Reviving the joy and honor of working with your hands (2015)
richmond.com
richmond.com
In high school for my A levels I was able to take both Maths, Physics and Politics (with an academic focus) and Metalworking and Photography (with a more practical hands-on focus). I loved this, and feel like this was incredibly useful to me later in life.
But for some reason beyond school level you are mostly forced to choose between academics and hands-on work (at least in the UK). With the hands-on pathways being looked down on by much of society.
I designed and built it with friends, investors and colleagues. Very satisfying. (The fish farm has since the pictures been significantly upgraded.)
https://cirkularodling.se/build-an-aquaponic-indoor-farm-par...
It's long gone, now, but it taught me to be a good worker. They had dress codes, fixed, workday-long hours, little vacation, and behavioral rules.
By the time I graduated, I was able to immediately start working in a defense contractor's shop. When I went in, I was pretty much worthless to the workforce.
I know of folks that credit the military for similar structure.
There's a lot of things that I could have learned at Stanford or MIT (my parents wanted to send me there, but I insisted on paying my own way -see "reasons," above, and they probably would have passed on me anyway -"reasons").
Did OK.
Purely coincidentally the people with those loud voices would benefit from cheaper tradesmen, their kids would have less competition and politically would benefit from a less tertiary educated population.
Hypothetically, I wonder how viable it is to switch to a vocation like electrician or HVAC in your 40s-50s.
The problem is that the wages are way low starting out. That's why young people tend to do it. If you can swing the first three or four years, then start your own business, you'll be good.
I don't know about transitioning to hard work in your 40s or later. My background is blue collar but it's telling that I don't know anyone working a skilled trade over 45 who started later than say 30. I don't know any over 45 who would probably say they feel great either.
Larry Haun iirc even broke some bones in his first few years. It's a young man's game, getting over that well enough and fast enough to return to work without going bankrupt.
Health and safety regulation has exploded in the last 40 years and the liability gives administrators heart attacks. Many kids today are not even allowed to use kitchen knives let alone chisels or lathes.
It's not the fault of the kids, but the effects are somewhat self-fulfilling - kids who don't get access to even slightly dangerous things while growing up don't develop the skills and awareness they need to work safely as young adults.
If you ever get yourself into serious hobby machining, get ready for the average density of all your possessions to double.
https://rainfordrestorations.com/2013/06/04/traditional-sloy...
>Students may never pick up a tool again, but they will forever have the knowledge of how to make and evaluate things with your hand and your eye and appreciate the labor of others.
Some tech skills are helpful too. I typically CAD projects so I know what size lumber and cuts need to be made.
My father was a farmer for 40 years and built a business that was supposed to be his retirement. Then the government eminent domained his water rights without any compensation, destroying his life's work, and leaving him and all the other farmers in the area high and dry.
Now I don't build anything that isnt cashed out immediately.
The funny thing about democracies is other votes count too. 99% of the population is happy with the outcome because they get more water water and don't have any person rights they feel are put at risk.
I'm guessing the state figured most of the farmers in their 60s can't afford legal challenge when there primary financial assets were cut out from under them and if they do, it can be tied up in the courts until most of them die. That's how it seems to be playing out anyways.
I already had a few advantages going in: a year of drafting in high school, a year of computer drafting in college (mind you the tools were long dead); the ability to think in parametrics; courses in engineering to go with my physics degree; and just being a general geek. Like a maniac, I took all but one class they offered.
Probably one of the happiest times of my life, scampering around the shop and churning out trinkets for friends and family, making weird art projects for myself.
I have a few hobbies that are somewhat physical (whittling, calligraphy) and the shift from purely digital work to those are very relaxing. There's something special about involving more senses that just your eyes with a job.
For the past few decades, there was a push for everyone to get a university degree, driven by a prmise that academic achievement would guarantee a prosperous life: A good salary and a high-status job.
We've seen that promise broken. Especially in the US, where student loans are a drag on people's lives. But even in Europe, where people will get degrees in things that are better taught on the job (i.e. graphic design) and still need to struggle getting internships and even badly-paid junior roles.
