Thanks for the info. It is pretty much a no-man's land when you talk welding repairs on any aircraft part. OEM's give lots of info, but always go one step short of giving an A&P the explicit go-ahead to repair an exhaust or do a simple patch on a recip engine truss mount. For example, Cessna's Caravan 208 Series structural repair manual says what process to use on a truss mount, and some in depth information as to the materials and repair limits, but they leave it at that. Generally, you never see statements saying that a certain repair must be done by personnel qualified to a certain spec. Not very helpful. And an FAA inspector once outright told me that "the FAR's are written as vaguely as possible, so we can make them mean what we want them to mean in a court of law."
I had a semester of gas welding at Embry-Riddle, and a few days of TIG orientation, but the rest I've learned on my own after reading Richard Finch's books and making lots of scrap. I've done quite a bit of tooling fabrication around the shop as practice, and I'm happy to just mess with cars and do some metalshaping. I was mainly wondering about the feasibility of certification. Thanks for the input!
Dick basically if you have to make a move in the future having those skills could be an asset to land you the job. I work for a manufacture ....Some of the service centers around the airport still bring us stuff to do for them as "Favors".....but a lot of times they call me or one of my coworkers to handle it for them in their hanger for very nice $$$$. I just make sure their repair station docs are in order and get faxes in if need be.....but their inspectors buy it off and I walk away with some xtra spending money. But Lawrence is right on the money ...as far as the FAA is concerned any body can weld on whatever as long as it gets the stamp......scary scary scary.
My company spent a very large sum on my certs for D17.1....if someone truly has a need for the work to be done in their house they will spend the same on you to meet their needs. If you got a good sheet metal background as well I know a couple of places that would gladly like to see a resume. And both do quite a bit of welding in house with properly qualified procedures.
Best Regards
Tommy
I also work for a FAA repair station as a CWI/Powerplant license.We test our welders in house and send the test plates out to a AWS certified test facility for X-ray.They send back the X-ray (Accept or Reject),and we give the welders a in-house certification to weld.We develop our own welding procedures using actual aircraft parts (Embrear 145's).its pretty cut and dry just figure out your thickness range and base metal and practice till you can pass a plate test.
another aside.....if your going to do a (repair) on a non welded part make sure someone writes an EIAR with modification center certs in place.....that way your butt is covered and its on the inspector or engineering authority that wrote the EIAR. When I go in to do what they cannot do I make absolutely sure that they are buying off all liability.