Cleaning New Steel Stock

[Gary Fowler]

Everybody's got a different opinion, kinda like religion , who's right depends who you talk to, personally from experience and a dad who was a union pipe fitter and brother who also was a fitter combined 70 years . It depends on the application if it's a crucial weld, bevel with a grinder if it's not don't bother. A good welder with a stick with 7018 can weld something without a bevel a d8 cat can't pull apart. However if your iffy about your welding skills better bevel.and definitely grind off the galvanized coating burning it can make you sick although lots of people burn it off. And personally I wouldn't worry about paint a stick will burn right through it. A good welder will make a strong weld regardless of prep.

That sounds like a pipefitter talking. Sure stick will burn thru a lot of contaminates but every weld regardless of the process will be better and the weldrod will burn cleaner, less spatter and more control if everything is clean. Just because it will burn thru dirt and grease doesnt mean that you should do that. You wont find any professional welding procedure that doesnt call for cleaning of all rust, grease, dirt, scale, slag etc prior to welding. Clean it: your welding will look better and be stronger in the process.
That is the Quality Control Manager in me talking

 

[weldermike]

Everybody's got a different opinion, kinda like religion , who's right depends who you talk to, personally from experience and a dad who was a union pipe fitter and brother who also was a fitter combined 70 years . It depends on the application if it's a crucial weld, bevel with a grinder if it's not don't bother. A good welder with a stick with 7018 can weld something without a bevel a d8 cat can't pull apart. However if your iffy about your welding skills better bevel.and definitely grind off the galvanized coating burning it can make you sick although lots of people burn it off. And personally I wouldn't worry about paint a stick will burn right through it. A good welder will make a strong weld regardless of prep.

It is a crucial weld, because its for a trailor that will be on the road, and just wondering why you wouldnt worry about welding over paint. People listen to opinions that suit there needs, and endanger innocent people. If your only welding experience is repeating what you heard from skilled family members, you should not be repeating it.

 

[Jesse masterson]

That's not my only welding experience I've been welding since I was 15 and I'm 50 I know that's a crucial weld and I said if it's crucial it should be prepared. Obviously you all weld standing on flat stock because sometimes when your weldong something broke on say a dozer you can't even get a girder to the location. We don't live in a rose garden world a good welder can and do daily make repairs on equipment with little or no prep and it lasts I've made welds before that have been x rayed for quality to pass for high pressure steam. So you'll can chill out and be a little nicer.and by the way I agree It should be cleaned if it's important but let's face it sometimes it's not that important,

 

[Rock knocker]

So you'll can chill out........and by the way I agree It should be cleaned if it's important but let's face it sometimes it's not that important,

I agree with everything you said Jessie, with the caveat the even important welds sometimes do not need to be cleaned extensively if the weldor can make a weld that is more than strong enough. If you need 2" of fillet, and you run 4", it won't break, even if you ran lo-hy right over paint. Porosity isn't that terrible if you're not welding pipe, boiler tubes and a crucial engenered weldment

 

[Jesse masterson]

Welding is just like everything else, when your growing up have you ever seen the kid that loves say , baseball reads all about it, plays it every day , dreams about being in the majors, tells everybody how good he is and snowballs a few. But when its all said and done , he ain't worth a s!!!. In the end you either have talent or your talentless.I've seen welders that are no better after 20 years of welding than there first 2 months. And others have talent, whether you make good welds or bad welds depends more on your god given talen and skill than rod ,,machine or process or preparation.and thats the facts.playing basketball is a simple process shoot the ball through the hoop. With that knowledge we should all be able to play NBA right.

 

[sparc]

That sounds like a pipefitter talking. Sure stick will burn thru a lot of contaminates but every weld regardless of the process will be better and the weldrod will burn cleaner, less spatter and more control if everything is clean. Just because it will burn thru dirt and grease doesnt mean that you should do that. You wont find any professional welding procedure that doesnt call for cleaning of all rust, grease, dirt, scale, slag etc prior to welding. Clean it: your welding will look better and be stronger in the process.
That is the Quality Control Manager in me talking

Sounds more like a junkyard welder talk to me. No decent fitter/welder would do such a thing on the job, at least not the jobs I worked on as a fitter for 34 years. But maybe its different elsewhere, maybe we just have alittle more pride in our work than where Jesse is from.

Sorry but I'm not gonna let your statement which refelcts badly on fitters stand without rebuttal.

A good welder with a stick with 7018 can weld something without a bevel a d8 cat can't pull apart.

That's a joke right?

 

[Jesse masterson]

I'm not insulted and I do agree mostly , I know on a job it's not proper procedure and wouldn't be tolerated. I'm just saying for in your own shop it's not always necessary. My god I feel like I said something negative about walmart to a bunch of women. And no that's no joke the weld should be stronger than surrounding steel if the steel don't pull apart neither should the weld.

 

[Rock knocker]

What's with all the name childish name calling? Jesse says that not everything everywhere needs to ground down to clean metal and welded as if you're on a power plant job with the ASME and Hartford Steam Boiler breathing down your neck, and his dad's union and local get drug through the mud? Grow up.

What is crucial is that the weld be strong enough. One can do that by doing a perfect weld, perfectly, with preparation worthy of a nuke. Or one can add more weld metal than normal, and call it good.

You just have to take the application into context. There is a difference between welding a gas line, a boiler tube, a piece of uni-strut, a fire-extinguisher hanger onto a tractor or adding metal to the bucket of a '64 JD.

 

[Jesse masterson]

Agreed rock knocker , couldn't have said it better myself, from experience thoughs that lack understanding usually lack skill.

 

[Shield Arc]

The part that always got me when working as a weldor. Is having to work for such ignorant foremen / job site supervision. What very, very few times I ever worked for someone with a welding background, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven! In my trade most foreman were riggers, and everyone of them were high ballers! And everyone of them thought weldors were nothing but dead beats! If you took the time to grind an area clean they would go through the roof for taking too much time, when I would explain why the material needed to be clean, all I would get back is, "I thought you could weld"! When we built the West Seattle Bridge in the early 1980s I was working on the east end, right where the Spokane Street viaduct started. We had to build an elevated traffic detour, I was down inside a cofferdam welding 24-inch pipe, standing knee deep in water, and pouring down rain! All welds were to be 100% UT'd. Water was running down the inside of the pipe and out of the open root joint! The welding inspector was looking down his nose at me knowing this wasn't going to cut it. I climbed out of the cell went and got some visqueen to cover the top of the pipe to stop the rain from running down inside the pipe. The foreman walked up on me when I was hooking up the man basket to the crane so the operator could fly me up to the top of the pipe. The foreman went ballistic! Told me to get back to welding, when I tried to explain, here again, "I thought you could weld"! I went back down in the cofferdam, grabbed my bucket and went back to the union hall.:laughing: