Old boilermaker told me to stop babying my preheat and I fought back for weeks

I was talking to a guy named Earl who's been in the trade since the 70s. He watched me heat up a thick walled vessel for about 10 minutes before welding and just shook his head. He said I was wasting time and the heat was too uneven, told me to crank the torch up and move faster. I argued with him for like two weeks in my head, but finally tried it his way on a job down in Gary last Tuesday. The weld came out cleaner and I saved myself almost an hour of preheat time. Has anyone else had an old timer holler at them about something they swore was wrong but ended up working better?

3 comments

3 Comments

charles9191mo ago

Wait, he had that thing glowing like a literal toaster? My old foreman would have thrown his hood at me if I got a 2 inch wall that hot. I thought that much heat would warp the pipe or wreck the filler, but I guess if it worked for you I might be the idiot here.

noah_webb1mo ago

Man, I gotta disagree on this one. I've seen too many guys turn a good pipe into a warped mess by running it that hot. Sure, it might work on some walls, but on a 2 inch schedule 40 pipe you're playing with fire. That kind of heat can pull the filler out of alignment or mess with the puddle control. I'd rather take the extra time and keep it cool than explain to the boss why the pipe looks like a pretzel. Earls have their tricks, but I'm not buying that every problem needs a blowtorch solution.

drew_patel571mo ago

Earl probably would've yelled at you for thinking too, but he's not wrong. I spent a solid month babying a preheat on a 2 inch wall pipe because some YouTube guy said slow and steady wins the race. Old timer walked up, told me I was welding with a hairdryer, and cranked the heat till the thing was glowing like a toaster. Finished in half the time and the weld looked better than anything I'd done before. Earls are basically cheat codes for the trade, you just gotta accept the verbal abuse.