I think it's been known for a long time that you can make money in the crafts, often more than you do in entry-level office jobs. But I think an important part of making the crafts more popular is status.
If your dad is a lawyer and your mom is a professor, you might not get encouragement if you want to be a welder, chef or roofer.
There needs to be more respect for those professions. They, too should get respect for learning a complex craft and mastering it.
Low supply?
> “There’s a huge need for people in CTE fields,” Kaine told me Friday. “The old stigma about CTE, or vocational education, that’s really disappearing and there’s kind of a renaissance going on.”
Big demand?
This would imply that machinists, etc., are enjoying a big surge in salary. Is this true?
Yeah that's what happened. They became "unfashionable", rather than hopelessly precarious due to structural economic changes.
What bothers me is gatekeeping the capital to do this, as well as the "apprenticeship" requirements to get your gen con license.
It would solve two problems simultaneously - something laid off engineers can easily do (they are problem solvers and fast learners).
I'm building my own house, and it's ridiculously easy (not all parts). I hope to build more after and sell them.
House building is not that difficult. And literally zero of the licensed trades (plumbing, electrical, HVAC, etc) cannot be learned by a smart and motivated person in 1-2 months at most, instead of the multiple years (each, nonconcurrently) required for apprentice, journeyman, and eventual master licensing.
I've built three houses. I subbed out the work that was required by local regs (this varies by jurisdiction and year), and did the work myself, with inspection where available, wherever possible. Not difficult at all.
And it means that you do not know how to do electrical or plumbing work.
That's fine! But take it from someone who does: it does not take years of training to be excellent at it. Household electric and plumbing is extremely straightforward. Commercial can be much more complicated! And if you run into any semi-complicated stuff, like say a bathroom below grade where you need a toilet to flush uphill ... you learn it from the vast resources available, or you call a plumber for that bit. Simple.
Similarly, if you ever are not 100% certain of your own work, you call a licensed tradesman for the inspection. Note that this is not always allowed -- but where it is, everyone agrees that it makes total sense.
The most complicated thing is knowing the code, which boils down to just a handful of simple rules for residential stuff. Most importantly: look it up, don't guess. There's a right way to do everything, and it's never the hard way. There is very little variance or judgement call involved, the code is quite clear and specific.
Doing it right might take additional materials or time though, and that's fine.
Which I think is partly held up essentially by the "dodgy tradie" stories which are routinely passed around but get re-interpreted as "it's very easy to do <obvious stupid thing>" when the stupid thing is something like "don't do a wire run from 10 short pieces of wire you have lying around" or "PVC pipes need to be glued together to not leak".
It's the edge cases that are time consuming to learn. Understanding each case that could come up on different types of builds, in different scenarios, is an important skill to be a proficient electrician that can walk onto a unknown job site, complete it, and leave at the end of the day. It makes sense if you are running commercial job sites where time is money. It makes sense if there is a failure or upgrade needed on an operational structure.
If someone is smart and time is less critical, it is only moderately slower to learn the edge cases as they come up.
I did the gas, electricity, and plumbing install for my Mom's kitchen, and I did it to the State building code. I did it in one week and with no prior training.
In a lot of ways, the certification process for contractors mirrors that of our white collar workers. Someone might spend 4 years getting a computer engineering degree, learn a dozen languages, study English and art, only to code basic tasks in CSS.
Even simpler, barbers don't really need a 1000 hours of certified coursework to do a buzz cut, or even your 50 most common haircuts.
Same with electrical. Yeah, you can learn the basics but only experience is going to get you to do it right. And two months ain't enough experience to do all the new construction electrical for someone else's house. Doing it for yourself is fine because only you have to deal with what you didn't do completely right when you didn't know any better.
But you're wrong about the experience required. Everything you do in a house gets done repeatedly. A modicum of code knowledge, a good reference book, some simple math to calculate loads, some skill with power tools, and a lot of patience. No problem.
There are zero surprises in a house, the requirements are 100% predictable. Get it inspected, of course, because QA is always beneficial. Be careful, but don't be afraid of it, it's not magical or malevolent.
