Brooklands collage course

[Aaron_]

Has anyone been on one of these

http://www.brooklands.ac.uk/Course/practical-welding

I was looking last year but it was £250 then now it's £450 will it be worth it or just keep watching videos and keep practicing I'm not doing to bad but would like someone to watch and explain if and what I'm doing wrong

 

[Richiew]

I'd look for a City and Guilds course if I were you. FE colleges do them. Did mine about five years back 20 weeks, three hours a week. Cost me about £250 then. Even with inflation it would seem to be better value and you get a qualification at the end of it if you pass.

 

[cumbriasteve]

It appears to be a 30 hour course in total:

Remove the half hour a day hello's and goodbye's
Verbal H&S Discussions
Verbal Intro's to each learning module

and your 'hands on' welding time could be as little 10 hours across gas, mma, mig and tig, I would be very surprised if it actually got near 10 hours in all honesty, depends on the number of candidates per class.

Of those 4 elements you may be lucky to use two and probably only one for the majority of your welding hobby, unless you enter the trade.

Any chance of learning is of course good, so it depends what sort of financial hit £450 is to you and what alternative training there is available to you, had it still been £250 then I would probably have given it the thumbs up...that's not a lot for some decent insight into the skill.

 

[Wendelspanswick]

You might be better off paying someone for some one to one tuition.

 

[Aaron_]

I just wanna learn to tig better really. Anyone in the Heathrow area fancy a bit of teaching :-)

 

[dan_j_carter]

I did this course maybe 4 years ago - was a complete beginner, was a good start, learned enough to be happy doing my own hobby stuff.

Is only time for one process really, I did tig, and had a go for a couple of hours each on stick and gas (stick at least was worth doing, as I have used it on my tig machine a couple of times)

If you already know what you are doing, am not sure it would be worth the money, although maybe it would be useful asking the instructor about anything you've been struggling with.

Might be better looking at the follow on course: http://www.brooklands.ac.uk/course/level-1-emta-award-in-introductory-welding-skills

 

[HughF]

You can buy a lot of electric, argon and filler wire for the cost of the course. Personally I wouldn't bother, but then I self taught myself in 2 months then walked into a welding job doing fine limit stainless and alu tig, so perhaps I just 'got it'?

 

[Johnseat]

You can buy a lot of electric, argon and filler wire for the cost of the course. Personally I wouldn't bother, but then I self taught myself in 2 months then walked into a welding job doing fine limit stainless and alu tig, so perhaps I just 'got it'?

You walked into a welding job without any qualifications?

 

[HughF]

Yep... Seem to remember the requirements were to pass a weld test and be able to read technical drawings. Nailed the weld test coupons, could read drawings no probs, had my own tools... I remember the charge hand took one look at the coupons and said 'start on Monday if you want'...

Also had a computer science degree, so perhaps I was qualified, just not to do that specific job.