So......when I Was An Apprentice I Had To.....................

[kerching]

As the title says, what are your memories of being an Apprentice (indentured or not)?

Come on then...the good AND the bad!

Me?

Spending 2 weeks turning 3/4 and 1" conduit lengths into nipples using hand stocks and dies

Running the gauntlet of the "putty guns" because I got the brew orders wrong twice in a week

Having my Billy Can screwed ( through its base ) to the table because of my poor brewing ability

Two weeks on a Rawl drill

Rawl,drilling concrete ceilings

Drilling floor joists with a 3/4 hand auger

Running busbar cleaning for an overhead gantry crane with white spirits and a rag

Having my complete barn door toolbox contents thrown down a lift shaft for being gobby

Days on end tonguing floorboards

Weeks of making up pendant drops

Being splattered with hot lead trying to wipe a joint

And loads more

The best bit?...........being accepted AND treated as equal by blokes 20 years older than me

Just........ saying what we went through when apprenticeships WERE apprenticeships, cable was cable, backboxes were made of metal NOT cheese, sleeving was green, red plugs were black, Pyro was commonplace AND THE REGS BOOK WAS A5 in size!

 

[SLIPSHOD & SLAPDASH]

So you didn't have your boots nailed to the ceiling then, or had a scaffold pole put through your donkey jacket sleeves (whilst you were wearing it) & then hung on the scaffolding over the pavement .

 

[Manator]

Rawl drilling has got to be the worst

 

[Andy™]

I can't remember much more but then i have trouble remembering what i did last week :slap

i often forget what i done yesterday... sometimes even in the morning!

 

[NozSpark]

From my apprenticeship... (slightly different)

2 years of 5 days a week in a training school

During my mechanical engineering.... filing a piece of rectangular metal so that each side was flat and all angles were 90deg

Making a gyro compass table and holding onto the supply (200V 400Hz) until the tingle reached my shoulders

When on shop floor.... constantly being taken the P out of...until the next victim was found... but then taking the P out of anything that moved

Clean room suits whilst just wearing underwear beneath.... silky

 

[SLIPSHOD & SLAPDASH]

The fitters welded my mates tool box closed, now that made me laugh.

 

[M107]

Slightly different but as a new gunner in the Arty you could expect any of the following:

sent to the stores for a large punch.

given wire wool to remove rust from the vehicle tracks.

remove the dirty snow & replace with clean snow before CO's inspection.

drink the alcohol mix from the optics out of a full size 9 boot.

And so many more

 

[ProDave]

Each sleeve of boiler suit clamped in adjacent bench vices.

Being sent to stores for a long weight.

Sending next years intake to stores for a long weight.

Ah yes put a different padlock on someone's tool box.  they are sent to stores to get the bolt cutters. When they get back with the cutters, the offending padlock has gone. Return cutters, and the padlock is back.

We were rascals.

 

[binky]

thye get off quite lightly these days, which is probably just as well as local dockyardies used to kill an apprentice about every 5 years, usually with an airline up jacksy :red card

 

[NozSpark]

We also used to put peoples personal belongings in an evacuated/sealed bag, then put that bag in a bag of water (sealed again) and then freeze it at -50C for a couple of hours

 

[SLIPSHOD & SLAPDASH]

Remember the days when you had either a steel cantilever tool box or a large canvas tool bag with rope handles, I had to carry my own and the sparks heavy tool and materials laden tool bags  across site and up 5 flights of stairs to the work and when we got there he started laughing so much, he had put a couple of the lift engineers test weights in the bottom of each bag. They weighed something like 18lbs each.

 

[Evans Electric]

Ah those halcyon days .......

As the others , plugging fixings with the Rawlplug jumper chisel.

But..never did chasing out conduit drops & boxes , a building operative used to be assigned to the Sparks for all that.  Until around the 1980s anyway.  Just finished them off for the fit.

Same as Kerch,  threading nipple sticks forever with that damn awful smelling tallow as cutting paste. 

Cutting 12"  X 4"   (300 x 75)  slots in panel boards / trunking  by hand with a hacksaw blade taped to a piece of wood.

