Used to fight with tube alignment for hours until a foreman showed me the drift pin trick

I spent 3 years wrestling misaligned boiler tubes with a sledge until some old guy on a shutdown at Mill Creek showed me how to stack drift pins in sequence. Now I line up 4 inch tubes in under 10 minutes without any swearing. Anybody else got a trick that made them feel dumb for not figuring it out sooner?

2 comments

2 Comments

terryallen1mo ago

Learned that same trick on a condenser job back in 07. Felt like a damn idiot for all those years beating on tubes with a brass hammer and a prayer. Stacking pins just makes everything slide together smooth like butter. Another old timer showed me to turn the tube a quarter turn while pushing and it catches the alignment perfect. Pass that stuff on to the greenhorns, nobody should suffer through that frustration.

ellis.susan1mo ago

Got shown the drift pin trick by a pipefitter named Red back in '09 at a paper mill. He told me to spit on it first for good luck and I laughed but honestly it worked, lol. Now I teach every apprentice I get that same routine, plus I add a little cutting oil on the pins if the tubes are being real stubborn. Some of these guys come in thinking they're gonna muscle everything and it's just funny watching them learn the hard way.

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