Some trade programs train people for jobs most of us never think about. Horseshoeing can take eight weeks, guitar making five months (880 clock hours), commercial diving seven months (900 hours), piano technology nine months (1,260 hours), gunsmithing as little as 16 months (2,496 hours) and violin making three years.
Shoeing horses in eight weeks
A farrier trims horses' hooves and fits their shoes. Lookout Mountain School of Horseshoeing in Gadsden, Alabama, has taught the trade since 1987. Its course runs eight weeks. The first week is lectures in the mornings and forge work in the afternoons, and the school says there's no lab fee, no materials fee and no housing fee on top.
A guitar in five months
At the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery in Phoenix, a course is five months and 880 clock hours. Classes run Monday to Thursday from 8 to 6 and Friday from 8 to 5, and there are two courses a year, one starting in January and one in late July.
Each student builds at least two "project" guitars: an acoustic steel-string, plus either an electric guitar or a four- or five-string bass. Students who keep up can start a third instrument in the second month.
Seven months, mostly underwater
Divers Institute of Technology in Seattle trains commercial divers, the people who inspect, test and rig below the waterline. The program is seven months and 900 hours, and a new class starts every month. The school says classes fill up and waitlists are common.
The list of certifications a graduate can earn reads like a small library: surface-supplied air diving through the Divers Certification Board of Canada, an ADCI entry-level tender/diver card, 40-hour OSHA and 80-hour HAZWOPER hazardous-materials training, scuba and nitrox, a rigging qualification and two kinds of non-destructive testing.
Nine months of tuning pianos
North Bennet Street School in Boston teaches piano technology as two nine-month courses, Basic and Advanced. Each is 36 weeks and 1,260 clock hours, Monday to Friday from 8:00 to 3:30, starting in September. The Basic class takes at most 16 students and puts tuning by ear at the core. The Advanced class takes at most nine and has students working in teams of two or three to take apart, rebuild and repair grand pianos.
For anyone reading this at a finance desk: tuition for 2026–27 is $29,000 a course, and the school's own page offers it as nine monthly payments of $3,222.
The same school runs some of the longest programs on this list. Bookbinding and jewelry making are two years each, and violin making and repair is three.
Gunsmithing in sixteen months
The Pennsylvania Gunsmith School in Pittsburgh runs a four-semester program that can be finished in as little as 16 months. That's 2,496 clock hours of shop time: metal lathe work, TIG welding, metal finishing and stockmaking, the woodworking that fits a stock to a firearm. Students leave with a portfolio of custom firearms they built.
The common thread
Six trades, six lengths, from eight weeks to three years. What they share is that each one is learned by doing, at a bench, a forge or the bottom of a training tank, with someone who already knows how. And at North Bennet Street, at least, the bill can be paid the way Singer sold sewing machines: in parts, over the months it takes to learn.
Sources
- Lookout Mountain School of Horseshoeing, home page and course description
- Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery, Guitar Making and Repair Course
- Divers Institute of Technology, commercial diving program FAQ
- North Bennet Street School, Piano Technology, Piano Technology tuition and full-time programs
- Pennsylvania Gunsmith School, Master Gunsmithing Program
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