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Boat fabrication/welding qualifications


MrsM

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My son is coming to the end of his apprenticeship in classic car restoration. He is a fabricator and welding is his favourite part of this. Can I ask the experienced bods here what welding qualifications and equipment he would need to do work on narrowboats? (I'm presuming there is a specific certification he could achieve?) Obviously welding 5mm+ thick steel is very different to welding the thinner sheets often used in car fabrication. He enjoys boating and is interested in offering a mobile welding service at some point in the future to supplement his full-time work on classic cars. I have suggested he talks to Martin Kedian as his name regularly comes up in relation to fabrication questions. Thanks in anticipation. Marianne 

 

Edited by MrsM
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I don't think there are any qualifications required for inland boat work. I think he will need a decent arc welder (stick welding) capable of supplying the current needed for the steel thickness and many now seem to use a MIG welder but maintaining the gas shield could be problematic. If he is working on cars I suspect he will need a fair bit of practice to produce decent welds on steel with stick welding.

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Apart from some decent equipment that is capable of running for long periods without overheating, he will only need Public Liability to cover 'hot works' which will probably be relatively expensive as a newcomer.

Many marinas however will not allow outside welders (if any) to work on site.

Welder/genny would be a handy bit of kit and would get him alot of work as he could then work on the towpath.

Have a look on Facebook and you will see a good few doing this.

 

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I don't know for sure but I suspect hull fabrication is as different from classic car restoration as rag and stick sailing is from canal boating. 

 

I very much doubt boat fabrication companies give a toss about paper qualifications. The skill in the hands and the willingness to do whatever needs doing on the day will be what they want. Oh and reliability. Turning up every day like you said you would. Worth it's weight in gold, if it weighed anything. Can you get a degree nowadays in "Standing by your commitments"? Employers would love applicants with that.

 

Rambling now...

 

 

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1 hour ago, Tony Brooks said:

I don't think there are any qualifications required for inland boat work. I think he will need a decent arc welder (stick welding) capable of supplying the current needed for the steel thickness and many now seem to use a MIG welder but maintaining the gas shield could be problematic. If he is working on cars I suspect he will need a fair bit of practice to produce decent welds on steel with stick welding.

Tony is likely more up to date on this than myself - certainly though back in the day when I got involved with shell building there were no specific required boatbuilding qualifications for welders.   Welding codes such as ASME and AWS existed then, as they do now, and welders could take tests to demonstrate particular competences such as positional welding.   That said, in employing welders I soon learned that just because someone was ASME coded did not guarantee that they were a competent production welder for narowboat work.   Doing a test piece on a bench is very different to lying on your back doing overhead welds.

 

As the OP recognises, welding and fabrication work involved in the thin sheet gauges used in car restoration is quite different to working with the plate gauges used in narrowboat construction, though many welders find the heavier gauges easier to work with.   For shell building MIG is probably used more now than it was when I began, and is generally OK when working with clean, rust free steel in a sheltered environment.  But for repair work on older boats, outdoor work, or less than perfectly clean steel MMA (stick) welding is still usually more reliable.  

 

Regarding kit, much depends on the work to be done.   For shell building I'd suggest a minimum 300 amp machine capable of running for long periods without overheating.  For mobile or maintenance work a 180 amp set should be enough for most situations.  There are plenty of low cost imported welding sets, but for serious professional work I'd still look at the Oxford range of welders, not cheap but you get what you pay for.

 

Edited by malp
Typos
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No, Tony is not more up to date, but my thoughts are based on the observed welds on many narrow boats. Such skills as I had with gas  welding, then a period of many years without doing any has left me only able to produce sparrow crap runs with arc, but they do seem to stick enough for non-critical welds.

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3 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

No, Tony is not more up to date, but my thoughts are based on the observed welds on many narrow boats. Such skills as I had with gas  welding, then a period of many years without doing any has left me only able to produce sparrow crap runs with arc, but they do seem to stick enough for non-critical welds.

What a perfect description of my experience and current ability Tony!!

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Thank you everyone for taking the time to reply. I think he envisages doing more evening/weekend mobile repair work rather than shell-building from scratch. I will forward your comments. Thanks again. 

 

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A skill he will find useful is plate work.  This is the ability to cut and shape a fairly hefty (4-6mm thickness)  piece of steel to fit up against and be welded to other pieces of steel.  Areas where this skill will save him time and grief include over- and re- plating round the bow  and swim.

 

Rebottoming, and major over plating generally, have a lot of tricks of the trade.  It involves a lot of fairly specialist kit, to lift and cut big plates and some suitable facilities if going down this road.  Probably needs to sqqqqqqqpend a few years working for or with a recognised specialist, if he can find a place.

