Advice/Input Wanted

[Jelly]

I'm at a bit of a cross-roads in my life currently; I'll be completing my degree studies at the end of this year and am increasingly torn as to where to go next. There is a good chance that I'd be eligable for a fully funded MSc in the next academic year, however I was also pointed at an apprenticeship scheme, which involves an element of competitive skills-based selection (with the Edward Barnsley Foundation, if anyone knows of them).

I'm trying to decide whether it's a worthwhile endevour in producing a portfolio of pieces for the apprenticeship scheme, and I could do with some input on the following:

1. If I was to complete an apprenticeship as a funiture maker, am I realistically likely to be able to find employment in the trade? as a young man in my mid 20's I have neither the resources nor the desire to jump straight into self employment, not to mention that I'd miss out on the chance to learn from a wider variety of experience craftsmen (as per the Journeymen of old).
2. As someone who has not attended college and studied woodworking formally, are there areas that I'm likely to be at a disadvantage to other applicants?
3. In the same vein, as a graduate from an STEM background, are their transferable skills that I should be emphasising during the application process?
4. Is doing what you love as a job all it's cracked up to be?

Some background: I've been involved with woodwork in some capcity or other since I was a small boy (I think my grandfathers began getting me tools and teaching me to use them around the same time I was learning to write, certainly far back enough that I struggle remembering clearly). When I left sixthform at 17 I went to work in a sawmill, or more precisely a saw and planing mill specalising in secondary convertion of joinery stock, finished mouldings and treated exterior joinery stock; with a strong bias towards imported softwoods. I've been employed in the timber trade ever since, both full time and later around my studies (Chemistry, including two years of research specialising in Synthetic Organic Chemistry). This year I was transfered from the sawmilling operation to a sister company which produces fully finished timber windows and doors, I'm classed as a semi-skilled labourer due to my lack of NVQ's but have been called upon to work alongside the bespoke joinery cell, during times of high demand, owing to having demonstrated an degree of knowlege, inititive and skill exceeding the expectations of my job role.


I appreciate that I'm unlikely to ever earn as much as a craftsman as I will pursing a graduate career, but I feel that for a Job I'd genuinely enjoy, it would be a worthwhile tradeoff. Moreover I'm unlikely to be in a position to chase this dream again, right now I'm unattached and used to living on very little money... but the likelyhood is that it won't stay that way forever; by contrast I know from my current studies that persuing a further post-grad qualification around work is quite achievable for me, If I was to decided that I wanted to transfer back into the Sciences at a later date.

 

[Hudson Carpentry]

I have an NVG in engineering and thats it. Nothing else thats related to a qualification in woodworking and im self employed, have my own workshop, employ people when there needed and earn that craftsman wage you speak of.

No idea what a MSc or STEM is so ill answer as I can.

1. You may or may not find employment, this is a gamble. While I was looking for an apprentice the company that offered me one and the apprentice confirmed they have been struggling in looking for employment for a few years. In fact the one they deemed fit for my business was one that had finished his course and was helping out at the centre. It maybe when you finish the market is lacking in decent wood workers and you can walk straight into full time employment.

2. Depends on the employer. When im looking I very rarely look at what wood working qualification they have. I look at there experience, question them and see them in action. Degrees and so forth in woodworking or other trades mean little now days. I also look at the person and see if I can get on with them. Other employers maybe different so it maybe yes.

3. STEM I don't know what it is sorry.

4. Most of the time yes. There are times in any thing you do in life where you will not enjoy something and the job you love if the same. For me its the pressure when im behind and have a date coming up that needs the furniture delivering by, however the finished result of my efforts is always worth it.

 

[Jelly]

Thanks for that; just to clear up STEM is an abbreviation for Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathmatics.

With regards to 2 I'm not concerned about the qualification so much as my own knowlege, we have an extensive library of books, papers, manuals and technical standards on all things timber and woodworking related at home; but it's a case of trying to work out which areas I'm likely to have missed out on from informal and "on the job" training, so that I can select the material thats best going plug the gaps in my theoretical knowlege.

 

[Hudson Carpentry]

Thanks for that. I saw STEM on the side of a school building I was visiting with views on sending the growing up one too, makes scene now.

If your making furniture the client normally has an idea on what timber they would like, if not they normally say Oak or Pine. It would be wise to read up on timbers and what there best used for so you can advice when required. If you do an apprenticeship you would get the relevant knowledge form the employer on the job, anything else you don't learn probably isn't anything you need to worry about within your carrier.

How old are you now if you don't mind me asking? If your over a bracket or close to, an apprenticeship may turn into a job within the firm anyway as they would after a year have to pay you full national wage but that is only relevant if your 25+ I think.

