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A 30 year hand in Gary told me to quit rushing my tube rolling and I didn't listen, cost me 16 tubes
A guy named Ray on my crew out in Gary kept telling me to slow down on the tube rolling and let the roller do the work instead of leaning on the gun. I brushed him off because I'd been rolling tubes for 4 years and figured I knew my own pace. Last month on a condenser job I got cocky and pushed a 3/4 inch tube too fast, flared the ends past spec on 16 tubes in one bundle. We had to cut them out and reroll the whole pass, which put us 2 days behind and the foreman had to eat the overtime. Ray just looked at me and said 'told you, son,' then helped me pull the bad ones without a word. Turns out his whole point was that the roller torque tells you when it's done, not the clock. Any of you got a trick for knowing when a tube is actually rolled proper instead of guessing?
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the_viola5d ago
Sounds like Ray was doing you a favor and you just had to learn it the hard way, huh. Nothing like eating two days of overtime and 16 dead tubes to really drive the lesson home. But hey, at least you got a good story out of it, and Ray got to feel like a wise old owl for a week. For real though, the torque thing is the tell. On most rollers you can feel it in your hands when it stops pulling and starts just spinning, that little hum change. If you're leaning on the gun you'll never feel it, you're too busy fighting the tool instead of listening to it.
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