A bad weld on a feedwater heater in Toledo made me change my whole prep routine

We were doing a shutdown at the old plant there, and I was rushing to get a new section in. I just wire brushed the old joint and started laying down a bead. The foreman, Pete, stopped me and said, 'You're just painting over rust.' He made me grind it back to bright, clean metal, which felt like a waste of time. That one extra step took ten minutes but saved us from a call back two weeks later when the pressure test passed clean. How do you guys make sure your prep is good when the schedule is tight?

2 comments

2 Comments

hugo_hayes16d ago

Is it ever really that big a deal though?

elliotjenkins16d agoMost Upvoted

You know, "big a deal" made me remember when my friend's cat got stuck in a tree for three days. The whole neighborhood had an opinion on whether to call the fire department. Some said it was a huge crisis, others said the cat would come down when it got hungry. Turns out everyone was overthinking it. The cat just walked down on its own like nothing happened. Sometimes the size of the deal is just about how many people are watching.