Man I'm pretty pissed now.

A guy who left a little over a month ago in the saw shop came back, and I found out he's making the same thing as I am. He was being paid 12.75 as a temp, got hired on full time and went up to like 14, and now he's on 3rd and is making 17.25. He quit a month after being made full time, get's rehired at a higher rate AND makes the same money as I do, to literally stand there and cut piping.

Literally everyone but two guys who have 0 welding experience (no schooling or previous on the job work) are paid more then I am. I'm fucking doing the majority of the fitting because I'm one of the only people on my shift who can build the complex stuff and because I can do it faster then two people combined. And to add insult to injury I'm also showing people who are being paid several dollars an hour more then I am, where and how to weld the shit.

I think after my vacation in December, If I don't see at least a 2 buck raise I'm gonna walk. It's just getting ridiculous at this point.

@Seatbelts

Anything new, or still a pile of shit there?

Still a pile of shit. More of the same day after day. The only really positive thing is I will be able to take the 21st of December through January 3rd off by structuring my vacation time. And as of now I should be in line to get 1500 in the bonus shit they started this summer, but if I miss one punch, or am late by one minute I'll lose 500 bucks. And they have the most unreliable clocking system ever.

I'm still somewhat hopeful that they do a Christmas bonus on top of this extra bonus but I doubt it. If they did what they have done in previous years, and when you factor in the performance bonus, if everyone were to max that out (which I would say less than 1/5th would actually get it) they would be paying 1 million in bonuses alone.

That seems unrealistic to me, and frankly I think they will fuck everyone like last year.

I also saw they updated with a message addressing "rumors" that is leading me to think I may be in a "who moved my cheese" scenario sooner then later.

Anyways here's some stuff I have been working on.






Now this is a great example of the fuckery I deal with more often then not. This is designed this way. Whats even more ridiculous is it's listed part name is "support gusset". I personally think its an engineering fuck up that was just never fixed and they just keep doing it this way because they have always done it that way. The fucked up middle part is a connection point where two large pieces are welded together, and this was exactly how I was told to weld it. The cutout is for the bolt hole, that it also doesn't hit.






Back to the stuff that doesn't look like a goatfuck.

I built about 4 of these solo. A fair amount of overhead and I was actually surprised how easy it was. I had never really done overhead before and not to toot my own horn too much, but the beads looked damn good. I did however forget to take any pictures. But everything was welded in position.










These are something I already posted before, but I was happy with the fusing this time.




This thing was a trip. I wish I had more pics of it, but basically everything came flat and I built the entire box out, and it had to be within 1/32 because its part of the super structure we make, and is really integral to the entire system. The entire structure when completed runs close to 1m. When I eventually leave here and can share where and what I do, I'll try and go back and photograph where all these parts go and it will probably make a lot more sense.



This was a new challenge for me. The largest thing I have ever welded. The base plates are 1in and the corner tubing is 6x6's with 4x2 cross members.

Former api inspector here. Your work looks excellent. Been following your progress. Keep up the good work, don’t cheat- do your best every time. Be your own harshest critic. Keep learning and improving your skills. Don’t let other people’s negative attitudes get in your way.. promote yourself when it’s the right time for you.  If you want to move down south oil and gas/chemical work pays better and good welders are always in demand. Especially tig hands and pulse MiG for shop pipe roll out. The best I ever saw were P&E welders those guys were amazing with tig on a 9 chrome furnace retube. Weld with either hand and sometimes using a mirror! I mean it was hard for me to get the welds inspected….no access!  Absolutely impressive work. Back early 90s those guys making 90.00 -100.00 an hour traveling the world. They had to pass a 6G restriction test tig and stick! Also saw them tig out some xxs heavy 316L ss welds these were in the field up in a pipe rack, high humidity environment. Looked liked a machine weld done in a shop…
Just looking at your work so far… think you could do it
Good luck!

@seatbelts - this thread was the instigator for me signing up for a welding class, and now pulling the lever on buying a welder.  You're awesome.  The price of steel now makes me sad, though.  

One of my kids is super artistic, especially with 3d sculpture-ish stuff.  They're super stoked to learn to weld metal sculptures.  The welding supply store was curious when I asked them for the smallest TIG gloves they could get.  

Awesome man! Tig is by far one of the most enjoyable welding processes you can do, and for detail work and especially art projects its perfect. And something to consider for a beginner might be some of the Pyrex cups, since they are clear you can really see the puddle and stuff like that. I'm considering getting one myself haha.

The price of metal has gotten ridiculous. There is a ton of stuff here that can't be finished because the shortages on stainless and massive price increases. I know I try and squirrel away some scrap when I think it's something I may be able to use in the future.

Also sorry for the lack of pictures lately, I do have another massive drop coming but finding the time to upload has been difficult. I only have to work 3 days next week so I plan on dropping a bunch then, including a step by step build

So I had a bit of free time this morning and put all the pics it took since the last post a month or so ago on my computer, and there's like 100+. Not all are interesting enough to share, some have stuff that I don't want to share atm because of OPSEC, but the majority will be uploaded when I have some free time in a few days.

But since I had a bit of time I decided to share a few.

First is the robot that goes on that monster stand I welded last month. It was pretty damn cool to see it all laid out and assembled.



And lastly for this post, as promised I will walk you guys through a build. This is one of the more tedious things, and it goes with another piece that I have welded, and had done just before this was done. Part of the tediousness is there are a number of hidden parts, and the tolerances are 1/32 because the other part has to fit inside of it.

I started this at 10:34 AM.

This is how I get most of my shit, unless it's brought in via a forklift.


I start by looking over the print, double check my parts list against what I picked. Not shown is I measure each part to check that the holes were all drilled correctly, and that my lengths are correct. Nothing's worse then getting something fitted only to find out that the hole pattern is wrong, and that it needs to be plugged and redrilled.



This goes here. So I mark it




Next we tack it and it also has to be perfectly square.


Next up we add some support gussets. I'll highlight on the print where these little fuckers are hiding.



Now we add those cross members. Again these have tight tolerances so I will measure and square it probably 5 times before I'm happy with its tacking.



This shows you how brilliant these engineers are. Why yes, please put the support post right next to a hole so I can't really get a solid weld all the way around it. Wait whats that? The hole is just for wires to go through? Ya thats critical that its put 1/16th away from the support post!



Whats that? You forgot to put several measurements on the print? Typical. This was particularity irritating because the two sides are not the same length, and it's kind of important to know where they tie in on the other side.


Now we need to check and recheck square. I'm a bit anal about this, and will check between tacks to make sure it hasn't shifted.


Son of a bitch it's assembled.


I weld everything I can from one side, including the overhead.


Some welding



Lets see how were shaping up. I had to wait to put the plates on, because obviously the plates were going over the inside of the frame and there would be no way to weld those.


Now lets mock up the plate locations.



Now we put those pipe beveling skills to work.


Lets fit those plates


I skipped ahead a bit, and this shows the plates welded, and the entire thing now flipped over.



This is the 4F and some 2G (now flipped over)



This now has the plates on, and again being straight is very important.


Some more of the sides



Not my best horizontal but it will hold. It's gonna be ground off anyways



Braces added to make sure it stays put



Whats that? You put MORE holes for fucking wires next to the piece that holds the heavy ass thing that has to be perfectly mounted? Brilliant! And I can't weld both sides?? Even more brilliant!





