How To Improve Your Commercial Joinery Skills

Working in commercial joinery requires you to possess a number of skills, including precision (especially with measuring and cutting), mathematical and problem solving abilities, and good work habits. As commercial joiners will work on a range of projects, from the buildings themselves to the timber parts inside these buildings (such as the stairs, cabinets, and so on), their skills need to be interchangeable between these areas. But how do you improve your joinery skills and ensure you can work on a range of commercial projects?

Certifications
Generally, in Australia you are required to pass skills tests in order to be granted an official commercial joinery status, but this is not the only way you can achieve such a rank. You can also be known as a joiner based on how good you are at what you do, how many years experience you have working in the industry, and how you support yourself in the trade.

There are also night classes that you can take in order to improve your commercial joinery skills or learn new ones. Often, after completing a night course, you will receive credit towards a joinery apprenticeship. You can also be granted credit by your employer if they feel that you have appropriate experience in the industry from an earlier appointment.

Training
If you are even more serious about improving your commercial joinery skills, you can undertake some formal training at a university or specialized joinery college. Often, these courses will accept you as an entry-level student, meaning that you don’t have to have any experience before starting. This sort of training, however, will often take you on a path of both practical and instructional classes revolving around joinery. A university or college may also help you to get a paid internship in joinery, as well as work experience that will help you to find a job later on (and give you credit in an apprenticeship).

Whilst commercial joiners used to learn their trade “on the job”, it is now much too hard to achieve this. Instead, employers are looking for people who have had some sort of prior joinery training, whether it be formal or informal, when they decide who to give their apprenticeships out to. Whether you decide to get a proper certification (thereby allowing you to run your own business) or to head off to a specialized university or college, the documentation you receive from these choices will cement you as a skilled commercial joiner.