 

[Jelly]

I'm 22 (now, but I won't be for long).

 

[Hudson Carpentry]

Deferentially under so as I understand it your under the full national wage rule. If you wasn't, after a year spending a full wage on you would give the employer more an incentive to keep you on after your course is over.

 

[Noggsy]

It's a really good question and one which I can only answer anecdotally (not being employed in wood at all). I've been doing a job I absolutely love for 10 years and that is worth a huge amount to me - my wife has worked for a few years doing something she does not like, and the stress it has brought to her (our) life has been difficult at times to cope with. That said, I get reasonably well paid and am therefore able to indulge my hobbies and there also a lot to be said for having a hobby which allows you to switch off at the end of the day, especially if your job is very intense. I love the idea of working at my hobby and lots of people describe that as an ideal, but I've also heard loads of people moaning that what they used to love doing for fun, they now find a drudge.

No clear answers, sorry, but hopefully a bit of food for thought. Good luck, anyone who can (mis)quote Billy Bragg will do well in life

 

[Lord Kitchener]

There's no doubt that there is still some traditional furniture making going on, but is it economically viable? Yes, if you can find the customers who can both appreciate and afford it. Being able to knock out a set of perfectly cut dovetails in a reasonably small amount of time is a piece of p*** compared to the difficulty of finding someone who is prepared to and able to pay for it. There are some people who can do that, actually find such customers, but they won't normally be the ones who are actually doing the woodwork, but they will be the ones who are getting the money, and they won't be passing very much of it on to the guys doing the work.

If you've got the chance to stay in education and improve your qualifications then my advice is to take it. My further advice is that if you have to write any applications get someone to proof read them

 

[tomatwark]

Jelly

I had the same problem 25 years ago or so, do I continue with my studies in furniture and end up driving a desk or do I carry on working with my hands.

I choose the latter and have spent a lot of that time working for myself and also in a management roll with a furniture manufacturer as well.

Things have changed now though and a lot more companies seem to think that having a degree is necessary.

But I have seen a lot of people your sort of age with full time qualifications come into the work place with no really idea of the job and also not capable of working at a money making speed.

Would I have done things differently now?

From a ease of getting a job probably, for job satisfaction no.

It really comes down to what you want to do with your life, make lots of money and possibly be not content or do something you love to do, if you a really lucky you might end up with both.

If you are going down the apprenticeship route make sure that you get some grounding in machine operation as well as hand tools as this will make you a lot more employable, as if you end up working for a small maker like myself you will be expected to be able to do both.



Tom

 

[Jacob]

.....Is doing what you love as a job all it's cracked up to be?

If you know what it is at your age then don't even ask! Go for it........

a further post-grad qualification around work is quite achievable for me, If I was to decided that I wanted to transfer back into the Sciences at a later date.

Lucky you if you can hedge your bets.
I'd make a priority of doing what you love to do. In the end it may not be so specific as being a poverty stricken craftsman, there are a whole range of other activities and areas under the general 'maker' or 'furniture' idea. Design being one - who knows where that may lead?

 

[beech1948]

Jelly,

I see your problem as the Known and the Unknown.

I see that you are trying to turn a liking for working with wood into a career maybe through rose coloured glasses.

I see that you have been successful enough as a student to be able to get or be within reach of a degree in some form of Chemistry.

To be blunt as heck. The world needs more chemists of all types. The world maybe does not need to have more hewers of wood.

Chemistry will yield a good living and if your good at it will yield an affluent lifestyle.
Woodwork will not yield anything like that lifestyle unless you are one of the 25 people in the UK able to make it to the TOP.

You hint but do not say it outloud that you "dislike" the STEMs approach of your life..BUT WHY ?. There is much to be said for the achievement of a Chemistry degree or masters. -learning, discipline, focus, thinking styles, scientific method etc etc

At 21 I completed my BSc in Pure Physics otherwise known as Mathematics
At 22 I thought I understood the world..I was wrong
At 30 I went from being a Physicist ( Weapons designer ) to being a Management Consultant with a wife and two kids
At 45 I set up my own consultancy and focussed on Innovation and Creativity
At 46 I took up woodwork to relax
At 50 I reduced my Consulting hours and used them to take a few commissions for furniture
At 64 I now do 60% Consulting on new product development, 30% on furniture making, and 10% on management coaching in a 65 hour week.

I think I have achieved quite a lot.
The basis was my education, learning to learn, being disciplined, being focussed.
The 3 or is it 4 career changes came with a great deal of heartache and worry but also success based on earlier learned skills.

Complete your studies, get a job as a Chemist, learn about the world and always move forward never look back.

The past is no guide to the future.