This was welded completely by 1am.

I apologize for not updating this, I ended up catching covid finally on the 13th so I have been out of work since. I'll be back on the 2nd but I thought I would take my vacation time to finally get a bunch of these pictures uploaded.

















Some Tig work. It's almost a rare thing for me anymore. I spend so much time fitting for everyone else since there are so many new people.

The only time I ever really get to do these are when I work over, and the fucknuts they usually give them to leaves a stack of unfinished ones and I grab em before anyone else see's that gravy




These are always a treat. I do have having to fill some large gaps on parts because it rarely looks good but the base usually comes out pretty clean.


I kind of laughed at this. This was the solution I had to make to get the holes that were tapped wrong to line up where they were supposed to go.


Some uphills


This is what I meant when I said I hate filling those deep gaps. I didn't worry too much about how it looked since it was going to be covered anyways, but it still irks me.




This was a bit of a challenge to get it to all tie in correctly, but I was happy with the result. I ran the right side uphill and had to add a bunch of filler to get that gap filled.



I kind of kicked myself when I realized I could have just picked it up the entire time, instead of running horizontal and vertical. But its good practice


Once I realized I could get it to stand by itself, I ran the otherside.

More Tig work. I'm trying to figure out what specific cup size and style I need to get a pyrex cup, I'm hoping that will help me be able to walk the cup better. Almost all my Tig work is freehand dabbing.




Some 1/16th stainless.


So this was a really weird piece. It was basically a huge key from what I understand, and I think it was a prototype but I could be wrong. The end piece basically slide down over the cylinder and had to be welded.




The ridiculous part was I had to actually had cut a piece to fit inside, and because of that it didn't fit exactly as the print showed. It was originally supposed to be a half moon that went down inside the handle part, which would be fused. But since I had to hand cut it, and because of the size I basically had to just get it close, and weld it on the outside with filler. It had some undercut that really bothered me, but it is what it is.



These are always fun because I enjoy making long passes, and for the most part they end up looking pretty decent. The amount of time you have to pause to fill the gap is always tricky, but its part of what makes it a bit more challenging, especially since these are never cleaned up and are erected as welded. Because of that I always try and make as clean of a weld as possible









More Tig, same as before.






I don't weave a lot, but for these they want a large weld instead of a normal sized bead.





This was a bit of a challenge, first time I had done one. It is some kind of air exchange for something I think.








I grabbed this scrap plate and welded it after work one day. I regret doing it so quickly because I was in such a rush it came out pretty shitty. I'll make another one day and either just fuse it, or just go really slowly and focus on taking my time. I welded it in under 7 minutes, because I had to be out the door in 10.



This was a new technique I tried. Whenever I have a gap I typically run it like its an open root pipe piece, or I bump tack it with a thick filler. But this time I decided to try using a brass block. It wasn't that bad honestly.





And this was the last thing I did before I started getting hot flashes and feeling weird. It was in my final 2 hours at work, and hit out of no where. I finished my lunch break at 4:30 and all night I had felt fine, after lunch I felt fine and like a light switch got turned on at nearly 6AM on the dot. I started feeling hot, my face would feel like it was burning up, I had a disoriented feeling but I was able to finish my extra 2 hours fine and by the time I got home at 8:30 I was burning up, shaking from feeling like I was freezing and I ended up having a fever of 103. I let my HR dept know I had a fever of 103 and was going for a Covid test that afternoon, and almost unbelieving they told me that unless it came back with covid they still wanted me to go in... It of course was positive so I got a nice 10 day break. All unpaid of course. Thankfully for me my vacation started on the 21st so it at least covered a few days with some pay.

But anyways this was what I was working on. 1/16th stainless fuse. I had to leave before it was finished, so hopefully it ended up looking ok.

Beautiful work brother.

I hope you are all better after your bout with the attack from Wuhan.

I hope you get the the chance to build the heavy equipment we will someday use to finally crush those responsible.

I haven’t felt right for several days. Hope I’m around for a while longer to enjoy seeing the fruits of your skills applied. The war is raging. So different than past wars. You, and the others with heart and skills like yours, are why we are winning. We see, and we are sincerely grateful. May honor and righteousness always guide your hand. Hold the line and advance!

I really appreciate it man, I was honestly really worried when I got it, but I seem to have weathered the storm OK. Still slightly lethargic at times and I have some brain fogginess but other then that it really didn't hit me bad at all.

The rage I feel at China for this shit is palpable. The good thing is we do manufacture stuff for a bunch of the Fortune 100 companies and they have been ordering up a storm so I can only hope that means more jobs for other sectors and people all over the US. But whats also nice is I'm noticing a ton of orders for smaller companies that are up and coming and that will hopefully also mean a lot more decent paying jobs for the blue collar workers. I just really hope that we see a decent wage increase as well. The VA minimum wage just went up to 11 bucks now, and I can only hope that translates to a well earned increase for me when I go for my first review. I plan to ask for a minimum of a 2 buck increase, but depending on inflation that may actually go up some. I'm pretty determined to either get a compensation that matches my work output and abilities, or find a place that will. I really don't want to have to give up welding and go back to school for something that will pay me enough to build the life I want, but at this point if thats what it takes, then so be it.

I was really worried that I was going to have a really hard time getting back to work after being out for 20 days, but it went pretty well tonight. To be honest I think I laid down some of my nicest beads in a while ironically.








I even managed to prank a buddy back from something a few months ago. He thought I had forgotten He never noticed the "Virginity Rocks" sticker

While I'm stuck at home from the snow, I thought I would take the time to upload some pics of the stuff I have been doing since the new year.


I added some that I can't remember if I shared already or not, but either way enjoy.


Starting with the Tig stuff.











This was a fun project, and it was kind of funny that only after I had done it all in the uphill from 3 to 12ocock before flipping it, did I realize I could have just stood it up and done it all flat. It was still good practice though.




This was another fun project and one of the larger TIG projects I have done solo. It was all tig and time consuming, so it really made that 10 hour day fly by since this took up a 3rd of it. The part that really irritated me was the lack of planning on whoever it is that orders our filler. I had warned them a while ago we were dangerously low on 3/32 filler and sure enough by the time I got back from my leave someone had not only used all of it, but had taken my supply as well. So I was stuck using a mix of 1/16th and 1/8th. The result was I had to add so much it was almost always a discolored weld. It gets cleaned up anyways but it still annoyed me. It was nice to run some 3G tig.






I have started to try something to help my weaves on the larger butt welds, basically I draw to lines with a sharpie an equal spacing so I have some reference lines. It helps me keep from making super unequal welds when adding a ton of filler or doing a large weave.










Some Mig work.

I wrote out a longer detailed post but my browser crashed and I don't really have the time or energy to re-write it.

But the gist was basically I'm getting pretty burned out. Shit is just turbulent as fuck and after the buyout that they lied twice about happening failed the work has suddenly fallen off. I suspect they were making it look like we were busier then we actually were or something but the nonstop wartime production bullshit will probably cost them more in the long run. Another two guys left, one who is my buddy that started a week after me. The other had 6 years of experience here. That brings the total number of years of experience that has left since I started to around 22. First shift which I started on was by far the best at output but its now become 3rd by a mile. Were putting out more material by a factor of 3x then 1st and 2nd. 2nd is down to 5 people one who started yesterday. First has been savaged by the majority of the people leaving.

