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Caught myself tack welding wrong for 8 years, a pipefitter set me straight in 10 seconds
I was at the Marathon refinery job in Gary last Tuesday, laying out a 24 inch line, and this old pipefitter walks up and asks why I'm running my stinger lead over my shoulder. I told him that's how my first journeyman taught me back in 2016, and he just shook his head and said, 'You've been fighting the arc every single pass.' He showed me how the lead should trail behind your hip so it doesn't twist the gun, and honestly, my welds on the next root pass came out flatter and cleaner than anything I've done in years. Anyone else pick up a bad habit from an old timer that took a stranger to call out?
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jamesm3820d ago
The part that gets me is how fast it clicked for you. Ten seconds from a stranger did what eight years of habit couldn't undo, and that says a lot about how we learn this trade. Your first journeyman probably wasn't even wrong for the work he was doing, maybe he ran thinner wall pipe or a different position, and the habit just stuck because nobody ever gave him a reason to question it. That's the thing about bad habits in welding, they don't feel bad at the time. The arc fights you a little, you chalk it up to the machine or the rod or the weather, and you never stop to think the problem is where your lead is hanging. Worth passing that one on to the next green hand you see running his cable over his shoulder.
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