Manual machinist apprenticeship work trial – any advice?

[Sebastian MayfieldParticipant @sebastianmayfield67516]

Week One report:

Well, the first week has gone by in a flash. It's a very busy workshop, which is good to be honest because there's nothing worse than a day spent watching the clock and waiting for home time.

My original post is somewhat vague and misleading, in hindsight, because I am not technically an 'apprentice' at all – for one thing, I am too old, and I do have some knowledge and experience already. This makes it slightly awkward for the other guys there because I suspect they fear offending me by asking questions like 'do you know what a pilot hole is?' which they would have no qualms about asking a 17yr old apprentice. Me being ten yrs older makes it not quite so straightforward for them I suppose, but it's all fine by me anyway – I reassured them that I'd rather they check what I do or do not know. My fellow machinists are all a great friendly bunch which is nice, and they are all willing to help me out when required.

As far as the work has gone, they really threw me in the deep end basically. On the very first day they set me going on a Bridgeport making stainless steel blades – a fiddly job which I soon found out was one most people dislike and avoided if possible! I did struggle with that to be honest – I have used mills obviously, but I have far more experience on lathes.

The next thing I made this week was a big socket spanner thing (6" mild steel tube with two square prongs?) which involved angle grinding most of the meat off, an awkward set up in a Bridgeport, and then a 1" hole right through for a big tommy bar.

That done, the next thing the shop foreman presented me with was a worn part off a machine and said "measure this and make a new one – it would take me around a whole day to complete this job, so see how long it takes you". It was some kind of driveshaft coupler – four internal square splines (?) with a M24 x 3.0 thread on the other end, so it involved screwcutting in the lathe, boring, internal grooving/counterboring, then setting up in their slotting machine (really cool piece of kit, like a vertical shaper) and cutting the 4 spline slots. I was just finishing milling 2 flats on the body for a big spanner, and I would have finished it in 1 day 2.5hrs had the boss not called me in the office for a chat.

"A 2 week long interview" – yeah, that's about it! They want me to get up to speed as soon as possible basically. I'm sure I will – once I've figured out where every tool is, I reckon I'll be halfway there

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