I guess 2 and a half years of 6 day work weeks, and mandatory OT and 10 hour days for bullshit pay wasn't a smart idea. 1st has become a shell of what it was when I was there. There are 4 people with over one year of experience left. One of those is my old boss who is so busy running around helping everyone else he doesn't really weld shit anymore so its really 3 guys. The other guys are all 3-7 months in, and one of those I'm pretty sure is in the process of being fired for missing 8+ days of work in that 7 months and being chronically late. The rest are pretty much worthless and can't do shit and also can't weld/fit for shit.

So what do you do to remedy that problem? Well you tell 3rd (your most productive shift) that they are going to be rolled back into 1st and 2nd soon. Now what does that mean? Well not only do we lose 15% of our pay but those 8 hour shifts are gone and so are our weekends off. So more work, less money and now Saturday work. You can imagine the sentiment.

They claim that there are no "immediate" plans to roll us back but just like they told us the company wasn't for sale, only to announce 2 months later that the sale fell through after a 3 month exclusive due diligence period I expect to be back on first in a month, maybe 2. They are already moving the guys on 3rd in assembly, cleanup and machining back to first next week.

And you can imagine the response from most of the guys on 3rd. I would say of the 7 guys who weld I suspect that they would be lucky to keep 2 people, the rest of us would leave the second another opportunity comes along. I know a few are already applying. I have already decided that unless I get a 2 buck bump to 19 an hour, I'm out. If I go back to 1st that 2 buck bump becomes 4.25 and I doubt they would agree to that. I actually already applied to somewhere else, and if they make an offer I'll either use it to leverage a raise, or leave.

I'm just to burned out to keep doing this.

Anyways I have a bunch of pics but no time to upload. Here's one though.

I feel for you man. Keep us updated on the place you applied to

Dude, you are a bad ass welder!

Thanks for the words of encouragement guys, it means a lot.

I have heard nothing back, and I might now. I guess there is such a thing as being overqualified. A buddy on first had actually applied there and did their weld test. He's a phenomenal tig welder and I guess he laid down some flawless beads and the shop foreman felt one upped.

From what I understand their a splinter company from our direct competitor, who left and made this company. It could also be that they don't want to look like their poaching people, or it could be any number of things including a lack of experience. Its a shame though, a simple offer to come in and do a test would have made me feel better about being able to leave. It would have also helped them because from what I can tell, they make some of the same parts so the learning curve would have been minimal.

I do want to note something that I may not have mentioned before. I do know that a lot of what I do isn't even close to AWS code welding. Its something that a guy I work with who did a bunch of structural steel including skyscrapers and bridges and I talked about. A lot of what they do, is because its fast and production is god. Some stuff isn't that important. But especially on the 1inch thick material, the lack of a root, and two or three fill passes was new to me. That's why you'll see a larger fatter bead instead of a multi-pass. We basically crank up the voltage and WFS and burn it in. And the downhill we do is also another sticking point, because its not good for penetration. But as anyone who does shop work will tell you, you learn the _______ insert company name way. They want it done that way fine by me.


Anyways, heres some stuff I have been working on. I still have a few hundred pics to upload but I'll get around to it sooner then later.














We have to weld these in one single pass. It was a bitch the first time, but the more you do the easier it gets.































I love the rare occasion where I can just run a smooth pass, on some thick material and just free hand dab it.

So a few weeks ago I went shooting with my brother and some of his friends. It ended up being a gigantic waste of time because the land we use (my aunts farm) has basically become a no go. Some neighbors changed since the last time we were there, and now she's got a neighbor from Connecticut on one side, and one from LA on the other. Long story short these dumb fucks are doing the whole "farmette" bs and the 3 cows one had freaked out and we had to stop shooting after about 10 rounds because my aunt was afraid it was going to run the shitty fence down again.

But we were having a hell of a time trying to get one of his shitty target holders to stand up in this unusually windy day. Its one of those 16g angle POS that is really flimsy and without being staked it just fell over constantly in any breeze. He's in IT and so are his friends. And his buddys are piling these little rocks on top of this angle, and trying to prop it up with small sticks. It was sad.

So I banged this out in 20 mins on my lunch break. Used some scrap I started collecting. I think it came out pretty damn well if I do say so myself. It definitely won't blow over.

It's not my prettiest work, but its functional.

So I figured I would give some sort of an update since its been a while.

Shit has gotten.. weird. It kind of came out of no where, we had been just chugging along and keeping the same tempo and suddenly it all changed. They announced everyone was now on 8's including 1st. It started a month or so back where they started letting the guys on 1st have Saturdays off, which I figured was just a reprieve since they had lost a number of people recently and the tempo had been 2 years of 54 mandatory hours a week. But without really any warning they decided that our department was on 8's along with a few other departments. And then they told us that if we wanted OT we had to go to assembly and work there. Then they started pulling guys from the weld shop completely to work 100% of their 40 hours in assembly.

Its gotten so bad that the other night they made one kid on my shift mop the entire shop floor, pulling everything out from under the tables, all the welders out to the middle of the floor and had him mop for 8 hours. We have been basically told heres some work, don't kill yourself to get it done.

Then today I watched the lead man on 2nd tacking 2 in wide, 8 foot long strips of stainless together. You see they were .125 (1/8th) and they needed quarter inch so they had him tacking these strips together because assembly desperately needed this quarter inch banding.

The problem of supply chain/material shortages has finally caught up to us.

So who knows what BS is gonna happen, and what really blows is it's coming up on raise season which is going to determine if I stay or find something that pays slightly better. I have a long list of reasons I should get a raise, including the fact that they have had 5 Million in PPE funds forgiven so all that shit they upgraded and the debt they paid off with those funds, is basically free money.

Another 2 people left from my department, and my shift in fact. One kid was getting paid about 14.00 even with the shift differential, and he got tired of that and sprung for a chance to learn electrical work with an HVAC company that is also going to pay for him to go to school. He's starting at 18 with no experience. The other was the really nice dude, who was absolutely terrible at welding and I was surprised he left, since he had been there for about 3 years. He managed to get a job through a family friend paying 3 bucks more an hour bringing him up to 21.

My buddy who started a week after me and stayed on 1st left a while back to work in the Nuke field doing some robotic welding, and another guy on 2nd left to weld stainless pipe. My buddy's friend got hired for 2nd about a week after he left. Dude had come in back when we had started a year ago and did piss poor on his welding test so he wasn't hired back then. But I guess they got desperate since no one was really biting at those rock bottom wages. Anyways he made it 2 weeks before he quit. It was one of those good riddance things though, the dude was kind of a douche and 3 people there actually worked with him previously. He was a job hopper and was the definition of lazy millennial. He "worked" 2 weeks. In his first week he skipped his second day, and left early two more days. Second week he left early 3 more times and by the 3rd week he just never came in, which even if he had he was gonna be fired. When I say he left early, I mean he worked for 2 hours and left. One night I remember I had to take a shit, and went back at about 11:15 and finished blowing up the shitter around 11:30. He had gone to the bathroom several minutes before me and left at the same time. He disappeared at 12:05ish and didnt show back up until 12:30, where he walked in and arranged some stuff on his table, cleaned up his gear into a pile, and walked out the shop in the direction of our boss. I figured he was looking for more work or something but he never came back. 12:50 on the dot he re-appears and cleans up his shit and then stands there on his phone until 1am when they left.

