Holy **** guys I apologize. I ended up not taking the job. Long story short I'm glad I didn't. About 6 months later I got a call from a company that we did quite a bit of sub contracting work for at my previous job. The owner is a really solid guy and he asked me if I would be interested in going to work for him, in my own, brand new shop, as the fab/machine shop foreman! We build state of the art distillation equipment and do a lot of r and d work for other companies. It was a smart move. I have maintained a great relationship with the guys that this thread is about. They ended up hiring a fellow from AZ to do their fab work and it seems that they are doing ok with him. We have our second annual Rod and Custom Car Show tomorrow and they will all be attending. Life has been nuts the last year or so with the new job and new builds. I have not been on the HAMB as much as I would like and I have a complete build thread ready to post up pretty soon on a 49 Chev pick up. I wasn't holding out I promise. The thread kind of drifted away and I forgot I hadn't updated. Hack
I have worked at a few hot rod shops and a few bike shops. Always paid by the job never by the hour and never considered them to be a permanent job. My experience with one exception is that they are not a career just a stopping place. granted no job for me has ever been permanent, but I have had a few where I could have stayed if I wanted to. So you have to ask this how secure is your current machine shop job? if it is secure or even if it isn't is it more secure than the hot rod shop? Probably the only way I would take a shot at the hot rod shop if I needed to have steady work for a long time is to build clientele for my up and coming business as a hot rod shop owner.
Yeah, same here. I left the hot rod building industry for another field, except as a technical consultant, on occasion. What I am doing now is not my true p***ion, but it pays 5x (yeah, you read that right) what the bast shop that I ever worked for paid, and has benefits, for me, and my wife.
My dad told me when I was younger that you need to keep your hobbies and your career separate. That once you started making a living at it then it was no longer a hobby. I guess he believed that he always had a nice car but his p***ion was always motorcycles and he certainly could have built bikes as easy as cars for a living. I always made more money working as a machinist fabricator than I ever did working as a mechanic. And still there were fields that paid me more then that. If you count benefits as wages and you should it gets even better then that.
Good advice. I had it a long time ago, but didn't listen. I wish that I had. I would be a lot better off today than I am now. I feel like I lost a good decade.
I'm glad you held on and things worked in your favor. I was told, "If you can fix a house, or fix a car, you'll always have work". Did both as a hobby and as a vocation. I wish he would have said the rest of the sentence. "You'll also never be rich". What he meant, "If you own the contractor biz or the shop, you'll have more money".
A decade is nothing. Seems like a lot but in the whole scheme of things it is very little. You'll catch up before you realize it ever even happened. that said yes sometimes the old guys are right, even if we do know more than they do. LOL Funny I have been disabled 12 years this year and I do not know where the time has gone.
Glad you updated as I just stumbled on it and was invested! Anyway congrats on the move and am really intersted in the 49 build thread as you can see by my avatar...
If you you like the job you now have, stay there...I once took a job at a hotrod shop, and it was cool for awhile, but pretty soon it turned into just another damned job..like they all do..
I was just talking to the owner of a machine shop that I've done business with for 40 years. The owners father started the business 60 years ago and gradually built it up into a fairly large shop with over 20 employees. Those employees have aged and are retiring and he can't find machinists to replace them. The local tech school has a machinist program but they are basically trained to put pieces in CNC machines and remove them when they are done. Finding people who can build or repair one off parts is very difficult. The owner is 63 and has been trying to sell the business and retire but there is little interest. He figures he will sell the machines and the building. Machine shops are closing all over. The few that are left are very busy. Another shop has a 52 year old owner. None of his 3 boys has any interest in the business and everyone who works there is over 40. He says he will have to buy CNC machines to hire younger employees but they are mainly good for m*** producing parts not the repairs on parts that provide most of his business.
The Jalopy Journal
