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Pro tip: stop grinding your tube welds down to nothing, a fitter in Tulsa set me straight
I used to think a nice dressed weld on boiler tubes was the mark of good work, so I would take the grinder to every cap until it looked like a smooth factory seam. Then a fitter named Ray on a job in Tulsa watched me do it and asked if I wanted the tubes to fail. Turns out the reinforcement on a tube weld is not ugly, it is the strength. When you flush it down to the pipe surface you cut the throat thickness, and that joint has less meat holding it when the boiler cycles hot and cold. I pulled up the spec we were working to that night and the required leg size was right there, and I had been grinding past it for 3 jobs. Since then I leave the cap alone unless the drawing or the inspector says otherwise, and I have not had a single reject in 6 months. Anybody else have an old timer call them out on something you thought was making your work look better?
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