He left his gas on, his fucking welder on, the leads all over the floor, all the work he had done (a bunch of busy work welding nut pads) in a pile on his table, is sawhorses pushed over to my side and in my way, filler rod scattered all over the floor and he never swept. He never once swept the floor or cleaned up his table/space. Something they give us 15 minutes at the end of the shift to do, and something thats done every single day. All of his co-workers are sweeping and cleaning and this fucker is playing on his phone without a care in the world. He couldn't weld for shit, the only thing he did that wasn't busy work, the railings were all tacked up wrong, and we spent more time fixing those then he did fitting them and apparently he was spending about 30+ minutes in the shitter every hour and a half, or just wandering around the building doing nothing.  

So counting him we have now lost 10 people from my department since I started a year ago. A total of probably 30 combined years of experience at this place. Guys who helped me get a grasp on the work, guys who worked their asses off. All because the pay was shit, and the mandatory OT untenable.

Anyways enough ranting. There's really not many pictures to share. Nothing new of note, but I did get a few of stuff I did that's now assembled.




This was something I did on my lunch break. I have decided its time to brush up on my skills so I did a bit of tight spaced piping. Half inch gaps between each. I have another small pipe, and I'm gonna take an make that into a saddle fitting to practice that.




Something else I did on my lunch. Just some fun shit with scrap.




Some basic shit, but since we were so slow I decided to wire wheel it.





Those winches from the other week. We all got walked out to look at the square tubing thats holding it up because the person who did it, under filled it, under cut it and it came out looking like shit. Stuff thats going to cost a mill easy and it's a likely candidate for r/badwelding should anyone ever spot it in the wild.

I decided that since things have been so hectic lately I would brush up on my skills during my lunch break. So I grabbed some scrap aluminum and started welding.

First attempt went badly. It had been 3 years I think since I had welded aluminum and while I had my settings right, and pure tungsten it was dogshit. My boss saw what I was doing and told me I needed to get it up off my table because the steel was acting as a heat sink and after I put it up on some blocks it went a lot better

First attempt



I did it again tonight and a buddy of mine wanted to have a go as well and joined me, and frankly his shit was actually better then his stainless welding. But I didn't get any pics of his work.

So here's my second attempt. I ran one of the sides continuously.






I brought in my roll of 0.45 flux core and some D1.1 test plates from school I had saved, and I plan on doing some 3G FCAW practice next. I have decided that if my job decides to pay me dogshit when the raises come soon, I'm gonna be ready to apply elsewhere..

I am also going to be working on a shop press build here soon, which may just get its own thread.

smart. get ready for the move and test plates at a new employer

It's looking more and more like thats going to be in my future.

Another one bit the dust last week. It kind of came out of left field to me, but it's not exactly surprising. The guy with the most experience who had been there 3-4 years put in notice last Friday that he was leaving and was gone in a week. What surprised me about it was it was the bosses favorite. Dude kind of was a dick but he's talented no doubt. He got a job at one of the few places I had actually been looking at and was able to get me a rundown on what the test there is.

Its 1/16th flux core on a 2 inch thick plate with a 3 quarter backer in 3g. But the part I didn't know was that they time each pass, and inspect each pass. He said the guy never said a word so if there was a problem then its on you. And while I did get an AWS cert for 3g FCAW its been years, and I spent a shit ton of time practicing and our test plates were only 3/8ths thick with 0.35 wire. So bigger wire and thicker plate, with a lot more passes. He said it took him from 9:30 to 2 to finish, but he got the job starting at 25 with some extra shit like some sort of covid pay that bumps you closer to 26. Its union so hes gonna be on 3rd but that's not really a big deal since we were already on 3rd.

I do know this. I have a lot of practicing to do, but with him making the move I think its best to hold off on doing a 3g flux core test on my breaks, using my company equipment. I have my own 0.45 wire but I don't really want to be obvious about it right now. Shits a bit too turbulent to be stirring the pot.

But with him gone, that now leaves 4 of us on 3rd. And I now have the most "experience", aka have been there the longest. But the boss has new favorites and that guy will continue to get all the good work that would actually help me get to the place where I need to be.

I did some math the other day. That makes the 7th person with over 3 years experience minimum to leave since I started one year ago. The 10th I think overall. That leaves 6 people, 7 including me who have over a year's experience. The rest are all under one year, and 3 or 4 who are actually worth a fuck out of the other 10 who are left.. Most of the new guys are terrible, and I mean not just they can't understand or do the work I mean they suck at welding, showing up and need constant supervision to accomplish anything. That takes one from each shift on first and 2nd to wrangle the new guys which means my buddy who runs 1st doesn't actually weld shit, he just spends the entire day helping and telling people to get to work. Which has made him go back to night school for HVAC and he'll be gone sometime this summer. 21 years of experience gone in an instant because of low pay, which attracts shit employees.

Let that be a lesson to anyone who runs a shop who may be reading this thread.

You can hire welders in the middle of rural America and get away with paying them 15 bucks an hour. But what you get in return for that is a steady stream of people coming and going, the second a better opportunity presents itself. You may get someone like me for a while, but the second I feel I have the necessary skills to get that high paying job I'm gone. And you won't be able to keep me because you can't even come close to matching a measly 22 bucks an hour the shop down the roads offering. You'll get the bottom of the barrel applicants who can pass a piss test they know they have to sneak clean in for (almost 90% of the new guys) but if you do a random you'll lose 75% of your workforce. You'll get guys who don't show up, who call in every other week for "arc flash" or whatever reason they can think of, even if it means they take the day unpaid. They will do as little as possible and will try and set up a home away from home in the shitter, and you'll lose an hour or two a day to the guy who has to shit every 2 hours for 15 minutes. They will leave early and often, they will fuck up even the most simple of tasks. Which means the few who actually can do the job will get stuck fixing shit all the time. Orders will back up and quality will drop, and soon you'll be either accepting work you know is fucked up and trying to convince the customer that its fine, or you'll lose money on materials that you have to keep replacing until they do get it right.

I saw a post in GD the other day, I'm sure we all did. But this reply hit the nail on the head.

By adamtheduke:
If you can’t spare a guy for three days you’re understaffed.

If you can’t get your normal workload accomplished in 8 hours you’re understaffed.

If you can’t get your normal workload accomplished without working weekends you’re understaffed.

If you’re chronically understaffed that’s a leadership problem, not an employee problem.


Now that everyone's on 8's I can tell you this. Factoring OT as part of the pay is a terrible idea because when it ends, people realize just how little they make.

Anyways here's some pics of the shit I actually felt like taking a picture of.

I can't even begin to describe how boring it is to just sit there for 8 hours fitting shit so the fucksticks on 1st can actually weld something when they come in. Its pretty much all I do anymore.









This is something I had never tried before, but I had some 1/16th tungsten and decided to not fucking burn the shit out of some 1/16th stainless I had to add filler to by actually doing it the right way. See the part thats always bothered me about this place is the stainless. The part is a fucking roof, and they would have been perfectly fine if it had sugaring on the side you can actually see. I don't get it, we have smaller tungsten to go with the 14mm filler but no one is ever told to use it.





















