While wrenching away in your garage or shop, do you ever find yourself thinking you wish you could do this as a career? Or, perhaps you’ve thought it would be amazing to do this part-time, and help pay for your classic car addiction? Well, if that thought has ever crossed your mind, here’s your chance! Our good friends over at RWM&Co are looking for some new staff to help keep the restorations moving on schedule in the shop. If you’ve ever been to the shop, you know it’s a dream space for those of us who love classic cars.
Robert and his team specialize in everything from simple maintenance, to full-blown restorations and even ground-up custom builds. Some customers arrive with no parts or car, just a photograph of some long forgotten piece of automotive history. Robert and his team can recreate those body panels using the english wheel, an entire wall of hammers and wizardry which we here at CCA don’t really yet understand.
We know what you’re thinking…”I’ve never even seen an english-wheel in real life, yet alone used one?” Don’t worry, RWM&Co is looking for a much wider variety of skills. As you read through the list you might think that you’re not a specialist in any one area, but have some of the skills needed for two or three of them. That’s perfect! RMW&Co is looking for both specialists, and staff who can become a little bit of everything around the shop. Here are the areas RMW&Co is currently looking for staff:
Tear Down – Tear down of a restoration is much more then just yanking it all apart. This a job where detail-minded individuals find their calling. Nuts, bolts and washers must be tagged with their proper locations. Photographs, lots of photographs, are taken to ensure everything goes together correctly in the assembly stage. Teardown is also the part where all the hidden issues or unseen problems are found in a restoration. A tear down specialist is part-mechanic, part librarian and part Indiana-Jones. There is nothing more exciting then removing a structured assembly to find the grease-pencil signature of a factory worker in 1958. Come to think of it, with the number of project cars in boxes on Craigslist, we think the tear down specialist might be the most common type of enthusiast!
Mechanical Work – If you’re anything like Dave at the CCA office, your youth was spent borrowing dad’s tools so you could tear apart and rebuild whatever mechanical or electronic item you could get your hands on. Years of ‘mostly’ working toys taught you the careful skill of bolting things back together in the correct order. At RWM&Co mechanical work ranges from simply replacing worn bushings in a suspension overhaul, all the way to engine and transmission rebuilds. In this area of the shop, there’s room for folks of all skill levels…as long as they’re willing to learn. While rebuilding a Bentley wheel cylinder might not be an item currently on your resume, perhaps after being shown how to do the first unit, the other three won’t seem so challenging. If you were to end up working at RMW&Co, the mechanical work you’ll experience will be dependent on your skill level, and always under the supervision of Robert’s top trained technicians.
Welding – Here at the CCA office we’ve (okay, Dave) has blown enough holes through metal and warped enough panels to understand that welding is both an art-form, and a skill. If you can weld, RMW&Co wants to hear from you! In the shop the guys are welding with both MIG and TIG, on both steel and aluminium. While experience in both welding types (and materials) is certainly an asset, the shop would love to hear from you even if you’re just experienced in MIG. The ability to weld thin panels, however, is definitely important!
Assembly – The most exciting stage of any restoration is the assembly. Finally, after many hours of work, the car is starting to look like a car once again. For many of us, it’s also the scariest part of a restoration. It’s here that one slip, or a tool misplaced, can really spell disaster. Assembly specialists are those who are detailed oriented, and can think ahead. They know that you just can’t focus on one part of the window trim, you have to be aware of what the loose end is doing as you try to attach the first section. They’re also people who look at each restoration as if it’s their own. Other shops might simply mount the gauges, or wire things up to work, but you want every job to look like it’s going in a magazine.
So, does any of that sound like you? Whether you’re thinking of a full-time career change, or perhaps working in a restoration shop part time, the team at RWM&Co would love to hear from you.
RWM&Co
rwmandco@gmail.com
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778-683-7554