Old boilermaker told me to stop babying my preheat and I fought back for weeks

I was talking to a guy named Earl who's been in the trade since the 70s. He watched me heat up a thick walled vessel for about 10 minutes before welding and just shook his head. He said I was wasting time and the heat was too uneven, told me to crank the torch up and move faster. I argued with him for like two weeks in my head, but finally tried it his way on a job down in Gary last Tuesday. The weld came out cleaner and I saved myself almost an hour of preheat time. Has anyone else had an old timer holler at them about something they swore was wrong but ended up working better?

2 comments

2 Comments

charles9193d ago

Wait, he had that thing glowing like a literal toaster? My old foreman would have thrown his hood at me if I got a 2 inch wall that hot. I thought that much heat would warp the pipe or wreck the filler, but I guess if it worked for you I might be the idiot here.

drew_patel573d ago

Earl probably would've yelled at you for thinking too, but he's not wrong. I spent a solid month babying a preheat on a 2 inch wall pipe because some YouTube guy said slow and steady wins the race. Old timer walked up, told me I was welding with a hairdryer, and cranked the heat till the thing was glowing like a toaster. Finished in half the time and the weld looked better than anything I'd done before. Earls are basically cheat codes for the trade, you just gotta accept the verbal abuse.