Remember what I was talking about in an earlier post? This is what you get when you hire the dregs. I got assigned to work a piece that's pretty big with a guy on my shift. Hes not a bad dude and hes an alright welder but he laid this down and I told him to grind it out. He said it wasn't a big deal it wouldn't be a problem. I knew better but who am I to argue with the guy with 5 months of experience.


He laid these horizontals down. The don't grind these out. They are support beams. He wondered why I told him we choose a side and weld that side, no crossover. You stamp your side I stamp mine. When we flip it we stay on our sides. That way when it gets returned I know exactly whose gonna be grinding.


This is a part on a several million dollar piece of equipment, same dude did this. What frustrates me is trying to tell him its under-filled, getting a "no its not look at that color". Why they give these fucksticks the parts that sticks in the customers face, to the guys who do shit work but do it quasi fast but who produce results like this is beyond me. This is how it ships.



Here's some pressure tested shit. It's sad when this was the highlight on my night. The rest of the time I fitted shit for other people who can't read prints to weld.

It’s their business and it sounds like management wants “good enough” over “perfect at any cost”, likely because they have to turn a profit.  That’s what you’ll find at most places where time/money is a finite resource.  

Sounds like little or nothing about where you work is desirable for you, so it’s time to move on.  If you don’t like fitting in and can’t make any changes then it’s time for you to move on.  If $1 or $2 an hour pay differences cause such consternation then it’s time to move on.  There’s a common theme in those 3 sentences I just wrote!

Whats crazy the way it was when I started vs now. In just a year shit has gone downhill so fast its almost unrecognizable. I mean with the cost of some stuff we do, theres really no excuse to not try and be more competitive with the pay.

The sad part is for the most part I like everyone I work with, the boss can be a dick from time to time but I have never worked anywhere thats not a reality. The facility is top notch, and its nice working in AC/heat when summer hits. The only real downside is the pay and the problems paying shit brings. I don't even really blame a lot of the new guys for sucking ass, the prints we use are hard to read, often wrong and missing measurements frequently. 90% of new hires have never welded stainless a day in their lives, but because of the lack of manpower they get thrown into welding it way before their ready.

But what really irritates me is when we all get walked out to the assembly area to be shown all the fucked up parts/welds. I can't help but wonder what the fuck they thought was going to happen when they put people who have no clue how to TIG weld, on pieces that everyone can see.  

Here's a great example. The guy who did these was hired 3 weeks ago Monday. Never Tig welded a day in his life and had previously worked fitting structural steel for the shitty company with chomo managers I have mentioned several times. The guy can Mig weld just fine, but putting him on this is setting him up to fail, and fucking over the next guy who will get this back in a week after cleanup cleans the weld and finds pinholes/gaps all over it.





I found out the other day exactly what they expect each week. No less then 275,000 per week in orders/completed work. Even now when we can't get materials and shit, were still over that each week doing a fraction of what we did all of last year per week. They kept talking about last year being a banner year, and I think they said we were somewhere around 45 million in profit last year.

But either way, I'm close now to finding out what the raise is going to be. I already have my doubts they will offer the 2 bucks I want so I put up my resume and have applied to a few select places. Have yet to hear back though. Theres some places that while the may pay 20 the work is 12's seven days a week and I'm not interested in that shit. So I'm holding out for a step up and not a lateral move.

Sorry for not updating this for so long. Its slow. I mean the work has fallen off a cliff. Metal has become ridiculously hard to source apparently, and the prices have skyrocketed. I was talking to the plant manager a few weeks ago about this, and he was showing me some shit and the price of stainless has gone from 550ish a sheet last year to nearly 1700, with the quote only being good for 24 hours now and that's only if you can even get it. Shit like regular cold roll tubing quadrupled in price in a month.

So we have been doing jack shit.

Edit. Another one down. He got fired Friday lol. I guess being chronically late and mouthing off to his supervisor didn't pay off.

I found some stainless gussets and realized I had exactly what I needed for my beach vacation. I couldn't find an umbrella stand at Walmart so I decided to just make one. Worked great.

I practiced on some pipe today for fun. It had been I guess 3 years since my last pipe? I remember it was the 6g pipe I did.

The root went in much better then the 6g, and I can honestly say it was just fun to do. I did a 1/8th gap 1/16th land and did a root, hotpass and 2 fill passes and then a 2 bead cap. I have a bunch more so I think I'll probably end up doing maybe a single wide bead cap tomorrow.

Certainly not Instagram material but I gotta say it came out a lot better then I expected.

So for once I have good news.

We finally had our reviews and it went the way I had hoped.

They do a bunch of different categories dealing with knowledge, skill, productivity, interpersonal relationships, attendance and so on. I score a bunch of 90's and 85's and an 80 and I had worked under both shift leads and had nothing but good comments, and the department manager who did the review also added a paragraph of good comments. He basically talked up the good work I had done, the ability I had shown and the fact that I was able to weld the thin metals from day one which normally they had problems with new hires being able to do etc. We get to the end and at the bottom it showed the raise amount. It was 1.00

He asked if I had any questions and I went for it. I explained that I had never received a raise at 90 days, even though I had been told if I did well I would get, that my base non 3rd shift pay was 15 and said that I really liked working there, the people and the stuff we do, but because of inflation I needed at least 2 bucks.

Now that may not seem like a big deal for most of you, but I have never been good at standing up for myself. Its why I started at 15 and my buddy started at 17. He said no and negotiated while I said yes and accepted that I had to prove myself and would be rewarded for my hard work after 90 days. My dad was the same way and I have always just kind of been a "take what is offered without arguing about it" person. Its lead to some bitterness because I work hard at being the best no matter what I do. If its my wife or friends I have no problem standing up for them, but I just never seemed to be able to do it for myself. Its lead me to accepting less then I deserved for a long time.

I didn't want to be forthright and flat out say that if I don't get two bucks I'm going to start responding to the 6-7 job offers I had received in the past month since I allowed Indeed to make my resume public, with the starting pay no less then 19. And I had probably rehearsed what I was going to say a thousand times in my head, but I think he was expecting it and he told me he was going to go to the VP and see if he can get me that 2nd buck and we would meet back the next day (this morning).

So all last night and when I went to bed yesterday I thought of everything I was going to say, how I could make my case but to be honest I felt pretty confidant that I was going to get it. He comes to get me and without any fuss he tells me its approved, we sign the paperwork and its done.


All and all I'm happy enough with it. I'm still not making as much as the two other guys I work with but they do have a few years more experience and frankly they negotiated better at the start, which was when I should have done more to plead my case. The only things that bothered me is when the 90 day raise came up he flat out lied to my face and said that they had to stop doing it, but he had argued and gotten it reinstated "not that that helps me". I know for a fact that is a lie because two guys on my shift told me they got the 90 day raise. Hell the one kids dad who started in the shop got a raise and he started in January. The other thing that bothered me was the 1.00 raise amount was written on top of a strip of that whiteout (the kind that comes out in flat swipes). And I'll forever wonder if they were GOING to either pay me less, or more. Not that it matters but it would have been interesting to see.

