Interesting bio. I dabbled in doing metal work when I found my father’s 1960s metal working book from high school. I was 14 at the time. I did only minor things such as heat treating, casting and annealing things all self taught. In the early 1990s after leaving the service I went to trade school and worked as a manual machinist. I then went back to college to learn how to weld and certify and then went back to school to receive an associate degree with an emphasis in fabricating/production work. Along the way I learned and took courses in CNC. I tell all this because sadly I left the field in my late 20s early 30s because I grew tired of production work and simply never made much money at it because I live in poor old state of AR whee there isn’t formal certifications or much advancement in the field. I did work up north for a short while and instantly made half as much more as here in my state. Last place I performed metal work was in 2001 operating a CNC turning center working 12 hour night shifts for $11 per hour (after all the experience and school) and being threatened to be fired because I wasn’t consistently producing 90% all the time. Cool thing is I never completey forgot everything and I weld at home for extra money doing odd jobs for people and I can still set up and operate a lathe. As I grew older I learned that at least half the places I worked was either out right threatened by me (at one job the supervisor apologized after I left after 2 years and told me he held me back on purpose, I was cleaning bathrooms and hired as a machinist) or they didn’t challenge me enough.