The whole point of codes and inspections is to eliminate thinking and turn the subjective into the qualitative.
You can learn to do competent, inspection-passing, code-compliant, and never-problem-causing electrical work, adequate for wiring a full house, in less than a week.
From your other comments, I think we agree. Apologies if I've misunderstood your points.
Doing the wiring in a new house (yours or otherwise) -> easy.
The fact that you're making a mountain out of a mole hill her really just screams that you have no experience with ANY of this. The stuff that's hard to "do right" is the stuff that you get one shot at (like concrete) or stuff where the feedback loop is very long (it may take decades to find out that your poor flashing job is letting water in and ruining your siding). The stuff the internet likes to screech about like plumbing and electrical and framing are way easier to validate the quality of because you can test them or because problems will become obvious quickly.
I would generalize that to "locating and safely fixing problems inside closed walls or ceilings -> sometimes hard".
Sometimes easy still, but that is where things get complicated, and sometimes dangerous. I've found dead-ended intermittent lines left inside walls without any attempt at proper termination, for example. This is how fires start.
Doing your own electrical work exposes you to the lazy errors made by other people in the past. You learn not to be those people (some of whom were licensed electricians).
Anyone can and should be able to build their own house (I have done so myself), but if you ask for someone else to depend on your work, you had better prove it.
The further east and urban you go, the more rules you have to follow. This is, ultimately, sensible.
They are awarded based on years of service as an apprentice and a journeyman to a master, who is effectively your pimp until you become a master yourself.
Guess who certifies master tradesmen? They guy who prefers to have you working for him instead of competing with him. It's a racket. There's some logic behind it, but less than you'd think.
Becoming fully competent to plumb or wire a house takes a few weeks of instruction. If that. It's just not difficult to become competent. It takes a bit longer to get fast though!
I would fully support a certification process that allows you to demonstrate your competence in a written and practical exam in front of experts who have no stake in your success or failure. But that is not the way it works.
(Actually, there are a few programs where you can do this for some work that would otherwise require a formal license. Lead paint remediation, of low or medium-risk surfaces, is one of them.)
My dad (Navy electrician) built his own house with help from a Navy friend (carpenter). It sold a half-century later for 5 times what it cost him. The stucco exterior (whoever did it) lasted with zero fails in a climate that varied from -30F to +90F.
I personally would want a person that is being paid very well that oversaw every nail, every wire going into that house.
But :shrug: I don't mind you not being my customer. I will give my meticulously installed kiln dried studs/plates, zip sheathing, rockwool, interior rockwool, exterior rockwool jacket and james hardie fireproof house to someone that appreciates it!
Sometimes you also see tradesman do this during down seasons, as it gives them a steady flow of stuff to do that they can complete almost as slow as they like then flip when done.
The buyer likely won't have any insight into the personal motivations of the builder, or what bothers them.
A person who builds their own house will care about what they built. A specialised team will care to get paid and know all the corners to cut to get the job done to the minimum standard.
What kind of house do you want? One built robustly with care? Or one built to minimum standard? Not everyone wants minimum standard.
As some of the other "I build my own house" commenters here have mentioned, nothing stops them from hiring people when they want and specifying higher than code minimums. Building your own house doesn't mean you have to do absolutely everything even when it doesn't make sense because someone else has the tools to do it better. But it does mean they have the choice.
I never said "construction not done diy = bad quality". I tried to say: "tradesperson work has incentive to meet code and move on, as opposed to diy which has incentive to build something that person wants to live with". My attempt to say that clearly didn't work well. Good thing my trade is not wordsmithing.
If you want to bring up "bad quality" ... like all humans there are dodgy elements in any group. I'm sure a whole forum of war stories of dumb shit tradespeople have done can come to light - there's probably a subreddit. Maybe all the people you work with are legends in their craft. However my point is not the skill level - it is the structure of motivations.
A person building their own house thinks differently about the house than tradespeople coming and going.
