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Got humbled by a 40 year old rivet forge on a boiler job in Gary
Had a rough week in Gary, Indiana working on a retrofit for an old fire tube boiler that was installed back in the 70s. Tuesday morning I was torching out some stubborn tube ends and I kept fighting the puddle, blowing holes through the sheet instead of cutting clean, and a guy named Ray who has been doing this 32 years just watched me mess up three in a row. He walked over, turned my oxygen down maybe 10 psi, and told me I was treating the torch like a cutting tool when I should be treating it like a scalpel. I swallowed my pride and let him show me, and the next tube came out like butter with almost no cleanup on the seat. Funny thing is I have been using the same torch settings since trade school and nobody ever called me out on it until now. Made me realize I have been losing maybe an hour a day to grinding and rework that I just accepted as normal. Going back Thursday with his settings written on my glove. Anybody else pick up a dumb habit early and ride it way too long before somebody finally says something?
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ericp6718d ago
Man I felt this in my soul lol. I spent like six years running my mig way too hot because thats how the guy who taught me set it and I just never touched the dials. Blew through so much thin stuff and just told myself it was the metal being cheap. Then a kid fresh out of school watched me for two minutes and goes "why is your voltage maxed out" and I had no answer. We are all just walking around with some setting from 2010 that nobody ever bothered to question.
The scalpel vs cutting tool thing is real though. Its wild how much time we lose to stuff we just call normal. Good on you for actually listening to Ray instead of getting mad about it.
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