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An old boilermaker in Toledo showed me his tube rolling trick and I've been doing it wrong for 12 years
I was up in Toledo last month doing some work on a small package boiler and got paired with this old timer named Ray who's been at it since 1978. We were getting ready to roll some 2 inch tubes and I started doing my usual thing, just cranking them in tight and moving on. Ray stopped me and said, "Hold on, let me hear one first." He put his ear right up close to the tube sheet while I rolled the next one and told me to keep going until the pitch of the drill changed, said that's when you know the tube has swedged out all the way and you're not just spinning your wheels. I tried it on the next one and sure enough, there's a real change in the sound right when it seats. I've been rolling tubes by feel and torque for over a decade and nobody ever told me to listen to it. We knocked out 86 tubes that day and not one leaked on hydro. Any of you guys use sound to judge a roll or am I the last one to hear about this?
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matthew8645d ago
Gonna try this on the next job for sure.
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