Asides: 1. where do you think DIY builders come from? Everyone I know doing/did it either is or was a tradesperson. They decided to stop going job to job for someone else and put more time into generalising so they can make something for themselves.
2. how old do you think I am? I would hope the "tradesman before I was born" could be retired before they got to their 70's. I guess some people like to keep moving and work is as good as anything.
If you do not derive value from that sort of thing, then what point are you trying to make?
I have no desire to sew my own clothes, but I'm guessing you are not interested in hearing me talk more about that?
Where I live, Western Australia, maybe 2% of adults that I know have been actively involved in building and or major rennovations of a house.
There are a lot of people here with serious trades backgrounds, many with rural backgrounds that'll tackle anything.
People here even build their own aircraft and quirky ground effect flying machines.
I've built three houses; two significant renno's (jacking up and replacing major structural elements), and one from foundations upwards.
My father's played a major role in three full builds (he's not a "builder by trade", just a former farm hand, shearer, five year navy, mining foreman, etc. type).
> You are part of a tiny elite group of people.
Still, not that hard.
OK, definitely do not build a house until you do a little bit of research on the topic.
But if the topic interests you, it's worth looking into. It's not nearly as complicated or arcane as you imagine.
In the meantime though, you seem to have very strong opinions without the knowledge to support them. If you do find a receptive audience for that kind of thing somewhere, it will be to the detriment of all involved.
I think most people would run into the most trouble trying to follow code with electrical, plumbing, and HVAC. You can frame 95% of a house the same way as a 120 year old house, but if you go beyond 15 years then all those utilities have had constantly evolving regulations and design constraints and just because you saw it in a dozen other houses doesn't mean it will pass this years code.
I had a TechShop membership for years, and a TheShop membership after that, right up to the bankruptcy. The gym business model doesn't fit. Gyms work because people only show up a few hours per week, max. A gym can have 10x to 30x its capacity in members. For a maker space, people show up more, and it's only 2x - 3x.
I went to the wake for maker spaces, a small meeting in Silicon Valley. Some guy from TechShop made excuses. The guy who bought Heathkit went on about their retro kits. Then we all went home.
There are still some maker spaces, but they're mostly 3D printers, sewing machines, and paper-folding, not lathes and mills. They're much more kid-oriented, with kids doing prescribed projects.
Others in 2025: https://makerfaire.com/upcoming-faires/
There's much ink spilled on civil rights and people who fight to gain opportunity, acceptance into society, good educations, employment and leadership.
And perhaps it's not so easy for the privilged folk to accept displacement or disenfranchisement in favor of in-groups. Because if equity and justice are done, every winner is balanced by a loser, because you cannot magically grow an economy to expand rights and include everyone, even with stable resources and game hasn't changed. It didn't escape my notice that there were murmurings of fleeing the city, prepping for disaster, going full granola and off the grid and kiss this world goodbye soon. Are we in the Matrix? Mom's basement with a kitkat bar? Are all the birds replaced by machines?
I've been studying a bit of philosophy and history and seeing threads that just can't be denied, where the struggle for power and privilege is claiming casualties as abortion, addiction, mental illness, homelessness and unemployment. It seems absurd to propose that we're a society enslaved by machines, or Life Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness aren't as equitable as we'd hoped.
But I am taking sick and perverse pleasures in simply hand-decorating Thank-You notes with a fistful of magic markers, and folding up paper and doing other things in meatspace, things that were unthinkable when my hands were welded to the Super NES controls or Type M Keyboard.
But say a Darkroom workshop you cannot easy do miller etc. A republican group is hard to get some social … a middle of the road killed by both sides …
How to accommodate and work with difference is a question. Both AI and non-AI … the key is the and part.
Rather than following the threads back and forth to see that it's all a journey in space and time, and I had no idea about 1,000km away, much less 80 years ago in my own state!
Gilbert Houngbo, Director-General of the International Labour Organization did an interesting interview with DW today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhbQvcnugVc
The real question is "what roles are going to be in a good position to capture value from all the wealth generation?". As far as people selling labour are concerned it could be the trades.