Driving the firm's van (Quite a few sparks didn't drive then) ((and feeling quite important.))   Austin A55  , column change , bench seat often with four crammed in there.  

Nearly blinding myself when the sparks pushed the metal fishtape in some conduit , it entered the TPN fuseboard ,( old type Bill ,open busbars)  I shoved a long ,uninsulated driver in to hook it out ,  followed by the smell of burning , a loud bang , I'm sitting on the floor unable to see,  no eyebrows, no lashes, no nose hairs , no Elvis style quiff , no Elvis style sideburns .    Pupils fully closed. 

 

[Technician]

What about belt syrup in your sandwiches?

Or some bright sod pinching the piston out

of your motorbike engine and fitting one made

from wood?

 

[OnOff]

"Now then........hold these probes, one in each hand as far apart as you can.......DON'T LET THEM TOUCH.........whilst I wind this little handle up!"

 

[Steve3948]

My first week at work, I saw the plasterers frying Bacon on a dustbin lid mounted on two concrete blocks with a fire underneath and using our block of Tallow for thread cutting our conduit for the fat, they said it tasted lovely.

No toilets on site, it was lay shovel on floor in corner of empty room, wedge your backside into the corner of the room, go and then take shovel outside and lob it.

Oh how times have changed.

Hand Auger for drilling all joists, Rawlplug Jumper for Fibre Plugs, RB4 (J107) for lights.

BUT they were good old days, not like now, where we are PC governed and everyone is worried about this and that.

 

[kerching]

There are only two members on this thread so far, that are NOT time served.....Binky and 107, BUT as they are "special" it does not count!

Is it only Time Served Sparks that have tales to tell?

Surely some of the Newer Kids on the Block must have some tales? OR has the demise of the PROPER apprenticeship done away with this as well?

Just wondering.......

 

[OnOff]

I remember getting sent out to buy LARD when they ran out of tallow once. 

Working as a 16yr old mate up at Britoil in Glasgow with a Greek sparks who spoke very little English then being sent to buy Pizza at night having to walk through the red light district at night! The car park in morning next to the site was littered with condoms.

The obligatory box of well thumbed grot mags in the back of the vans!

Falling asleep, drunk on a hot plate in a Chinese and nobody telling me!

Manchester airport just after the fire.

And CHIPS for breakfast that was an eye opener having led a sheltered life!

Telling my governor the site agent's name was Richard Doon and my governor asking if I'd met his brother "Ben" as he knew him.......me saying in all seriousness that "No" I hadn't.

 

[NozSpark]

There are only two members on this thread so far, that are NOT time served.....Binky and 107, BUT as they are "special" it does not count!

Is it only Time Served Sparks that have tales to tell?

Surely some of the Newer Kids on the Block must have some tales? OR has the demise of the PROPER apprenticeship done away with this as well?

Just wondering.......

Missed me off that list kerch

 

[binky]

There are only two members on this thread so far, that are NOT time served.....Binky and 107, BUT as they are "special" it does not count!

Is it only Time Served Sparks that have tales to tell?

Surely some of the Newer Kids on the Block must have some tales? OR has the demise of the PROPER apprenticeship done away with this as well?

Just wondering.......

actually I am time served but in factories as an electro-mechanical apprentice.

as for being special, 1 is probably enough  :slap

 

[Evans Electric]

There was one job where it was agreed that in front of the new apprenice, all references to the male gonads would be in the singular .  It was three days before he began to get worried. 

At one firm apprentice was sent for the proverbial "Glass Hammer"     .  Duly returned from the High St Woolworths with a glass ornamental hammer .  Rest of the Sparks turned on the initiator and made him reimburse the kid.

Same firm ....just reminded me ..... Gaffer was , supposedly, an ogre,   he calls at a job to find the sparks is doing "a foreigner " ...rewiring the shop next door .

Orders him back to the office , sacks him , "How dare you ...doing that job on my time,  why did you do it ?"  

"Well I can't afford to pay the bills now the missus is'nt working ...with the baby etc"

The Ogre looks at him .... then says  " Bring me your bills and start back tomorrow "

Paid his leccy/gas  and all the back rent.