Remembering a bad flange weld on a boiler in Spokane

This was about 15 years back on a big steam boiler job. We were doing the final pressure test and I heard a hiss from a flange I'd just welded. It was a tiny crack, maybe an inch long, but enough to fail the test. I had to grind the whole thing out, which took two hours in a tight spot. The old guy running the job just said 'better you find it now than the plant does later'. It really drove home how one small skip in the bead can cost you a whole afternoon. Anyone else have a story about a weld that looked good but wasn't?

2 comments

2 Comments

davis.mia5d ago

Honestly, how bad is a tiny leak really? @brookep27 makes a fair point about the sound, but sometimes a small fix later is easier than grinding for hours right then. That old guy's advice sounds nice, but time is money on a job site.

brookep275d ago

Man that hiss is the worst sound. Had a similar thing on a pipe spool that passed visual but leaked like a sieve on the hydro. The fitter swore up and down his prep was perfect, but the root was just cold in one spot. Sometimes the metal just doesn't want to fuse and it hides until the pressure goes on. Grinding it out in a tight spot is its own special kind of punishment.