Question for welders /fabbers

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JR

JR

Pissed off senior member.
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East Renton,WA (Seattle)
My work, knowing that I can weld, lost their normal welding guy to the bad economy and asked me if I would be interested in a long term position as a welder/fabber. I told them only if it was worth it and that they should come back to me when they have more of an idea what they want to do (sometime next week). If it is done right in a year or two I will be able to ship all the equipment (jigs, welder, ect.) down to the Vegas plant and we can move down there which is what Nikki and I want to do after the wedding and the 48 and 53 are on the road.
Taking into account what I currently make at this place (not enough), I have worked there for 8 years, I would be going back on full time instead of part time, I am not a certified welder but they know that, I would be doing something I love to do (weld) I have a low ball figure in my head but I was wondering what is the going hourly rate for welding/fab work?
 
Well, I'm not a welder but when I still worked for Halliburton the welders their charged about $80-85/hr but that was back before everything slowed down. When I was layed off they were forced to give a 10-15% discount depending on what they were doing. I'm not sure if those numbers are high or low. I know this probably doesnt help much so hopefully some else will chim in.
 
Just what does your company do, or what do they fab? Seems they pushed a high dollar weldor out the door, looking for cheaper labor? But what else is new, the american way. Need more info. did the other weldor work as a Vendor? supply own equipment etc.? If not, investigate what he made and ask for a couple bucks less per hour. If their work requires a certified weldor, let them certify you, with stipulation of keeping a copy/prefferably original certs. if they let you go. Rates are different as employee verses vendor of course. Give info then we`ll go from there:clock:
 
When I worked for a company tig welding I made $22 hour. This is about 9 years ago annd the company had so much work they started to turn work down. I too was not cert. but they saw I could weld and they paid me what I thought was a damn good hourly rate. This is in Mass. mind you . All I can say is dont low ball to much but dont push it either, remember right now nobody is safe in this economy . If you go too high it could back fire and have someone else making that dough! good luck !
 
I am not a certified welder, but I am a mechanic in the food industry (Pepperidge Farm) with alot of experience welding stainless and aluminum and some fabrication. I live in Utah which is just next door to Nevada. We don't have an in house certified welder. Most of the stuff that we do it is not required and it is up to us to build it. I make $25 per hour if this helps.
 
360scamp:
This is my honest opinion, since i was active in the trade for 19 years. I am a journeyman welder by trade with several tickets.
I got out of it for health reasons.
I still have a passion for welding and i often think about getting back into it.
Beware that it is a cutthroat trade (like bodywork) and i am preparing you for the reality of it from an honest point of view.
If you are really willing to do what it takes physically and i mean long term, and you trust this path that they are sending you on or you want to go on, then do it by all means. It's a long and hard path and it's not easy. I've made a good living at it in the past, $18-$30 per hour!
On the positive side, it is a very good trade and is good honest work and it is refreshing to see someone that wants to change their circumstances as well as take a chance to follow a passion.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained!
If you want to talk to me more about this, pm me and we'll talk more by phone or e-mail.
If not, good luck and let us know how it turns out.
BTW, i always go with my gut feeling. If you have that, then go with your heart.
Tom.
 
wear all the safety equipment,some of it is a pain in the butt but very much worth the time to use it.good luck to ya on this!
 
mopar head said:
Just what does your company do, or what do they fab? Seems they pushed a high dollar weldor out the door, looking for cheaper labor? But what else is new, the american way. Need more info. did the other weldor work as a Vendor? supply own equipment etc.? If not, investigate what he made and ask for a couple bucks less per hour. If their work requires a certified weldor, let them certify you, with stipulation of keeping a copy/prefferably original certs. if they let you go. Rates are different as employee verses vendor of course. Give info then we`ll go from there:clock:
Click to expand...


It is a custom shower door company in South Seattle, we deliver to AK, HI, WA, CA, ID, MT, AZ, NV, UT, CO and have shipped doors to India before. I would be building end cap displays for Home Depots and Lowes stores in batches of 20 at a time. I would also be building one off displays and tower displays along with any other projects they needed.


The welder they were using was a cert. welder with his own shop but he had to close down and they can't get a hold of him now. They know I can mig weld and have fixed things around the shop so they are seeing what it will take to set me up. I would be welding/fab for about 85-90% of the time and the rest would be training drivers, building displays, building small parts, shipping, random warehouse B.S., pretty much what I do now part time. They know that they will be getting a guy that can pretty much do it all, doesn't take brakes or lunches unless I'm starving, I am not there to make friends I am there to make money so I don't like or talk to really anyone, pretty much leave me the F alone so I can do my job and then go home.
I was thinking around $22 an hour would be nice, and I would get my insurance back, I have my 401k and profit sharing. I topped out in pay 2 years after I started (in 2001) at $14.30 hr. My last raise was $0.25 for my forklift cert. I was a driver (26,000lb Internationals) for about 6 1/2 years before I had my knee surgery and my back exploded on me. I pretty much gave most of my physical health to the company.
 
