Blind nozzle weld took me 6 hours, should've been a 2 hour job

Last Thursday I had to repair a cracked nozzle on a feedwater heater at a plant near Gary. The clearance was maybe 8 inches so I couldn't get a mirror in there, and my normal borescope decided to die that morning. I spent 4 hours trying to grind and weld by feel alone, burning through three electrodes before I got a decent bead. Finally borrowed a mechanic's inspection camera from a guy on the night shift, and the whole fix took 90 minutes after that. Ever run into a job where the tool failure cost more time than the actual weld? What's your backup for tight spots?

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sam_thomas15d ago

I've had that exact nightmare with a gas tungsten arc weld on a 2 inch line that was tucked behind a support beam. Spent 3 hours fighting a stuck collet and a flaky foot pedal, reweldin the same root pass twice. Turns out the tungsten was dirty and the gas lens was clogged, so I was chasing a contaminated puddle the whole time. Now I keep a cheap USB endoscope in my truck, the $40 kind that plugs into my phone, and I also carry two spare torches with different flex heads. That combination has saved me more times than I can count, especially on boiler tube work where every inch is a fight.