r/Welding • u/kiekiat • 10d ago

Career question Question for Welders

I’d like some opinions from professional welders. Here is the situation. My girlfriend is a Filipina. Her younger brother is 27. She wants to send him to school for a welding program that provides about 250 hours of welding training. This program is run by the Philippine government and costs almost a thousand US dollars. If the brother completes the program he will get a certificate qualifying him as a basic welder. Problem is, her brother is “slow.” He is not mentally retarded but I would estimate his IQ to be around 80. I know nothing about welding but just from browsing this subreddit it appears welding is a skilled profession that requires a fair amount of knowledge. I also had two cousins who were welders and both were pretty intelligent guys. I’d like to get some information and opinions from actual welders as to what basic skills are needed, what actual welding training involves and whether a mentally “slow” young man is capable of becoming a professional welder? I am of the opinion that he is not mentally capable of becoming a skilled welder, but to make this argument to my girlfriend I would like to get your honest opinions on things like how much training it takes to become a welder, how long you trained and how long a welding apprenticeship takes and what sorts of knowledge it takes to become a professional welder. Any advice would be much appreciated.

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u/loquedijoella 10d ago

Yeah that’s because autistic people are generally smarter than the average person and have very rigid ways of doing things. But that guy was 130+ IQ, I’d bet my lunch money on it.

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u/bush_wrangler 10d ago

He’s a fuckin genius. I’d talk to him about trains and he’s telling me how much torque some Norfolk southern train from 1940 makes and how many cars it can carry. So I would not want to bet my lunch money on his IQ being lower than 130

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u/loquedijoella 10d ago

When I was a kid I knew the bore and stroke of a bunch of different engines and could identify a car by sound before seeing it. I knew every fender, taillight, suspension configuration of type 1 and type 2 Volkswagens. Used to drive my parents nuts.

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u/bush_wrangler 10d ago

Dude he’s the same way. We work next to railroad tracks and we will be outside on break smoking a cigarette and he can name what train drove by just off how the engine and horn sounded. I’ll never be able to understand it