Noujaim Tool Co. molds Kaynor Tech students into apprentices

May 19, 2021

WATERBURY – Two days after his 16th birthday, Ryan Belmont began his career. He was a student at W.F. Kaynor Technical High School, and had a couple years before taken a tour of the Noujaim Tool Co., and met owner Joseph Noujaim.

“Joe said, ‘When you turn 16, come here and you’ve got a job,’” Belmont said. “So, of course, I was ecstatic.”

That was six years ago. Belmont, now 22 and living in Middlebury, spent 8,000 hours as an apprentice at Noujaim Tool, and is now a journeyman toolmaker.

He’s the latest of 15 former apprentices who have earned their journeyman status at Noujaim Tool since 1988, and one of several to still work there.

“Basically, we start grooming them when they are freshmen,” said Selim Noujaim, who does sales and marketing for his brother’s precision machining company. “And then we kind of know from there. We look in their eyes and we know who really has the potential to really become a good apprentice toolmaker.”

According to the state Department of Labor, some 80,000 industries and companies offer apprenticeship to more than 395,000 apprentices.

In the state, there are more than 4,500 apprentices serv- ing 3,400 employers, according to the DOL.

About 80% of them, DOL documents indicate, are at construction and manufacturing companies like Noujaim Tool.

“Selim’s place as well as the other area manufacturers love our kids and it’s a great relationship we have with them,” said Tom Kenyon, manufacturing department head at Kaynor Tech, noting his students also get placed at area companies such as ITW Highland Manufacturing in Waterbury and Naugatuck, the Modelcraft Co. precision machining in Plymouth, and Waterbury Swiss Automatics.

“We’ve had great success with them,” he said. “They tell me what their needs are and I see if we have somebody who fits that bill.”

Noujaim credited the company’s relationship with Kaynor for the success of the apprenticeship programs.

“Kaynor Tech is very progressive in trying to highlight the students,” he said, noting the school often contacts the manufacturer and requests tours or asks him to speak with students.

Often, he said, he reaches out to the school, searching for apprentices.

“First and foremost, we want an apprentice who has good grades, that’s most important. Then, we want an apprentice who goes to school every day, does his homework every day…has good support from his teacher and a good reputation from his teachers,” he said. “We don’t take just anybody who walks through the door.”

Each apprentice is teamed with a mentor, but will have many mentors over the course of the four, to four- and-a-half years it will take to complete the 8,000 hours, so they develop a diverse set of skills, Noujaim said. The first apprentice at Noujaim Tool was Melvin Santiago, who started his apprenticeship in 1988. Now 54, he’s a journeyman and mentor at Noujaim Tool.

“They come looking for tools or they want my experience on how to do the job,” Santiago said. “It’s not just me; a lot of the guys help the apprentices. We want them to learn the right way; we don’t want anybody to get hurt.”

Nicholas Palmerie said he started his apprenticeship at Noujaim Tool in 2007, and has held a number of different roles there.

“I pretty much touched base on every aspect of the shop,” he said.

While he started out doing computer numerical control— controlling, automating and monitoring the movements of a machine via computer — he now does electrical discharge machining, which uses a spark to melt metal in the manufacturing process.

“Today’s manufacturing companies are not yesterday’s dungeons. Everything is computerized. Everything is self-contained,” Noujaim said. “There is no oil on the floors, there is no junk all over the place; cleanliness all over. And everything has to be programmed by computer. You look at the blueprint and you have to be able to talk to the computer.”

But while the work is modernized, practical tool-and- die skills are still needed — and need to be passed down, Belmont said.

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