The reality is I like what I do, the work changes enough that it stays interesting, the pay is better, the people I work with are good, my direct managers are cool, and frankly with the market tightening I don't want to leave a sure thing only to be the first one laid off at a new job when the work slows. Not to mention the AC. It may not seem like a big deal to a lot of people who don't work in a shop, but I worked outside in the summer heat and the winter and cold for 16 years. Working in an environment that's climate controlled is incredible in the hot summer and cold winter. The AC went out the other day because of a storm and the shop was a fucking nightmare. Welding with swamp ass and sweat in your eyes sucks. I remember it from school, 98* outside and 115 inside wearing PPE and it was a big reason I applied her to begin with.

Now that's not to say I'll be here for a decade making little more then minimum wage. Quite the opposite actually. Right now my plans are to continue to hone my skills, really build up those skills in pipe, aluminum, stainless and flux and keep my eye out for that next job that's going to elevate my ability's and paycheck. In particular I plan in the next 3 years no matter where I'm at to go ahead and take the AWS CWI course and I suspect I'll probably land somewhere doing that. And as I mentioned before I do have the good fortune of living where the cost of living is very low, and that does make my wage go a lot further.

So for the first time in my life, with my wife and I's combined income we are now officially solidly in the middle class. For whatever the fuck that means now

I'll have more pics later, but this was what I was working on when the bossman came over to call me in today. 14g stainless, 0.45 filler, 2% Thoriated 3/32 tungsten in a #5 cup at 50 amps.

The answer is always no if you don’t ask. I still think you could make crazy money welding in Texas. I know drop outs that weld like drunk monkeys starting at $25. I am in contact with a lot of kids and I am now more aggressively pushing them towards trades than college.

That's very true. And no matter what I learned a lot about how to negotiate for a better starting pay when I inevitably move on from here.

In a twist of good news bad news my job is ending 3rd shift in a few months. The good news is that we get to keep the 15% differential. Which I think they realized was going to cost them no less then 5 out of the 6 of us on shift had they not left it. Hell I would have been making a quarter less then I was before I got my raise if they had just nixed it. They did say those of us on 3rd won't be eligible for a raise next year, but we'll see how that holds up. I know I personally won't be there in a year if the next raise I'm eligible for is in 2024, because that's bullshit and completely eliminates my incentive to work harder.

Its kind of a bummer because I am not a morning person, but I'll get used to it again. I guess they looked at the work next year and realized that it wasn't going to be worth keeping the plant open for so few of us. Which should be a warning indicator for all of manufacturing because as I have mentioned we do work for mostly fortune 100/500 companies and that signals to me that they are slowing production down. I suspect its because of the cost of fuel and materials mainly but who really knows.

I fear were going right back to the 08 era recession work tempo and a lot of people are going to be scrounging for shit paying jobs with thousands of people putting in applications for the single open position.

When the writing on the wall tells you you’re about to be unneeded…

I hope not, but at this point its hard to tell. I have seen the work sheets for the rest of the year and until this time next year and there is plenty of work but if were being honest the management just does baffling shit.

But to be honest with the no raises until 2024 I doubt its going to matter much longer.

Finally found some time to upload some pics, so enjoy.



I have spent a good amount of time working on my TIG, trying to up my game a bit. So instead of doing most stuff in 1 or 2G I have been trying to do more stuff in 3 or 4. This was 3G.



I can't remember if I have shared these or not. Its some kind of specialty air duct or something. All I know is its an absolute bitch to make. The amount of rolling and bending to get these in shape is unreal. The red lines show where I have to start the rolling at because there has to be a flat side in specific places.



Some stainless MIG. I hate the machine I do stainless with, because there is 0 postflow and no preflow either. The Miller 552 thats a few tables over will run a beautiful weld because it has the postflow.



I took some scrap pipe I had and decided to start working some open root in 2G. I do a 1/8th gap and a 1/16th land. Root was laid in at 95 using 1/8th filler.





Part of why I decided to start practicing again was because in plate or pipe tests, I never have a problem laying a root, but the correct stacking and then cap have always eluded me. I just have a problem getting the proper amount of fill and on the cap, I have a hard time laying it perfectly without undercut in spots.




And this kind of shows the problem I have. I don't end up stacking them evenly so I end up with a sort of high side and that makes the cap pass uneven. I actually still have to finish this. I tried to do a single pass cap and it did not go well. So I have to grind back the inch or so I welded so I can try it again.


And this is some kind of top cover. A pain in the ass to build. And because of the way they cut the angle there is a fucking 3/8ths to half inch gap in places. And being the anal person I am I couldn't leave that gap so I did these in 2G and 3G.






Finally got to do some more support structures. We have been stuck doing the brutal platform builds and 1st was getting all of these, so it was nice to do a few for a change. Its hard to see but these are about 16 or 18ft. I can't remember exactly which, but heavy enough I really wish we have an overhead crane.









So I wanted to show you guys this as well. I don't want to give the impression that I have it all figured out, because thats just not true at all. I look at my days like this. I have two goals every work day, first being make money. Second being learn and improve. If I do some mundane shit all night I'll tig something hard on my lunch break. I have always thought the saying that it takes 10,000 hours of doing something to become an expert in it was something to aspire to. I figure I have another 8 thousand to go.

With this I decided to try a new way of fusing. Instead of the way I normally do it, I decided to walk the cup the way a buddy of mine on 1st does. He was a pipe welder for a number of years and his advice was good when I was doing my practice pipe, so I gave it a shot. But as you can see that you don't always nail something the first time. I skidded off the piece a couple times, and it didn't look great. In addition to several restarts and being crooked slightly


But that just gave me the motivation to try again. This was the second attempt and the other side.


So then I wanted to keep replicating it and the more I did the better my wrist movements became.





And you compare that with the way I normally would do it


So then I started trying it on different stuff, and now I just keep working to make those perfectly refined movements so the weave comes out even. (It is hard to cover the massive tacks the guys on 2nd made when fitting these fuckers)







And today I did these next two things (among a ton of other shit). And I got me to thinking about this job. For all the bs, I am very lucky because I went from welding this 16ft tubing, which also includes doing all the fitting to doing 14g stainless in a single night. It keeps it interesting, it makes me proficient at both because you have to be able to mig weld some thick materials at 25v/475wfs to tig welding stainless at 40amps. Its really one of the few things I really love about my job.

So I happened to find a bit of a deal today and decided it was too good to pass up.

Pretty much brand new, I was able to test it and it came on and all so it should good to weld. The stick was the only function that had actually been used so the TIG torch is brand new never used. Came with a bunch of extra cups and collets and all that shit. Has the 120-240 connections which is nice.

All and all for 100 bucks it seems like a good deal. Granted its a lift tig DC only welder but its nice to have for some smaller projects at home.



I already have several bottles I got back when I that Hobart Mig welder, one is the argon blend I need but these torches come with a weird hookup that I need to figure out how to connect to a regulator. The guy deals with the connections and hookup in this video, but if you guys have any suggestions I would love to hear them.

Basically I want to get a good regulator setup and if anyone has any experience setting one of these up I would love your input.

Wow. That seems like a great deal. Congrats.

Thanks man, it appears to be a hell of a steal.

But as I feared the dinkly little gasline that feeds into the torch and regulator kept blowing off, so I upgraded the size of the nipple but I didn't have any hose clamps so I'll have to wait until tonight before I can actually try it.

