Do you pride your self as a competent handy man? Lets face it, there are many women who just love guys who can turn their hand to just about anything around the house. But it's not enough to be "just" a handy man, to be a well rounded in demand handy man you need to develop many different sets of skills.

Some people just like to do small handy jobs using timber, perhaps doing repairs to door jambs - window sashes & frames or repair a few rotten floorboards, and believe it or not the vast army of people working as handy men never seem to run out of work.

Perhaps instead of promoting your services as an all round handy man, you could specialise and concentrate your skills in certain areas, such as woodwork repair - fence repairs - household utensil repairs - garden furniture repairs - garden equipment & tool repair, there is an almost endless list that could be compiled in the general handy man arena.

But just imagine if you made a special effort and went a little further than the average handy man does with his skills, and included special metal craft skills that placed you into a position that few other people were able to offer in your area, now wouldn't that give you a competitive advantage.

Tools - equipment & other things break all of the time around a house, the simple solution is to simply throw broken items out, and that is what most people do, and one of the major reasons why so much stuff ends up in landfill refuse dumps. Many of these broken items could easily be repaired and put back into service once more, people will save money and landfills will end up with a lot less material & things being dumped.

Metal repair skills are not difficult to learn, many trade colleges offer short courses on equipment - tool maintenance & repairs. If you are an enterprising handy man there's a good chance you already have the right kind of skills to succeed. You don't need a large inventory of tools either, a mid size electric arc welder, a sturdy bench fitted with a 4" vice, plus a hacksaw, a pedestal drill press and several other metal working tools and you are ready to go.

The piece De resistance of metal craft skills is when you have learnt and understand the art of metal casting, this is where you melt aluminium or bronze and pour the metal into a pre-made sand mould. Almost any shape can be made, castings made in the hobby workshop can range in weight from 1oz to several pounds or KG. All kinds of knobs, handles, levers, rods and flat shapes such as nameplates and plaques can be made with some practice.

There is an acute world wide shortage of people with practical skills and know how to rebuild - repair and maintain, perhaps this is the kind of work that you would like to do either full time or part time. You only have to look in the newspaper classifieds to see that many people make a reasonable living rebuilding and repairing all manner of things.

Col Croucher