Wrote off that old timer's advice about tube rolling, and a water wall leak in Gary, Indiana cost me two days
A 30 year hand told me to always roll tubes in two passes with a feeler gauge instead of just torquing them down tight, and I figured that was just old school talk until we had a leak on a boiler water wall job in Gary, Indiana. We pulled three tubes that were weeping at the seat, and every single one had been rolled in one pass with too much pressure, which is exactly what he warned me about. Now I want to know how many of you actually keep a feeler gauge on your cart, or do you trust the torque spec on the gun?
Worked a shutdown at a plant in Ohio years back where the guy training me did the same thing, two passes, clock the tube, feeler gauge in his pocket like it was a pack of smokes. We all gave him grief for it until QA cut open a few rolled joints from the last crew and you could see the tube wall was egged out from one hot pass. Whole batch got re-rolled. Cost the contractor a week. Feeler gauge is cheap, pulling a whole wall of tubes is not.