I'm not looking to leave the industry, but give myself a backup. I enjoy working with my hands. Did most of the training for A&P school before the cash went dry to fund it. I've done some welding, and I recently bought a metal lathe and enjoy doing both. Just wondering if anyone has gone to one of these schools and knows if it's worth pursuing. Having my 4 year I really don't want to go back to get something else. I have heard that welders and machinists make some decent money and it's maybe something I can do on the side. I'm in South FL for who knows how long until I go somewhere else with my regional.

 

I don't know about the welding, but machinists these days need to be very familiar with CNC, and I don't enjoy CNC. Manual machining is much more interesting. But the manual jobs aren't very common, and are usually limited to tool-room and prototype gurus with decades of experience.

So if you want marketable machining skills, better get smart on CNC.

 

I fly with a guy whose son is a commercial welder. He makes good money but also works as an independent contractor with all of the concerns associated with the contract world.

 

I made 60K a year as a A&P 6 months out of school, and you have a license finish your A&P

 

Where was this at?

 

I assume you want to do this as a pocket change garage project. Anything more serious is going to put you in need of a lot of training, and if you want to make competitive goods it will take a lot of money to set up a decent shop, which every farm in America already has. So along the hobby lines-

>One idea is take a trip or find some books about Mennonite welders in rural Pennsylvania, those guys are the Cuban fender menders of America. If it can be done for a few hundred bucks, they can do it.

>Ask a custom gun shop who they have doing work for them and ask that person how he got into it and what he sells.

>This guy is an old friend from many years back who got fascinated with making custom tactical flashlights when white LEDs first came out in the late 90s. His first designs were very basic, and now he has some pretty sophisticated stuff. To this day has been evolving his designs out of a garage. The apparently sell, which is amazing considering how many Chinese flashlights there are at Walmart.

 

Cargo Company that was under a USPS mail contract.