Welding Tips and Tricks

A mate of mine with whom I work from time to time tells me he has been loosing work lately with some of his traditional customers to some "younger guys" that are apparently welding much faster than him. Now I consider my mate to be an absolute gun pipe welder, he is no layabout and I have seen him do welds that I would not even consider touching, never seen anyone as good as him.

So my mate, being the professional that he is, does not consider that they are laying beads somehow faster than him, but they are taking shortcuts. He is theorizing that they must be doing root, fill and cap in one run. He dropped by my shop the other day and took home some scrap pipe 3", 4" 5" & 6" to experiment with.

Its all tig and carbon steel sched40 pipe. This concerns me a bit because in my industry steel butts are subject to xray and this kind of shortcut goes against everything I have been taught and certified in. I don't think it would comply with our Australian standards which is similar to AWS.

Anyone come across this practice before?

Not with tig, but mig. Very experienced operators welding 25mm thick plate with huge fat passes may have well been bits of round bar layed in the prep. It all hit the fan when an old spec for ultrasonic testing was found. Let the grinding begin.

I have seen welders finish more than 30 4" SCHD 40 joints in a 10 hour day all tig in the 5G position.
It was 2 passes though not one and I doubt anyone can do it in one pass and still pass RT.

Thanks Taz.
That's 3 butts per hour or better without a break- real fast.
Do you know if he was using 1/8th wire? Was he prepping and tacking as well or just running rod?

Just fitting with the aid of a fitter and tacking. Prepping was done by other guys.
Wire was 3/32 and he was walking the cup.