Why a 30 year welder in Gary told me to stop stacking dimes on my root pass

I was showing a retired boilermaker my coupon at the union hall in Gary, Indiana back in March and he stopped me mid pass to ask why I was trying to make the root look pretty. He said 'the cap is for the inspector, the root is for the guy 40 feet up on the scaffold trusting your penetration,' then had me cut the coupon in half to see my own lack of fusion. How many of you had an old hand break your bad habit by making you destroy your own work to see what's inside?

1 comments

Log in to join the discussion

Log In

1 Comment

wyatt_fisher6d ago

I used to chase that Instagram stack of dimes look on my roots too, figured if it looked clean it had to be solid. Then a guy on a pipeline job had me bend test one of my pretty caps and the root opened up like a book, porosity and cold lap all through it. That was a hard pill to swallow after years of thinking I was hot stuff. The old heads are right, nobody up on that iron cares how your root looks, they care that it holds when the load hits it. Cutting your own work open is humbling but it teaches you more in five minutes than a year of trying to look good.

3