Wish I'd ignored that welder's advice about skip welding

An old hand at the union hall told me to skip every other weld on a big storage tank job to save time. I figured he knew what he was talking about since he'd been doing this 20 years. Three weeks later the inspector flagged a seam separation that almost cost us the whole contract. Never again trusting shortcut advice just because someone's been around a while. Anybody else get burned by bad tips from so-called veterans?

2 comments

2 Comments

matthewp5220d ago

...wait hold up, are we sure this was really that bad? I mean yeah the inspector flagged it but was it actually gonna fail or just didn't look pretty? Skip welding is pretty standard on storage tanks sometimes, the old timers aren't always wrong. The real question is what kind of seam separation are we talking about, like a legit crack or just some visual gap that scared the inspector? I've seen guys get flagged for stuff that would hold a million gallons no problem but didn't match the print exactly. Not saying the guy was right but maybe the problem is more about the inspector than the weld itself.

skyler_white20d ago

What about the metal's composition though? Could be a brittle fracture waiting.