I was at one of the shops that I do work for a few\u00a0 years ago and this guy comes in and asks the owner if he takes apprentices. Of course he says no, and the guy leaves. I finish up what I am doin’ and yell to the guy out in the parking lot, “Hey you wanna be a goldsmith?”\u00a0 He walks over and says, “Yeah, I have been all over and nobody is willing to teach anyone.” I tell him I can’t pay him but if he really wants to learn, just come over. I give the guy my number and figure that will be all I hear from him. I have had other people beg me to teach them but when it got down to it they never followed through. This guy called and showed up the next day.<\/p>\n
I am not much of a teacher so I tell him to come up with a project and make it and I will show him how, but\u00a0not to\u00a0expect me to hover over him. The guy is motivated, he actually has some ideas. This is a first, most people want me to tell them what to do. I have an extra bench so I just let him go to town\u00a0 and if he has a question I answer it. Holy crap, this dude worked all day with me, and he shows up the next day. He came everyday for almost a year and worked and studied at home too.\u00a0 Alot of you who have done this for a long time can tell if someone has the skills to be a goldsmith just by how they handle the tools. This guy used them like I did, he didn’t even bust saw blades, that was totally amazing. \u00a0He was crankin’ out stuff everyday and was getting real good. I guess when you spend 10 hours a day everyday workin’ at something you get pretty good. He didn’t talk much and didn’t ask to change the radio station, he just showed up and worked on his stuff. I gave him some of my extra tools to take home with him after a couple months. I couldn’t pay him but I bought him lunch occasionally, kinda a Will Work for Food program.<\/p>\n
I started giving him waxes to start for me and castings to finish. Since I don’t do any repair he only learned how to make jewelery, not a bad thing as far as I am concerned, repairs can age a fella. All good things come to an end. No this didn’t end badly, he decided to move to be with his girlfriend who was away at college. So I set him up with a flex shaft and a torch and all the basic stuff you might need to get a job and told him how to do it – just show up and say “Do you need a goldsmith?”and pull out some of the stuff you made and show them, that has always worked for me. Well a couple of weeks later he calls and tells me he got a job making jewelery.\u00a0 I felt like a proud pappa. It has been a couple of years and I still hear from him, he is still smithing and I am sure he is getting really good.<\/p>\n
I used to get so pissed when other jewelers wouldn’t show me how to do somethin’. They would keep secrets and not let me watch.\u00a0 I finally asked this one, “How long have you been a jeweler? 30 years? No shit, that’s a long time. Dang I must be pretty darn good for you to be worried about me taking your job. I have only been doin this for about a year.” I told him that if it took him thirty years to get as good as he was, did he really think I would be as good as him in a few hours or months for that matter? He thought about it and from that point on he showed me how to do anything I asked.\u00a0 I will gladly show anyone how to be a goldsmith but very few will ever go on to do it for a living.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was at one of the shops that I do work for a few\u00a0 years ago and this guy comes in and asks the owner if he takes apprentices. Of course he says no, and the guy leaves. I finish up what I am doin’ and yell to the guy out in the parking lot, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/kevinpotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/kevinpotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/kevinpotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/kevinpotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/kevinpotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/kevinpotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/kevinpotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/kevinpotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/kevinpotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}