Vehicle Painter / Spray Painter Profile
In Year 10, I needed somewhere to do work experience. My brother worked
in a panel shop and he got me a place there. I was there for two weeks
and thought it was pretty cool. My brother worked as a panel beater, but
it was the paint shop that really interested me. Those guys were amazing.
They would get a blank piece of metal from the panel shop and after a few
hours send it back looking as good as new.
In the paint shop, you get to see how the whole process works, from when a car comes in to when it leaves completely fixed. I enjoyed school so I decided to do my Year 12 but I kept working at the panel shop with my brother on the weekends. When I finished school I found myself an apprenticeship as a vehicle painter. Finding an apprenticeship was pretty easy as I had a couple years of weekend work backing up my application. I'm three years into my apprenticeship now and I'm learning something new everyday. My boss reckons that if I keep at it, I could do really well out of the trade.
The work I do
We're all part of the process here. The guys in the panel shop get a smashed up car. They take it apart and straighten it all up and then we get the panels or cars in here. I make sure that all the edges are out of the panel. Then I put on the primer and let it dry, usually overnight. While it's drying, we make up the colour. The computer takes all the hard work out of that bit, you punch in the code of the car and it tells you exactly how much of what to mix. It's really accurate. Yeah, so once we've mixed and matched the paint, we apply the paint and leave the panel in the oven to dry.
Once it's out you've got to make sure it's right and that there are no dust particles in the paint surface. We then take it back next door for the assemblers to put the panel back on the car. It can be really fast-paced here. The guys next door can send panels through really quickly and the owners always want their cars back as soon as possible.
My workplace
This is a good place to work. As I said before, we get some really flash cars in here and it's great to work on some of the best cars around.
We've also just recently got this new system that gives you fresh air when you're painting. The guys doing the painting wear a suit that is connected to tubes which give them purified air. They may look a bit silly but it's better for their health. So they look after us here. The workshop is pretty clean - it has to be.
At trade school, they told me there's a government website that has the average salary for most occupations. I checked it out and it said that the average weekly wage for a vehicle painter is about $750 before tax. So that's about $38,000 a year but I know some of my work mates get paid more than that. It depends on where you work and how good you are at your job. So if you work hard at it, like my boss says, I reckon you can do pretty well. I'll be happy working here for a while, but in the future I'd like to be the boss and maybe have my own apprentice.
Education and training
I've only got to do a little bit more work to get my Certificate III
and be fully qualified. These days you can also start your career with
a traineeship (Certificate II).
>> course/qualification
Why I love this industry
As a painter you just keep learning. Because we are working on these new cars, we get all the new types of paints and technology as they come out. With all the computer mixing of paints it's becoming more high-tech. So I'm learning a bit about computers as well as the whole painting process.
You need a great eye for detail in this job. Owners of cars can be really fussy - which is fair enough because we paint some really flash cars here. When we're done no one would be able to pick where the car was smashed in the first place. It's really satisfying to see the finished product.