For being a carpenter, the most essential quality that you require is that you must enjoy creating things with your hands. Carpentry, as the profession is called, can be learnt both for professional or personal reasons when you decide to take it up as a hobby. While it is beneficial if you have someone in the family who can teach you this art at home, but not many of us is as lucky. So the option for many to learn carpentry is to attend some trade school where you could be taught the basics as well as advanced steps. Of course, like many other professional courses there are online carpentry courses also available where you can take advantage of a distance learning course while pursuing your studies or a whole time job.
Learning carpentry is not only useful as a hobby but makes you equipped with rare knowledge which you can put to use at home. For some one who has no idea of what carpentry involves, it is divided into 4 broad sections: occupational skills, form work, framing and interior or exterior finishing. If you think that carpentry skills are needed only to make furniture, you could be wrong. Carpentry skills are need for milling, fastening, joining, assembling, erecting and dismantling any structural or architectural materials and the skill can be in extremely creative and innovative. Knowing this skill can make you and your family completely independent where you could do any job big or small and have the feeling of satisfaction of having done yourself. It includes repairing wooden furniture, boat, picture framing or even making new ones at your time and convenience. You could even build a kid’s play room or a pet house in your garden with carpentry skills. Your carpentry skills can be either residential or commercial. Learning residential carpentry skills you could put all your creative inputs and build structures in your own home.
The modern carpentry skills are more and more getting dependent on modern machinery and tools. With computer aided design software, carpentry of the digital age is enabling structures to be created faster and with more precision. You do not have to spend hours drilling a hole in wood or chiseling an arm of the chair. There are electrical drills and other electronically controlled digital tools which make the job much more professional in its approach and finish.
In fact it is not a bad idea to attend a carpentry trade school which teaches you the basics of this skill. For young people this could mean opening up a completely new job opportunity. Students of reputed carpentry schools are encouraged to work as apprentices with professionals on site – this means that you could get hands on experience seeing real stuff being built, repaired or erected. One of the options you have is to attend the carpentry apprenticeship program which is a four-year duration course and teaches you both theory and the practical aspects of the subject. The practical aspects are taught for six weeks every year and the students are awarded Certificates after due completion of the course.
So the next time you have a need for carpentry skills, think whether it is time you attended a course and learnt the art yourself, rather than paying money to a professional carpenter and getting the job done.