You will return to woodwork if you have a sufficient spiritual need to do so. At present I feel you have too little knowledge of what you want...go get it.

Of course that could all be sh*t as its just me.

Alan G Beech BSc, Phd, MP NLP,

 

[speeder1987]

I agree with beech above, I am currently in my third year studying towards my doctorate in the process engineering field.

As we move forward a degree is becoming worth less and less, and a masters will help differentiate you from the masses. And if you don't do it now it is very unlikely you will come back to do it later on in life.

There is always time in the future for you to move into woodworking..... and you will always have it as a hobby

Regards

John



Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk 2

 

[marcros]

for me my masters was not so much a differentiator as a qualification, but actually transformed my whole thought process. Looking back afterwards, I was a different person prior to the study. All the gear (knowledge) and no idea (application). It made me question statements, ask the question "so what" about theory and look at the practical application of theory that you hade merely just learnt at undergraduate level. My masters was in business administration- others may be very different in, but for me those few years with the Open University were probably the most beneficial of my 32 years of life.

 

[Jacob]

What you have to watch out for is the protestant work ethic. Some people feel that doing what you want to do is slightly morally dubious and perhaps it may not seem sensible compared to the very respectable alternatives. They could end up doing something they don't really want to do, for the rest of their lives. The longer they leave it the harder it is to change tracks.

 

[Steve Maskery]

I went back to uni in my mid-40s to do my Masters. It was the most fulfilling time of my life, absolutely fantastic. At the end of it I was offered the chance to do a PhD. I turned it down, on the grounds that I really did have to find a job and earn some money.

Ha-ha-ha.

Ten years on I've given up even trying. Yes I have created an oeuvre of which I am proud, and that would not have happened if I'd been to the office every day, but from an economics point of view it's been a disaster. If I'd taken the PhD option, would it have made any difference? I really don't know. I'm sure it would have been very intellectually stimulating, and that is worth a lot when you compare it to the ossification of the brain that happens when you bump along the bottom for year after year. With the great benefit of hindsight I wish I'd done it. But it may not have made me any more employable

You have the great advantage of youth on your side, and indeed, you still have time to make mistakes, learn from them and still succeed. I can't tell you what you should do. I can't even tell myself what I should do. But you do have options, embrace your choice.

What you don't want to do is get to the point where, in the words of the song, you are "too old to work and too young to die".

 

[Jelly]

I'm just going to pick on certain bits, this is giving me a lot of food for thought; which is helpful because it stops me creating and internalising an unrealistic idea... and is helping me question exactly what I would do with Chemistry if I do choose that path.

.....Is doing what you love as a job all it's cracked up to be?

If you know what it is at your age then don't even ask! Go for it........

Well, I kindof do; the thing I love to do is to make things... The more of the process from start to finish I'm involved with, the better as it's as much the challenge and the problem solving as creating a finished product that I enjoy. I think I've said it before, but my ambition as I reached school leaving age was to be a patternmaker; however there were no opportunities there, so I just went to uni to do something that interested me. The aspect that has engaged me about furniture is that there's such a broad range of challenges available; Given that up to this point in my life I've been one of "the men who don't fit in", there's every chance that with time and opportunity skills in that area would evolve into other areas of fine joinery, carpentry, even perhaps going full circle towards wood machining, timber technology and tooling technology.

You hint but do not say it outloud that you "dislike" the STEMs approach of your life..BUT WHY ?. There is much to be said for the achievement of a Chemistry degree or masters. -learning, discipline, focus, thinking styles, scientific method etc etc

I don't actively dislike it, so much as I've become tired of being in education... Due to ill health I had to defer my final year, then finally split it off into part time; I'm well again now but the process has taken it's toll on my enthusiasm, as well as causing me to lose both the place and funding for a PHd offer; which thoroughly gutted me at the time. I'm also unlikely to demonstrate my true ability and potential in my final degree grading now; which is one of the things that makes me take the MSc seriously, it's an opportunity to get a piece of paper representing what I'm actually capable of rather than what I achieve when I'm just getting by.

I'm also begining to question more deeply if I could cope with flying a desk, as outside academia, all roads seem to lead towards a corner office and whistful stare in the end. The research work I've done also took the rose tinted film off my glasses with regards to academia.

for me my masters was not so much a differentiator as a qualification, but actually transformed my whole thought process. Looking back afterwards, I was a different person prior to the study. All the gear (knowledge) and no idea (application). It made me question statements, ask the question "so what" about theory and look at the practical application of theory that you hade merely just learnt at undergraduate level. My masters was in business administration- others may be very different in, but for me those few years with the Open University were probably the most beneficial of my 32 years of life.