 

A common  job is welding on new or replacement aqnodes.  This job  is really well  suited to a lightweight inverter welder, but not at all to an Oxford!   Massive current is not required and the welds are so short that duty cycle is not a limit.  Something putting out 120 to 140 A max will be plenty.  A good  rechargeable angle grinder for prep or removal of dead anodes is handy too.

 

Other than that he should practise welding whilst lying on his back in three inches of cold water.  This will accustom him to the working conditions in some canal docks.

 

N

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10 hours ago, MrsM said:

 Obviously welding 5mm+ thick steel is very different to welding the thinner sheets often used in car fabrication. 

 

 

Or you could say, welding thinner sheets on car bodywork is very different to 5mm+ thick steel. 

 

As in, working on car bodywork is the outlier while 'most' welding work is on thicker materials. Here, it is important to use proper techniques to produce a strong consistent weld, with no imperfections, than in car bodywork where the main challenge is not blowing through the steel (where it might be thinner than it left the factory, on an old/classic car.....). I believe some industries have quite onerous weld inspection techniques, including X-ray....and if there's a single imperfection, the welder is expected to grind the entire thing apart and do it again.....

 

Obviously canal boats aren't required to undergo quite so close inspection but obviously they need to not leak and the welds hold.

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Thank you all, this is so useful. He is coming to the end of nearly 5 years of apprenticeship so I don't think he could cope with starting another. He's mostly considering a way to expand his welding/fabrication practice and to earn a bit of extra cash. His day job is primarily on Aston Martins (mainly DB5 and DB6) and he's just been nominated for apprentice of the year in the Historic Motoring Awards so I'm an extremely proud mum! He's at college this week (based at the Brooklands Motor Museum) so I'll pass on all this great advice when he's back. Much appreciated. 

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1 minute ago, MrsM said:

Thank you all, this is so useful. He is coming to the end of nearly 5 years of apprenticeship so I don't think he could cope with starting another. He's mostly considering a way to expand his welding/fabrication practice and to earn a bit of extra cash. His day job is primarily on Aston Martins (mainly DB5 and DB6) and he's just been nominated for apprentice of the year in the Historic Motoring Awards so I'm an extremely proud mum! He's at college this week (based at the Brooklands Motor Museum) so I'll pass on all this great advice when he's back. Much appreciated. 

 

Indeed, you should be proud and well done him. I am far from sure how his apprenticeship will fit him for boat work, I thought Astons were aluminium skinned on a space frame. I would think working up a business doing comparatively minor restoration jobs for DIYers who simply can't weld would be more financially rewarding.

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14 minutes ago, MrsM said:

Thank you all, this is so useful. He is coming to the end of nearly 5 years of apprenticeship so I don't think he could cope with starting another. He's mostly considering a way to expand his welding/fabrication practice and to earn a bit of extra cash. His day job is primarily on Aston Martins (mainly DB5 and DB6) and he's just been nominated for apprentice of the year in the Historic Motoring Awards so I'm an extremely proud mum! He's at college this week (based at the Brooklands Motor Museum) so I'll pass on all this great advice when he's back. Much appreciated. 

That's great to hear!   In that case I'd tentatively suggest he gets his feet properly under the table in the car restoration world before putting time and effort into finding welding work on steel boats where he would be a (relatively) unskilled entrant in a field where there is going to be more experienced competition.

Edited by malp
Typo, again!
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5 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

 

Indeed, you should be proud and well done him. I am far from sure how his apprenticeship will fit him for boat work, I thought Astons were aluminium skinned on a space frame. I would think working up a business doing comparatively minor restoration jobs for DIYers who simply can't weld would be more financially rewarding.

You are right - much of the heavier duty work he does is in creating jigs. These need to be very robust and they will be used over and over. Minor DIY type jobs sounds a very sensible way to go.

1 minute ago, malp said:

That's great to hear!   In that case I'd tentatively suggest he gets his feet properly under the table in the car restoration world before putting time and effort into finding welding work on steel boats where he would be a (relatively) unskilled entrant in a field where there is going to be more experienced competition.

Good point 

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There's a lot of transferable skills between car bodywork welding and bigger fabrication/welding jobs. If the classic car restoration work is buoyant (no pun intended), may as well stick to that and get some experience/years there. He may be shocked at the lack of sophistication in narrowboats!!

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1 hour ago, MrsM said:

Thank you all, this is so useful. He is coming to the end of nearly 5 years of apprenticeship so I don't think he could cope with starting another. He's mostly considering a way to expand his welding/fabrication practice and to earn a bit of extra cash. His day job is primarily on Aston Martins (mainly DB5 and DB6) and he's just been nominated for apprentice of the year in the Historic Motoring Awards so I'm an extremely proud mum! He's at college this week (based at the Brooklands Motor Museum) so I'll pass on all this great advice when he's back. Much appreciated. 

He could probably keep very busy turning out "Buckby" water cans.

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