If you like to work with machine tools and precision instruments, and have a keen eye for the perfect fit, you might consider being a millwright. Millwrights sometime work to specifications requiring tolerances to a thousandth of an inch. In the old days, before heavy metal machinery, millwrights carved out gears and shafts from wood for mills and small industrial plants. Today millwrights are en elite group of construction workers who work primarily in metal and with machinery and equipment requiring precision.

Millwrights install conveyor systems, escalators, giant electrical turbines and generators. Millwrights install and do maintenance on machinery in factories, and do much of the precision work in nuclear power plants. Millwrights are skilled construction mechanics who study and interpret blueprints, and then put their knowledge and expertise to work drilling, welding bolting and doing whatever else is necessary to assure that the cogs of industry are in perfect working order.

Millwright training is available in most areas through local labor-management apprenticeship committees. These committees, made up of contractor and union representatives, make sure that you get proper instruction while you are working to earn a decent wage. To get the ball rolling, you can call or visit your local millwright union and ask for further information. Remember, millwrights are members of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, a proud organization with more than 650,000 members like yourself.

If you are still in school, you should take classes in mathematics, drafting and mechanical drawing, metal or industrial shop, or any construction courses which familiarize you with construction technology. These classes will help you to develop the dexterity and practical thinking skills you will need as an apprentice millwright.

Millwrights generally work eight hour days. Apprentices usually start out helping journeymen with basic tasks like material handling, and move into more sophisticated jobs as their knowledge and skills increase. Although millwrights work indoors much of the time on installation and maintenance work, their duties also involve working on the outside of buildings and other structures, in situations often requiring the use of scaffolding. Quite often millwrights are required to work split shifts and overtime, and to travel long distances for work. In such cases the union sees to it that the millwright is compensated with overtime pay and travel allowance. Millwrights work with a variety of hand and portable power tools, and frequently cut, join and fasten metal construction materials using welding equipment and oxy-acetylene torches.