From a chemistry point of view, an MSc is unlikely to differ much from the research work I did alongside my undergrad... Two years of 3 days a week in the lab, far too many evenings spent in an office poring over data and papers and a couple of months handling the day-to-day running of a research lab (which is a 7-6 job, on a good day) as a favour to the Prof heading the group has given me a wealth of experiences and taught me just how easy it is to do the seemingly impossible if only you sit down and develop a full understanding of what you're about to attempt beforehand... Oh and two years work resulted in a black sticky mess that had none of the properties the theoretical modeling had predicted.

Studying at MSc level would be a mixture of formaliing those experiences and developing some of the ancillary skills that surround the nuts and bolts of research.

You have the great advantage of youth on your side, and indeed, you still have time to make mistakes, learn from them and still succeed. I can't tell you what you should do. I can't even tell myself what I should do. But you do have options, embrace your choice.

Indeed! In fact it's probably one of my strong points, I remember my academic supervisor remarking that what differentiated me from other students was that I was able to make more mistakes, faster; yet like as not would have learned from them before I finished making them (often quickly enough to redeem them).

 

[Steve Maskery]

two years work resulted in a black sticky mess that had none of the properties the theoretical modeling had predicted.

LOL!
I remember doing my research project for my BSc Chemistry in the late 70s. We were trying to make, IIRC, 2-6-dimethyl, 3-5 diethoxy carbonyl, 4-phenyl pyridene-N-oxide. Not sure I have that exactly right. Anyway, we were starting with a big jar of the precursor prepped by our predecessors and all we had to do was oxidise it. Easy peasy. Trouble is, we started with 100g of the precursor and ended up with the right stuff, but just a few grams of it.

Turns out that the darned stuff is water-soluble and we had been pouring it all down the sink in the washings.

Oops.
S

 

[Jelly]

two years work resulted in a black sticky mess that had none of the properties the theoretical modeling had predicted.

LOL!
I remember doing my research project for my BSc Chemistry in the late 70s. We were trying to make, IIRC, 2-6-dimethyl, 3-5 diethoxy carbonyl, 4-phenyl pyridene-N-oxide. Not sure I have that exactly right. Anyway, we were starting with a big jar of the precursor prepped by our predecessors and all we had to do was oxidise it. Easy peasy. Trouble is, we started with 100g of the precursor and ended up with the right stuff, but just a few grams of it.

Turns out that the darned stuff is water-soluble and we had been pouring it all down the sink in the washings.

Oops.
S

That sounds familiar... I was also working on a catalysis project to develop a preparitive synthesis from some initial papers, working at a kilogram scale we refined this 30 odd step synthesis... I worked through the process using glassware of epic proportions until one evening my supervisor told me to put the intermediate compound on the vacuum system to dry out, neither of us had considered it at twenty to nine the previous night, but it was actually volatile now the protecting groups were removed... by morning all one and a half litres of compound had evaporated...

edit: Sorry, I digressed from the actual point.

 

[Dibs-h]

Doing what you love (more) is always nice - but it may not pay the bills. Sounds like the other option is certainly not on par with something you hate?

I would perhaps put feelings\desires to one side and view it coldly - costs to benefits, etc. Not having a pot to pineapple in and living on a very tight budget is not something I would wish on anyone. Having been broke at your age and for some years to come, it's not pleasant.

Dibs

 

[Ian down london way]

I back up Beech.

I've a STEM background (and I'm now nearing the twilight of my career, at 53). I've been working in the computing industry since leaving university. I had a degree in maths and physics, which took me into computing in the first place (when a degree alone was enough to get you going). I've not had the dramatic career changes that Beech has had (although 5+ company take overs and an evolution from Software Coder through to Consultant System Architect does change the work big time) means that my career has also evolved.

And I do woodwork. Mostly intricate stuff, which involves as much problem solving as it does making saw dust.

The transferable skils from engineer to woodwork are very strong - the problem solving angle - unless your woodwork is 3-d carving, or something that is all artistic skill (of which I have little).

What I do know, is that my woodwork is a hobby from more than one perspective (time, money, and the ability to walk away for a while, when something else that twinkles attracts my attention - currently archery). I know that I'd not be able to keep my family going (University expesnses for #1 daughter now, and #2 daughter in the near future) on woodwork alone without a complete change in mind set. Now, I don't have to justify anything I do in woodwork, not the time, and more particularly, not the quality - I never have to trade off time/quality/cost, and to do so, I think, would remove alot of the pleasure.

So, overall, my advice is pursue the education / job market side to gain security - as long as that side still interests you - adopt woodwork as a hobby (maybe sell some stuff too), and adjust the balance as you can afford to do as your personal circumstances change.

best of luck !