line. Move a ways and do it again three fixes and you had the package location within a couple yards.

 

Ralph was the electronics guy, Jim was the chemist and I was the builder and wacky idea guy. There were a couple other guys who'd drift in and out but we three were the core. Ralph had his off the bell curve genius Grandfather who loved teaching Ralph, Ralph was smart enough to understand him. for instance Ralph was the only 16 yr. old in 1968 I ever heard of who had his own ruby laser. I have some pretty cool stories about Ralph's laser and the voices. Later maybe. Jim's mother worked in the lab at a local hospital and Jim seemed to have a serious knack for chemistry. I'll have you k now we never did anything destructive with the contact explosives and other various FAST burning compounds. Me, I had wild ideas, a machine shop, Dad's, welders, torches, various implements of con/de/struction and  piles of scrap, drops and such. Oh yeah, e had horses so getting around and packing . . . stuff in the Chaparal wasn't so hard.

 

Good times, every kid should have a bunch of ADD ADHD pals, resources and enough room to not destroy . . . too much.

 

Frosty The Lucky.

[VaughnT]

 "why do you want to even come and work in a disgusting filthy hot smoky place like this when you could have a real job with your intellegence".

 

That's the key, right there!  The world at large sees it as an ugly place fit only for brow-ridged brutes incapable of getting a better job.  That prejudice sets up a vicious circle, demeaning those that work there and making potential candidates afraid to apply for fear of what their peers might say.  Some could argue that said prejudice keeps the weak souls out of the field, but that ignores the damage done to the field as a whole.

 

As I said before, it's all about perception.  Had the accessor seen you in your Sunday best, with your shoes shined bright and your hat cocked right, she'd have probably made eyes at you - never knowing that you worked in one of those nasty fields.

 

Mike Rowe talks at length about the prejudice, and I think he's rather spot on.  The trouble is that it's going to take as long to fix the problem as it did to create the problem.

[ianinsa]

 I'll have you know we never did anything destructive with the contact explosives and other various FAST burning compounds.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

 

This line sort of doesn't ring true somehow????? :D

 

 

Ian