The most skilled trade?

diy_fun_uk said:
Bricklayer
Carpenter
Electrician
Floor layer

Heating engineer
Joiner


Plasterer
Plumber
Roofer
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Plumbers and heating engineers are definitely the most multi-skilled and versatile. In the course of their work, they have to carry out work in all of the above trades. Other trades are nowhere near. Eg. chippies - spend their days turning big pieces of timber into smaller bits and hammering nails through pipes.
 
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The skill requirements are all quite different.

plastering: requires a high level of hand and eye skill, but little technical knowledge

brick laying: requires a high level of hand and eye coordination and a fair degree of technical knowledge

electrician: requires minimal hand eye coordination, very high level of technical knowledge

carpenter: significant hand eye coordination, cut roofs require a lot of knowledge and ideally a good level of trigonometry.

plumber / heating engineer: Heating engineers need a high level of technical expertise in both gas and electricity - repair work requires diagnostic skills.


I would add builder to the list: a builder needs a high level of project management skills, managing staff, high level of technical expertise on building regs and construction. And most importantly managing clients.
Being a builder doing extensions requires a far higher level of responsibility than individual trades.
 
It depends on the job in hand. Most people, with a bit of practice, can lay a brick to a line in stretcher bond, but wouldn't have a clue on, say, an English bond or Flemish bond. And most brickies should count themselves lucky they don't have to do traditional gauged brickwork these days. Most wouldn't get past the years of training and practice it takes to become proficient. My cousin's husband is a plasterer; he can skim a wall with his eyes closed but he was telling me a while back that he'd been doing a lot of work for a specialist supplier of coloured clays. After 30 years of spreading muck on walls he had to go back to school to learn how to use the stuff, but now he's one of their top specialists. Different ball game. A contractor told me about a chippy apprentice that was a bit lost because the door he'd asked him to hang 'didn't have any holes for the hinges'. He'd previously been working with a volume housebuilder and all their doors come pre-cut with plastic hinges.
 
jeds said:
It depends on the job in hand. Most people, with a bit of practice, can lay a brick to a line in stretcher bond, but wouldn't have a clue on, say, an English bond or Flemish bond. And most brickies should count themselves lucky they don't have to do traditional gauged brickwork these days. Most wouldn't get past the years of training and practice it takes to become proficient.
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Its more than that really. The type of brick you are laying is massive. The one we have just built with (very hard impervious basdads) have been a mare. Even using stiff muck, after four courses the bottom course is squeezing and weeping. What this means is the second you try and tap your corner level, the whole lot slumps. I didn't let my lad anywhere near the corners.
They would have been impossible in the Winter. You could still point a 9:00am laid brick at 4 pm.:eek:
 
As a sparky for 50 years I have worked in most aspects of the trade, heavy & light industry, commercial & domestic installation, oil & gas, the guys who impressed me most were maintenance sparks fault finding in huge complex systems involving robotics, PLCs & conventional logic
 
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