The Welder's First Year

This is a book for adults thinking about welding as a second career. Maybe you are leaving a service job in your twenties, or looking at fifteen years of a desk career that has worn you down, or you were laid off in your fifties and noticed that the welders in your old plant kept working when the rest of the line stopped. Welding is one of the few skilled trades where employers actively want adult career-changers. Entry costs are low compared with other trades, and the work is unusually clear: either the weld holds or it does not. The book covers the first year, in the order you will actually meet it. Why welding, honestly, with the drawbacks included. The three training routes, apprenticeship, trade school and self-taught, and what each one really costs you in time and money. Which AWS certifications matter to employers and which do not. What tools to buy, in what order, so you are not spending money in month one on equipment you need in month nine. What a shop floor is actually like to walk into. The injuries that happen most and how people avoid them. And the job search as it really goes, rather than as a brochure describes it. Chapter 8 walks through the first year month by month, so you can see the shape of it before you commit. Three appendices give a first-year equipment checklist, the acronyms you will hear on day one, and where to go next. You are not too late, and this is what the year ahead looks like.