The master toolmaker is near retirement: HR for aerospace tooling makers

Every aerospace tool room has one bench that people walk to when a fixture will not close. The man there smears Prussian blue on a locating pad, presses the mating block down and reads the marking. He scrapes a little, blues it again and stops when the bedding looks even. He knows when a dowel will take and when a drill bush needs another touch on the lap. Often he is also the oldest name on the muster roll.

Here we look at one pressure point for tool rooms that build aerospace jigs. It is the master fitter whose retirement is a few years off, in a shop that has never written down his bench habits.

• Blueing and scraping. How much to take off a pad, and when the bedding has spread far enough to stop.
• Locator and bush fit. The feel of a drill bush pressed home, and the moment a locator becomes a push fit rather than a mallet fit.
• Reading the trial part. Which deviation on the first sample points at the fixture and which points at the customer's spindle or clamping.
• Rescue work. The quiet corrections he makes when a ground block arrives slightly off and the trial date cannot move.
• Trust outside the gate. The heat treater, the outside grinder and the customer's inspector who take his word on a borderline reading.

None of this is on the drawing. A drawing gives a band. He decides where inside that band an assembly jig or check gauge will behave, on a tool the shop may build only once. Wire EDM and the surface grinder get the steel close. His scraper finishes it.

Three habits keep it stuck. The master is the most loaded person in the shop, so an hour of teaching looks like an hour stolen from a trial. Apprentices spend so long deburring, sweeping and fetching slip gauges that the sharp ones leave for CNC jobs that pay sooner. And his grade often sits near a machine loader's, so teaching brings him nothing and can look like grooming the man who will take his stool.

Most owners already sense the risk. What tends to be missing is a month pencilled on a calendar and a named person standing at his elbow.

1. 1

   Fix the month

   Ask him, with respect, when he expects to stop full-time work, then plan backwards from it. Hand fitting moves over years, so two years of runway is tight rather than generous.

2. 2

   Choose an heir and a back-up fitter

   Pick from current fitters or senior apprentices who show steady hands and patience. Tell both openly. An heir kept secret cannot ask the questions that matter.

3. 3

   Turn live fixtures into lessons

   Choose jobs with heavy fitting and put the heir on the scraper while the master watches and talks. Photograph the blue bedding before and after each pass.

4. 4

   Write decision points, not a textbook

   One card per tool family: what to check first, what usually goes wrong, when to stop scraping, when to send a block back to the grinder. A page, with photographs.

5. 5

   Move sign-off across gradually

   At the start the heir fits and the master approves. Later the heir approves simple drill jigs alone. Inspection fixtures and gauges cross over last.

To follow a handover like this over several years, use the tool room succession page. Our retirement note for the aerospace group widens the view.

A master who gains nothing from teaching will teach slowly, and nobody can blame him. Give him a named teaching role with an allowance. Sit with him each quarter over the heir's progress, so the role carries weight on the floor. Separate grades for hand fitting and for routine machine loading tell every apprentice that the craft is worth reaching. Our page on pay scales for tooling makers covers comparing them with nearby tool rooms.

Retirement need not be a cliff edge either. Some owners agree a shorter week for a year after the stop date, or an on-call arrangement during trial weeks. Keep any such terms brief and on paper.

Tool family: drill jig, assembly fixture, check gauge or forming die.
Master: name, and the planned last month of full-time work.
Heir and back-up fitter: names, and the date each was told.
Fixtures worked on together this quarter: tool numbers.
Decision cards written so far: titles, with photographs attached.
Sign-off level reached: fits under watch, fits alone, approves alone.
Next hard fitting job planned for the heir: tool number and trial date.
Teaching allowance last reviewed on: date.

The owner or tool room manager updates the card every quarter, master and heir both present. Ten minutes does it. When the fixture line stays blank for two quarters running, the handover has quietly died.

A lone heir only moves the risk to a younger pair of hands. Behind him the tool room needs apprentices who reach the bench in years rather than decades. A written route, with skills set out year by year and a mentor who checks monthly, keeps more of them. The apprentice route for aerospace tool rooms sets it out stage by stage.

• Note the age and likely stop date of everyone who fits or scrapes by hand.
• Against every name, pencil in who could step in. Leave a blank where there is none.
• Pick the next fixture with hard fitting and pair the two of them on it.
• Agree the teaching allowance before the first lesson, not after it.

Order waves, controlled drawings and other strains across this group sit on our hub for aerospace and defence suppliers. If you would like help shaping a plan for your tool room, tell us about it.