Am I the only one who switched to rolled tube ends after a 20 year guy called me out at the job in Gary
I used to swear by just butting the tube up to the header and running the bead, mostly because that's how the guy who trained me did it and nothing ever blew back on me. Then last spring we were on a boiler rebuild up in Gary, Indiana, and this older hand named Ray was watching me fit up a lower water wall. He didn't say a word until I stepped back, then he just asked me how long I thought that joint would last with expansion working on it. I got a little hot about it and said I'd never had a comeback, and he nodded and said that's because nobody went looking. He showed me how he rolls the tube ends on the bevel so you get full pen and the stress spreads out instead of sitting in one line. I slept on it, tried it on the next section, and the fit up was way tighter and my bead ran cleaner too. Now I keep a roller in my bucket. Any of you older hands care to say if I was just lucky before, or is butting it up really that bad?