Cheetah, old pics

Mig welding,

Easy? For some. I've trained welders for 25 years, a few get the hang of it in a couple of weeks, a few just can't weld. Just speaking of mild steel. Most catch on in about a month.

I've always had to weld, can't think of the term, if it fails, someone is going to get hurt.

My Dad's an engineer, with a long history, know's a lot of people. Link Belt Speeder, Dad was Chief Engineer. He went on to bigger and better things, but never forgot his son. Ended up welding on more than one crane.

I mig weld stainless, tool steels, cast iron, aluminum. Mig weld magnesium, turn the argon up, believe me. I got smart later in life. Retired, believe me. Just weld mild steel, now.

My training is in pipe welding. Orbital welding. Weld aluminum tube, a few mils thick. Medical supply lines, industrial "steam" or "chemical" supply lines.

One day Ole Dad calls. Son, I got a friend, needs some welding done, you should be able to handle it. So, I get the number, call em up.

A local company in Dallas had a problem with the pressures in an oil well. A company up the street designed a tool to go on the tree, needed a new fitting on the tree to mount the tool.

Several engineers calculated a lot of stuff, asked if I could do it. We worked up some mock ups. Did some practice arc welding on the mock ups. The engineers tested the mock welds. The engineers went back to the drawing board a couple of times. After about two weeks of trials, the tree arrived, prepped, ready for the fixture, "flange", to be welded. I donned my abestos suit, 4 torches heated the metal and the fixture. I could'nt see what I was welding with the heat. Took the engineers another week to come up with a solution. Special lighting, special lenses, some chemical, guess it kind of glowed, gave me the definition to weld by. Did some more mock ups, this time with the torches. The absolute, most difficult weld, I have ever done. The heat was unbearable.

The engineers tested the mock ups, everything seemed to be ok. So the day of the big weld. Went pretty smooth. The tree went into further processing, heat treat, x-ray, whatever they do.

Now the pressure test. Picture a sewing machine, the size of an old steam locomotive. Flywheel, taller than me. Needle not much larger than a needle on a sewing machine, coming off the steam locomotive. Huge chilling unit, cooling the little tiny piston. Me, the engineers, oh a couple others, are watching the tree get pressurized, one of the engineers says, "were up to 22,000". I said, "22,000 what". Engineer says psi. I said how far you going, engineer said 25,000 psi. This flange was about 2 foot in diameter. We were standing 20 feet from the tree. Did'nt take me long, I was way back. The tree would actually ring, vibrate, settle down, really ring, settle down, vibrate, whine, shake and ring some more.

It held, did'nt answer their phone calls, got real busy, doing other things.

chuck