Stick trick

[Bryce Masuk]

Hey Im no slugging advocate,

if you think nothing dodgey happens in shipyards or anywhere anything is made than your fooling yourself


Does anyone rember where most ships in the world are built isnt it that country close to china?
KOREA I think is the name of it.

they treat all their workers fairly right? they would never try and cover up a mistake before someone noticed it!

[courtiron]

I had one instance years ago where I had to 'fill' a huge gap. At the time I was an apprentice, and as any of you that have been apprentices know, if your journeyman tells you to do something, it is simpler to do it and fix it later if he was wrong.
I had two 10" s40 pipes at about 28' above the floor, parallel and separated by about 40'. What I wanted to do was weld one of the 90's on the 39' odd length of pipe and then haul the whole thing into the air and fit the last 90 in and weld it up. The boss laughed and asked if I wasn't capable of welding the other 90 on and keeping it plumb and square? I told him that I certainly could but the odds were that the two runs of 10" that we were connecting to were most likely neither parallel or running on the same plane. I was directed to weld both 90's on. They were perfectly aligned... to bad the pipes weren't. Since I was on one end of the piece and the boss was at the other end when I asked him how the fit up was at his side he said it was fine... he lied... I welded my joint then went to the other end...
I had a 3/4" gap at the bottom of the joint and about 3/8" gap up one side. Torched out some of the pipe, and some of the fitting, and even after that I had an ugly gap.
Most pipe welding at the time was done with 1/8" 6010 (Lincoln 5P). I still like it a lot. I use 7018 in all positions, but as my eyes age, it gets harder and harder to see the puddle-slag interface of 7018... I used a defluxed piece of 5/32" weld rod as a filler rod and filled the gap. And while the huge gap will certainly shrink a lot more than a properly fitted joint, the filler pass and the cover pass that is the norm in pipe welding (3 passes are common, root, filler and cover pass) also anneals each prior pass... hopefully that reduced the stress somewhat. The last time that I had a opportunity to check the job, some thirty years later, that joint hadn't failed.
I asked a journeyman that was getting ready to retire some years ago how he knew when it was time to retire... he just looked at me and said "you'll know". Took another 15 years but last year I "knew" too. After 41 years in the pipe industry I pulled the pin and retired also. When you get to demo a building that you helped to build the hand writing's is on the wall. Hopefully I never became that crotchety old duffer that I had to put up with on that pipe job. I was still having a good time, but it was time...
Paul

[arftist]

I had one instance years ago where I had to 'fill' a huge gap. At the time I was an apprentice, and as any of you that have been apprentices know, if your journeyman tells you to do something, it is simpler to do it and fix it later if he was wrong.
I had two 10" s40 pipes at about 28' above the floor, parallel and separated by about 40'. What I wanted to do was weld one of the 90's on the 39' odd length of pipe and then haul the whole thing into the air and fit the last 90 in and weld it up. The boss laughed and asked if I wasn't capable of welding the other 90 on and keeping it plumb and square? I told him that I certainly could but the odds were that the two runs of 10" that we were connecting to were most likely neither parallel or running on the same plane. I was directed to weld both 90's on. They were perfectly aligned... to bad the pipes weren't. Since I was on one end of the piece and the boss was at the other end when I asked him how the fit up was at his side he said it was fine... he lied... I welded my joint then went to the other end...
I had a 3/4" gap at the bottom of the joint and about 3/8" gap up one side. Torched out some of the pipe, and some of the fitting, and even after that I had an ugly gap.
Most pipe welding at the time was done with 1/8" 6010 (Lincoln 5P). I still like it a lot. I use 7018 in all positions, but as my eyes age, it gets harder and harder to see the puddle-slag interface of 7018... I used a defluxed piece of 5/32" weld rod as a filler rod and filled the gap. And while the huge gap will certainly shrink a lot more than a properly fitted joint, the filler pass and the cover pass that is the norm in pipe welding (3 passes are common, root, filler and cover pass) also anneals each prior pass... hopefully that reduced the stress somewhat. The last time that I had a opportunity to check the job, some thirty years later, that joint hadn't failed.
I asked a journeyman that was getting ready to retire some years ago how he knew when it was time to retire... he just looked at me and said "you'll know". Took another 15 years but last year I "knew" too. After 41 years in the pipe industry I pulled the pin and retired also. When you get to demo a building that you helped to build the hand writing's is on the wall. Hopefully I never became that crotchety old duffer that I had to put up with on that pipe job. I was still having a good time, but it was time...
Paul

Thanks Paul. Good read.

[matto]

we would use the extra rod as filler rod for gaps and holes that newbies would make, most of the time when putting metal
decking down when welding galv. decking your decking and weld puddle can go poof, then you have a hole to fill with thin
material the extra rod helps make the hole go bye quicker.

[HWHII]

I have used this technique many times. It is great for filling gaps. I like to use 6010 or 6011 because of there fast freeze nature. I will then go back clean with a grinder and cover with 7018. I would not use this in a critical strucural situation only as a last resort. Although I have passed xray on pipe using this technique. Another use for this is to melt off blobs on to scuplture pieces to give texture. Hold a long arc length insert filler into arc but do not touch the base metal.