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An old boilermaker in Gary told me to stop guessing on tube expansion and start counting strokes
Last Tuesday I was on a job in Gary, Indiana, retubing a small firetube boiler, and a retired boilermaker who stops by the shop to drink coffee just watched me for a bit. I was rolling tubes by feel, going until it felt tight, same way I have done it for 12 years. He asked me how many turns I put on the expander and I honestly could not tell him, I just go by sound and feel. He said he counted strokes on every single tube for 40 years and wrote the number on the tubesheet with soapstone so the next guy could match it. I tried it on the last 15 tubes and you could see the roll marks were way more even than mine, and I did not have to second guess a single one. The next morning I went back and checked my earlier tubes with a gauge and 4 of them were overrolled, which I would have never caught by ear. It is a small thing but it made me think about how much of this trade I do on autopilot. Do any of you count strokes or turns when you roll tubes, or is everyone just going by feel like I was?
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