It never ceases to amaze me what kind of dumb shit they put with these cheaper welders. My Hobart was the same way. You put a bottle with a ton of air pressure on it, and have the user attach it with little more then a hope and a prayer to the regulator.

And we tried to run a few beads with the stick welder but on the 115 it couldn't really get the 1/8th 7018's to arc. I let him take it home so he could try it out with 240 to see if it can actually lay some rods down.

It does have a nice hot start feature that even on 115 will kick to 100 amps for a few seconds to get it burning.

So hopefully I'll be able to get it actually welding tonight. I almost had a buddy hold the hose on the regulator with the bottle turned on barely so I could at least lay one weld down with the TIG but I decided it was just too risky to try.

I have a bunch of pics I just need to get around to uploading, but I was looking around tonight for a cup set for my personal torch and figured some of you might have some recommendations.

The torch is different then the ones I used in school and my job but it's one of the more common types from what I can tell. Just a standard WP-17

The stubby cups are intriguing but realistically I can't afford to use that much shielding gas if I'm paying for it But I'm more interested in the glass pyrex cups which I have no experience with.

Anyone have some suggestions?

This thread always comes to mind when I’m listening to ZZ Top.

“Master of Sparks”

A #6 size cup is #6 size no matter the length - no need for higher gas flow.  I rarely weld stainless and keep my gas flow on the low side and it lasts a long time using the "stubby" gas lens with 6-8 size cups on a 17 torch.  
I do notice that the standard 17 hardware conducts less heat into the torch so that is sometimes helpful when welding for a long time.  

I tried the pyrex cups (normal sizes, not the giant ones) and didn't like them.  

One thing I really like is the CK wedge collets.  Since they don't flex like a normal collet they never get hot and lose their springiniess.  Especially on an air cooled torch, the collets can get so hot they deform and becomes difficult to use.  The wedge collects don't and they also don't require you to clamp the back cap nearly as tight as you have to with a deformed regular collect.

I hear ya, I use a 6 most all of the time at work.

What I have kind of settled on is a lens kit from Furick with the jazzy 10, a Pyrex 8 and the conversion kit to make it work on the 17. It comes with those wedge collets so I'll get to try that out too.

Really the only advantage I could find for one of those 18-26 cups is you can have a longer stick out but the reality is, I won't be doing much that I'll need that much reach with my personal welder.

Appreciate the advice man

Looks like their getting ready to fuck us when me move back to first. Those guys on 1st and 2nd just got put back on 10's. We go back on October 3rd so I guess their gonna wait a week or two and fuck us with Saturday work until March of next year.

But thats speculation. They have 8 large machines (the 1Million+ jobs) to do before the end of the year and their apparently panicking. I hope we can get them banged out fast enough to get out of Saturday work but who knows. What irritates me about all that was up until 2 weeks ago any OT was optional, and you had to go to a different department to do it. Now they get all panicky and are gonna rush the fuck out of us even though we can weld out an entire machine setup in a week at the most which means we would only need 8 to get it done. I think everyone's getting tired of their pisspoor scheduling fucking us all over.



Here's so pics I took today.





I'm sure some of you guys wonder if I ever weld without whipping it. Yes I do. Usually whenever its gonna be ground by me, I don't put any more weld then I need to. If its not going to be ground, I lay a bead that they want.



But on something like this, I will lay a normal pass even though I had to grind it to fit the plate on it. I do that because I want to make sure I get good penetration.

So as always I try and show the good with the bad.

This was all done with my personal welder, the Everlast. I had a chance to take it back in after getting the hose/regulator fixed and took my lunch to run some plates.

Everything was done using the 110 plug, so my max amperage was 80.

So this was actually the like 3rd series of welds I had done. I laid a kind of shitty pass, and decided to go back over it. You can see what happened in the middle. I guess I hit the gas switch just enough that it cut off and just fubared the weld. Basically at this point I was playing with settings and trying to figure out amps and what thicknesses it could handle. The top pass was basically a 1G groove weld, used 3/32 filler. The good was it filled out the groove good, but the amps needed to be cut back some. I ran it on 80. The biggest problem I'm having will become apparent.



This is actually the first plate I welded with it. You can see the change in settings, but it should be apparent what my biggest problem with lift Tig is going to be.


So this was actually welded over a different pass. I ground it down so I could go back over it with a dab instead of walking the cup. The issue here is at 80 amps, using 1/16th filler it felt to cold to be able to get a consistent dab going. Normally I can see the weld flushing to the edges with very little movement up and down. Basically I keep my tungsten at a fixed position and dab the filler and it will fill up and down the joint. But the puddle just wasn't hot enough to get the consistent bead I wanted. You can see to the left at the end, it finally got hot enough that the dab was filling like I like.



So I tried running a 3/32 filler with a wider weave, going nice and slow to see if it can handle it. It came out alright, but you definitely can't dab it on 80.


So now that I have figured out what works and what doesn't, I ran a few beads to see what it looks like with about 20 cfh, 80 amps, 1/16th 308 filler.



I fit a few more coupons up, and welded those. This was a golden straw color, but I forgot to take a pic before I welded the other side. You can still see some of the original color at the bottom side of the weld. I ran a simple fuse butt to see what a weave would look like. That was on about 65 amps.


I ran a couple new coupons, tried lowering my amps some to see how it would come out.


But by now the problem I'm having should be apparent. I can lay a beautiful bead all day long with it, I could weave a rainbow, but its all pointless if when it comes time to end the weld, I burn the fuck out of the area. You can see just how fucked my termination points are, especially on the first plate I actually welded with it. Every stop is burnt, nearly every corner has arc marks leading away from the joint etc. It wasn't as obvious with the T joints because its easier to hide with nothing to burn up, but you can still see the lack of proper post flow because I'm so worried about terminating the arc.

Its the one and only thing that I really hate about this welder. HF start is something I have been blessed with on every machine I had used until this. Pressure switches (my work torch) or a foot pedal. So this is my first foray into lift arc, and its hard as fuck to end the weld. I tried to pull it away fast, I tried to roll it forwards away from the work, I tried to shield the weld with the filler and end the arc with that but you can see the results.


All and all, I'm still very pleased with it. I can weld the piss out of 3/16ths and probably a quarter inch with the TIG, with just a 110 outlet which is huge since the place I would be welding currently doesn't have 220 wired. The downside is the stick aspect is iffy at best. Granted I was using 6010's but it was a 1/16th rod. HOWEVER it was from a box someone gave me during my pipe class over 3 years ago. I had sealed the box with air duct metal tape, but it may have still gotten moisture in it. But it wouldn't really start a forceful arc on 110. I suspect that its only going to really weld decently if its on a 220.

So this is new for me, and I'm not really sure how I feel about it yet. I do know that its going to be irritating.

Management has decided that its now time to track our work time. Now we already use a fucking electronic clocking system, and fill out a paper timesheet that has to be turned in, but now there will be a new paper to fill out on top of it detailing exactly what were doing, the shop order and the time we work on it.

We all already sign out prints for each piece we do, we initial the inside of stainless and stamp our work for anything mild steel. The prints are sorted by shop order, and kept until the shop order is assembled and then they go to the major bin wherever that goes. Sure people don't sign stuff sometimes, especially when they know they fucked up but for the most part everyone knows who did what.

Now they claim its so they can "better judge how they should price things" but frankly they have been in business for fucking 50 or 60 years. They know the margins and the time allotted for shit by now.

