machinist person employed to operate a machine On leaving school , he went into Dad's factory and trained as a machinist . He said those being asked to leave -- mainly machinists -- were not suited to the industry . Both left school at fourteen : my father to work as a butcher 's messenger boy , my mother to learn machining in a shirt factory . She worked as a machinistuntil she married my father in 1946 and chose never to have a job again He is a wood machinist by trade and runs his own timber business in Dublin . Eighty-five percent are women , all highly-skilled sewing machinists .