When I invite my ex colleagues and they offer to help in my under-construction-house it’s very sad to see a young guy lying flat after 60-90 minutes of hard work.
Every well paid engineer or manager will pay somebody a lot of money to make water flow again or have lights and internet working asap. That’s obvious.
It IS a huge shame to see wood and machine shop programs disappear. Even if you're not "blue collar" or a "craftsperson" there are massive benefits to learning the processes of working with your hands. At my undergrad architecture school you had to learn to use the shop in your first weeks. If you were familiar with the tools you had to go through the training and get re-certified. If you were never required to use them before, now you were. But power tools are such a time saver for always busy architecture students that you just did it anyway. Even if somehow you managed to avoid it you were still required to make physical models which requires precision, attention to detail, and care around sharp tools. In the 2000's there was a move toward an entirely digital pedagogy, but the pendulum has swung back - in architectural education today we require our students to make physical models. Many professors are less passionate about making still require a final model to "prove" your ideas. But as someone who bangs on endlessly about the lessons to be learned from craft I make my students use them as a constant and iterative process of prototyping and testing ideas.
There are some things that absolutely cannot be understood without having to struggle through how to represent them in real materials with real properties, in space, and subjected to gravity. Hand craft makes you plan your actions carefully - even in the small. There is no undo button on a hundred dollar piece of burl walnut. And unless you learn to always be constantly aware of your body and movements (heck, let's intellectualize and call it proprioception) a chop saw can get a little... choppy. Understanding that "let the machine do the work" is simultaneously safety advice AND a philosophical masterstroke is sublime.
I never took a shop or vo-tech class, but I grew up around machines and craft. My father was a union machinist making jet engines (and tooling), only retiring from poor health right after hitting his 30 years. His stepdad got him in to the trade, and was a career machinist turned manager. My dad's half brothers were gearheads - one has bought, revived, and sold literally more cars than he can count with nothing more than a vo-tech degree (but his first flip when he was 14). His day job is in machining consumables sales. His home shop would put most of his clients to shame. My dad's other half brother has an Associates in Electrical Engineering and has always been in high demand as an embedded and controls systems programmer. I changed my parents' oil for the first time solo when I was eight (for reference I also wrote my first simple computer program when I was seven). We all grew up working closely with machines. It was just what we did. To this day I'm the one in any situation who winds up fixing anything wonky. I can't explain it beyond "sometimes machines just speak to me." Sounds ridiculous but it's just a process of understanding through exposure how things normally should work and how to spot the things that are out of whack. Once you can understand the cues these complex machine systems want to give you it provides insight into ones you've never worked with before...
That's all to say even in the most intellectual modes there are lessons to be learned from understanding how to use (and not use!!!) machines. The death of shop class is unfortunate and short-sighted. Everyone across the political spectrum is guilty, all together for the death or flight of the industries that demanded these classes in the first place. I don't believe there's anything -intrinsically- redemptive about understanding these processes. (Knowing lots of building tradesmen will immediately put lie to the more over-the-top notions in the article.) But the ability to mediate between your brain and the outcomes of physical processes that comes with machine work is exciting (even joyful yes) and filled with lessons far beyond learning to face mill a plate or lathe a precise cylinder, etc.
i don't want to diminish the risk of injuries, but in big part it's also a question of lifestyle. every once in a while even programmers need to lift something beyond their current capacity... and even craftsmen can become couch potatos who only lift at work when they must... and because of that lose touch with their limits.
(programmer here who does metalworks as a hobby)
Edit: Actually reading the article now, and...
> One slip and you get a hand or foot bitten off. A jack slipped once and smashed the side of his jaw, requiring $20,000 in dental surgery. “I kept working that day, though.”
That's insane and just toxic. I feel like so much of this "working with your hands" is joined with this idea of making people "tougher" because that's intrinsically better.
Edit 2: And this:
> You know, I’m more proud of being a journeyman bricklayer than being a college biology graduate. To know how to work with your hands is a great gift, good for your body and your heart.
Why? I get this is a politician saying this, but I see little reason why one should be mythologized more than the other.