For me I see this as a way to micro manage to figure out what we're doing, how long were doing it so that they can say "well you only welded 200 thingamabobs last year, and we think you should have done 250 so no raise for this year". To figure out how long someones shitting and to figure out if they can make us work faster with less OT.

And as someone who doesn't fuck off, I'm not really worried about that. But I don't like the thought that there's going to be another layer of paperwork, and push to do more without increasing comp, and whatever infractions come from forgetting to write shit down.

I mean one night you may be working a shop order for your entire shift. But the next night you may be working an order, and someone rushes in with some fucking emergency replacement parts and you have to stop what your doing, and do a skid of those parts fixing a part someone else fucked up, and filling a mis-tapped hole or re-welding a tube cut too short.

And they expect us to track down the shop order that we may not even have yet, to write it down so you can document the time spent fixing something? Basically I'm saying that in one night you may have damn near 7-10 different shop orders, sometimes with the guy who fucked up standing there waiting for you to plug a hole real quick and were now supposed to remember during all that to jot down the time for the start, finish, shop order and part number?

I feel like fucking Peter in office space, or I guess one of the many work from home guys whose being monitored down to the keystrokes. Is this common across the industry?

Finally got around to finishing the pen/paper clip holder for my wife. Came out pretty good honestly. I started another one tonight, but that one has gussets staggered on 4 sides of each piece of tubing.

I purposely let it get as much coloring in it as possible, because my wife thinks it looks cool.



The next one is like this. I welded the pen holder part, and a few gussets but still have the paper clip holder to do. If it comes out decently I may give it away to anyone here who wants it.

We do it a little differently, basically we have a specific job number. For instance Shop Order 123456. Everything is on skids or in the hole (we call the area all the shits staged at the hole) and its all separated into the individual parts. So your given a complete piece to build out and all the cut parts are included with a blueprint. On that blueprint is the shop order number, and the item number. As of now all we have to keep track of is the shop order. So basically the way I have been doing it is like this.

9:30- SO 123456 to 2:34.
2:35- SO 1234532 to 5:50

And so on. Its irritating but it could be worse. They could be making us catalog the item number as well, which shows how long it takes to build that individual part. The problem I have with shops that have that idea is theres so many variables to why something can take shorter or longer to build. I can't tell you the number of times that theres been a new guy running the saw, and a 45 is cut at like a 43 degree angle, and you have to fight that for much longer then if it was done right. And sometimes it goes together perfectly and you can have it banged out in no time. Its a poor way to determine performance metrics.

But apparently its the entire plant. The saw guys are doing it, machinists and debur, brakes and all as well so its not just us. It very well could be that with the extreme turnover they have experience, the work is taking longer but it can also be attributed to the wild fluctuations in the price of materials as well.

The really irritating part is just taking that extra step to log it, and remembering to do it. The rush replacement or repair jobs always get priority and its just luck of the draw on that. You could be working on a single shop order all night, but then one of the times you finish something and go to unload it you get told that you have to do this rush job and its just not really an option. They always give the paperwork with it because without it, there's no way to build it.

I'm hoping they get a better grasp of whatever they want to know so we can go back to just filing the prints at the end of the day because its already getting to be tedious.

I finished up that other pencil holder, it came out OK. Some of the welds irritate me a bit because they could be better but it is what it is. Its really hard to make really clean welds in such confined spaces, but thats also part of what makes it fun. Having to hold the torch upside down, while feeding filler in between a tight space, with a 3/4 stickout is part of what makes these kind of things challenging for me. I keep playing around with the idea of taking a 1inch thick plate of mild steel, and then welding dragon skin scales in a honeycomb pattern to the top, and maybe send it down to Demo Ranch to get shot to bits.

Anyways if anyone wants this, and there is more then one person just post a number or something and I'll do a random drawing. But if no one wants it in a month or so I'll give it to my parents or something.






This was something I just cut because I was curious. Its a purge block for my stainless mig welder. Basically before I weld anything I will clear the line with a few passes on this. The base metal was an X made from 3/8ths thick scrap plate. Surprised at how little inclusions there were considering how many passes I made.

Its been a while since I posted, so here's some pics so the thread doesn't die.



This was a repair job. The guy who welded this and the engineer fucked up. The engineer gave the wrong cut length for the tubing and it was shown wrong on the print. HOWEVER the guy who welded this did have a correct overall length that he should have noticed didn't check, and thus I got to splice in 5 inches on two of these robotic arm stands.

It was nice because everyone once in a while someone listens to my opinion, and when I explained that even with 100% penetration, the strength of the stand is compromised because the splice tubing was 11g and the original material was 7g, and once the welds were ground off the reinforcement would be critically compromised because of the way I had to weld it. I had to keep the 4 sided braces on it which meant that the welds were basically sectioned and I had to weld what I could, then remove the braces and close the area underneath the braces. I suggested adding plate on all 4 sides to cover the entire section which would also cover the grinding that was done, and for once they actually agreed. These things weigh a fuck ton and it was a pain in the ass to move.

I was a bit irritated though, my shift ended and my old boss on first was going to have the wraps bent and added them after I left. Now I had ground these perfectly, I measured exactly how far I could buff using a flapper disk and the grinds were actually perfect and the wrap would have covered them 100% and the customer would have been non the wiser that we butchered in a splice. But for whatever reason he decided to grind more, and you can clearly see grinder marks below the plate which just irks me. It was perfect.






I post these a lot, but this time I was able to give a bit of an idea where they end up at.




It goes here. This is a larger grid of platform, so I figured it would give the best view showing a number of the parts I make regularly. Platform, legs, railings etc.


This was fun to make. The fitting was actually really intense and I was shocked when it came out less then a 3/32 out of square after building it. Normally you expect to have to pull something but it just went together like puzzle pieces and came out perfect. It was nice because I had only done this once before and it came out flawless. Even the open gap between plates which was around 3/16ths welded out beautifully.







This is something we have made a fuck ton of lately. The company decided they wanted a new metal rack and bought one. I guess they really liked it and decided "hey you know what makes a ton of sense? Instead of paying for one from a company that makes these, and whose responsible if it fails, thus deferring the liability to the manufacturer, lets copy the design, use thinner material and make our own!" So now we have made 3 more of these. I can say with my hand on a bible, you can not PAY me enough to stand anywhere near these fuckers, and I helped weld them. They keep stacking the sheets of inch and a half material towards the top, and you can see the sag from the weight of it. Its going to eventually pancake and collapse like the twin towers and I just pray I'm no where near them when it happens.


What they copied from the one they did buy.


I started using my gas lens on my work torch, and man it makes a world of difference. Its irritating having to remove it every day, but it was worth the money and since it works on my personal torch and work on, I figured what the hell. Its been fun going back to free handing stuff instead of walking the cup all the time.








Here's some stuff I did a while back that I can't remember if I shared or not. Before and after pics.














Some more large shit



I can't remember if I shared the Volcom stone I made, but its done now.






And for fun I decided to try and weld the same colors as the Baja Deep dive.

Well done sir.

I know of a school here called warrior to inspector.

Good shit

Thanks man, is that program to get vets to CWI jobs? If so thats pretty awesome.

I wish there was somewhere locally I could take the CWI prep and exam.