My name is Marral Eberts and I'm the head machinist at Superior Hard Chrome Incorporated Canada. We're the Hydraulic Division in Regina. I've been here for 7 years.

I decided to get into the job after I'd been laid off from my previous employment which was a non-skilled labour where the money wasn't paying very well and the job satisfaction wasn't there. So I went to Employment Canada and talked to them about going back to school. They helped me into a course for people exploring trades and technologies, where I went to - attended Wascana Institute for several days taking a look at each of the individual classes and just when I saw Machining, I just really enjoyed doing what they were doing - that type of work.

The training I took was 10 months, approximately 8 - 10 months, pre-employment program at Wascana Institute for Machine Shop. Once I had completed that, it was 2 years of on-the-job training. Once those hours had been completed, I returned to Saskatoon, Kelsey Institute, for 8 weeks of training for my third year. And then after 1 more year of work, returned for the fourth year, apprenticeship training in Saskatoon. And after completing the fourth year training portion of it, then we write for our journey ticket.

Characteristics, I believe that I have, to work well with Machining would be, patience, a desire to build something - to create something, there's a need for high tolerance in this job so precision and accuracy is a must, so just the desire to do that type of fine touch work.

Well, communication is a definite must. You're working along with other trades people, welders and mechanics, and there's portions of the job that they need to complete in order for you to do your job properly and vice versa. You need to complete things in a manner that they require for them to do their job properly. So we have to keep communication back and forth so that we can make the job run smoothly and come out properly.

It's important to be positive because of the different - the varieties of work that you come across. They can differ day-to-day and you must be able to solve the problems. Sometimes, things don't work out the right way the first time and you can't be losing your patience. You have to be able to think the job through, take the time to think the job through, in order to complete it properly without having to - trying to avoid running into extra snags.

There is a need to adapt to change in machining, equipment, things like technology it does increase. There are different standards to follow, different procedures, there's new cutting tools coming out on the market all the time and new materials being created. So you've got to be able to keep up with it in order to stay competitive.

Independent thinking is very important in this profession. You've got to be responsible for the work that you do and you've got to be - you have people to answer to whether between your employers' or fellow trades people that need to take that job on next. They need to, they have to be able to complete their job as easily as possible, so you have to make sure that they can do that.

A normal day around here would be coming in sitting down and having coffee - chatting with everybody and then once 8 o'clock hits, you're out there. We try to proceed regularly with scheduled jobs, to machine them from new or to repair the old. Occasionally we get hit with a rush job where we'll have to tear down a set-up and then re-set-up a rush job.

I would start off coming in by maybe checking over my machines, checking oil levels and making sure that they're in good operation for the day - running operation. Check my tools, everything's where it should be. Start off by setting up a job and finding out what needed to be done to the job and then machining whatever on it, whether it be repair or make-new from a piece of, I might make new from stock material, or whether it be setting up the piece that had been damaged to machine whichever damaged part was required

The most challenging part about this job is remembering each detail about each job. I may be working on three jobs at once. I may start one, have to pull it to do another job and so on. And I may have several jobs going at the same time. And there's a lot of numbers and sizes involved and the priority in which it needs to be done the order in which it needs to be done and trying to keep track of everything that I'm doing on a daily basis.

The best part about this job is the precise - the precision that's involved. It's a good feeling at the end of the day to have produced a very important piece of equipment for say IPSCO or IMC or some of the larger companies - very intricate work. And when you've got it done and you've hit every size right on, the Mechanics take it, they can put it together without having to fight with any of it. You feel pretty proud about that.

For somebody interested in taking this field, it takes about 4 years to get your journey ticket. And in the beginning it can - I've seen a lot of apprentice fumble and complain and consider getting out of it. But it's…it doesn't take long to click. Like once you get use to it you can go. You can handle pretty well any of the jobs. Some of them may become difficult, but once you get use to it, that difficulty and the struggle to find the answer to each new job that comes along can be very interesting. You should have a good knowledge or should be comfortable with mathematics. There's a lot of math involved and they don't necessarily have to be a genius at it. General mathematics is really all that's required along with some geometry and fractions, but as long as you're good with math and you're comfortable with math, that's all that's important.