It really depends on your economy out there. Like here in Iowa 13-17 range is making decent-good money. Not sure what its like out there. Try looking up on your state workforce. Ours will give you a wage survey for certain jobs. It will give you a average pay scale. http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_wa.htm Scroll about 80% down theres good reference material there
 
i am a union plumber/pipefitter our pay scale is 29.75 hr here in chattanooga TN but its diffrent all over the country
 
Make sure it is reasonable... ask what they paid the last guy.

Side note : want to come to Aberdeen and weld up the hole in the roof of my duster where someone had a sunroof? :D
 
JR, I don't know what welders get per hour as there is a huge difference in requirements from body shops to pipelines to aerospace and nuclear. However, what has my interest about the job is the custom fabrication. You definitely have an eye for style and what is needed to get you from point A to point B in realizing an idea. That does not seem so much to be production welding as custom/short run projects.

With your eye for style, you will probably be a more valuable employee to the company than somebody who only welds.

Moving to Vegas?
 
It's pretty expensive to live in Vegas, but if times get slow you could always weld up some ball and chain to sell to the casinos for non paying customers.
 
FISHBREATH said:
Moving to Vegas?
Click to expand...

We want to move down south to the desert. We have friends in St. George UT that want us to move in with them, Nikki has some friends/family in Vegas and I need to be somewhere dry and hot before I go on a killing spree :snakeman:
Also I would like to work on my cars more than 3 months out of the year.
 
Don`t blame you for wanting to move out of the rain forest:-Dain`t that one extreme to another:-D. Weld/Fab can be a pretty rough trade, hot, unless your in a climate controlled building. Most places your lucky to have heat, let alone AC. Personally I usually have to suffer the elements, commercial construction. You will be on your feet all day, wrestleing heavy material, breathing serious smoke, and or inert gases. something to consider if you have a blown back and knee. But if your company sets you up right, alot of that can be alieveated? Like a lot of these guys say it varys by location. It seems the closer you get to a large city the better jobs pay. Thats why I`ve commuted 1.5 hrs or so one way to make decent money. In my area, "local" you would be lucky to make 12-15 hr. commute and make 20-30 or so. I imagine this holds true all around the country. Employee wages are usually dependant on cost of living in your particular area. Something you`ll have to investigate. If you can get by comfortably on $22. go for it. These days thats just gettin by money, but with the economy alot of guys would jump on that. Maybe you can prove yourself and value and negotiate raises from there. This could also be a good business venture if you`d desire. If you could track down that Vendor and asked what he charged, and equipment that is required to build these racks. Could be from 10 to 50 large? And if you had a contract with them or trust them to keep you busy several years, That investment could be payed off, dependant on lifestyle. either way, good luck
 
Doing the kind of projects you described wont put you in the classification of 'welder' alone. That makes it a little harder to research pay scales. Most of the time the pay scale tables I see tend to be structured as 'typical'. In other words, if you look up welder, they assume you will be doing a typical welder job, not necessarily a lot of fabricating or doing a whole host of other tasks in your job like you described.

I think you should look at other job descriptions as well that share a similar level of responsibility and expectation. Look at things like production leads, foreman positions, maintenance managers, project managers things like that. If you become the go to guy for almost everything, then you're not just the welder/fab guy. They need to know that and pay you accordingly. I don't know what wages are in your area for the work you would be doing, but it seems like you should be making between $18-$22 for what you described, maybe even more if your local economy supports it.
 
I have been in the weld/ fab business for 15 years. I am now a supervisor.. When I hire a welder,I dont ask for certifications at all. I give them a standard weld test, they Set the machine themselves, they set there gas flow. Their weld has to be good, structurally and cosmetically. They need to be able to read and comprehend blueprints, as far as weld symbols, weld size, weld length. If they pass all the requirements to weld in our shop, and I see some potential after talking with them for a little while. I will hire them on at $12.50 an hour, the pay will increase depending on production, and quality of their parts. They will max out at $16.00 an hour. Now keep in mind they are not fabricating from scratch on off pieces. These are production welders, with weld fixtures, and sometimes a robot does the welding. All they do is assemble a part, hold the right tolerances (using a fixture) , and weld it to the blueprint. That is usually the going rate around this area.
 
Good info there, DARTLARRY. There certainly seems to be a huge variance in the field of "welding." Probably like most other jobs: the more you know, the more you can do, the more versatile you are, the more valuable you are to a company.
 
jr

saint george utah is bitchin.
my old school homeboy who has lived all over the west really digs it there.
i will ask him to check around and see what the current pay situation is in and around vegas.

regards,
jeff reynolds
[email protected]
 
Well starting tomorrow morning I will be filling out 2 time cards, one for the crappy piss ant stuff I have been doing and one for any welding/fabrication work I do. I will still be part time but about 85-90% of my time will be the welding/fab work at 22 an hour. Tomorrow morning the first thing I will be doing is building a table with a 1/4" top and then use 2" angle to build a jig. I figure I will bolt the jig pieces to the table so they can be removed and different ones can be set up for any other type of displays they want me to build.
 
JR, are you supplied with engineered plans or are you given a concept and have to engineer it for utility and strength?
 
They already have a sheet with the dimensions of the dysplay, all I have to do is build a jig to mass produce them. Basically it is just a big rectangle divided into 4 small squares.
 
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