Welding Tips and Tricks

Made this at tech school last semester and have some good practice. Shearing practice and oxy fuel cutting. 3/16" plate with 1/4" welds that were visibly inspected and weld the pipe in the bottom only to inspect your cut. Some of the welds were poor because I didn't realize someone changed my machine to pulse until after a couple of welds.

That looks like you're coming along nicely.

You mentioned you are too busy to take pics and post because you're teaching other students.
Friendly 2 cents worth of advice. Don't do it. For two reasons:

1. You are a student and your job is to learn and practice. Use every scrap of time in class to extract every bit of knowledge and seat time out of the school and its staff. Be the best you can be when you leave school because once you leave if you're not good enough you will get hungry real quick. "I practice too much" said no welder - ever.

2. If other students are coming to you for advice or help they are stealing from you (time and knowledge). Any popularity you may have for helping them ends when they walk out the front gate and they may end up with a job that was rightfully yours. Dog eats dog. If they want help they can ask the teacher, research themselves or come onto the forum to seek advice. You did, they can too. Doesn't matter how good or bad the teacher or school is, you're in the same boat.
Just tell em you don't know, go ask the teacher.

Great work! Thanks for the post.

Nice work. I agree with what Coldman said to you. It's nice to pass on knowledge but while you are learning, you should be trying to absorb everything you can, while you can. You will have a whole career to help up and comers but for now I would add your 2 cents but spend your time wisely. Now lets see some tig welds.

I will present the other side of the coin here, from my own perspective. I'm forever a student, but I'm not in school.

I have found that I learn as much from teaching as I do from being taught. Teaching a thing forces me to see it under a different light, to think it through as a set of individual sub-skills and bits of knowledge and experience I don't think about when I'm just doing the task.

I would say, as a student doing well enough to be respected by the other students, you need to find a balance between what you learn directly and what you can learn from sharing with and tutoring others.

I would also say, since other students gravitate toward you, you might try to take advantage of supervision/management classes. If you're a natural leader, now's the time to find out and expand on it. It will pay off handsomely later.

Steve S

Yeah you're right Otto you do learn a lot by tracking others. You notice what you are doing wrong and you tend to do more work or research more to help them.

Otto Nobedder wrote:I will present the other side of the coin here, from my own perspective. I'm forever a student, but I'm not in school.

I have found that I learn as much from teaching as I do from being taught. Teaching a thing forces me to see it under a different light, to think it through as a set of individual sub-skills and bits of knowledge and experience I don't think about when I'm just doing the task.

I would say, as a student doing well enough to be respected by the other students, you need to find a balance between what you learn directly and what you can learn from sharing with and tutoring others.

I would also say, since other students gravitate toward you, you might try to take advantage of supervision/management classes. If you're a natural leader, now's the time to find out and expand on it. It will pay off handsomely later.

Steve S

In other words...you're suggesting he become a bosshole

Some special people have a natural born gift for being a Bosshole! There's no denying that.

Jeff there is a difference between a boss and a bosshole. I know what a bosshole is and strive to be the opposite of that. Somebdy has to be a boss. Not a good time for me though-too much paperwork.

All the body parts got together and had a meeting one day to decide who was going to be boss.
The brain said he should be boss because of his intelligence and decision making ability,
the heart said he should be boss because he pumped life giving blood all over the body,
the lungs said he should be boss because he gives air to the other parts,
the legs said he should be boss because without them the body would go nowhere.

Then the rectum piped up and said he wanted to be boss, at this all the other parts laughed and laughed. This made the rectum very angry so he closed up.

After some days had passed the legs became wobbly at the knees, the lungs were panting and gasping, the heart was palpitating and the brain became all fuzzy and confused. In the end they couldn't stand it anymore and cried out to the rectum "OK OK we give in, you can be the boss".

Which just goes to show that to be the boss you don't have to be a brain, just an asshole.

Poland308 wrote:Some special people have a natural born gift for being a Bosshole! There's no denying that.

It's usually the laziest, ass kissing, lying, throw you under the bus and climb over your back biggest jag bag on the whole job. My former union "brothers" are famous for it. I'm too old and cranky to tolerate a bosshole anymore so I'll just continue to peck shit with the chickens

Thank you cold man for that insight on bosses. Couldn't stop laughing.

Work places are like septic tanks...the biggest pieces of shit rise to the top.

Yep, I've experienced bossholes before. Often. Thank goodness I don't deal with that now. My shop manager and the company owner have become friends I can rely on, though we intentionally don't associate outside of work (except maybe lunch). We all know how and why to keep those boundaries. They've come to trust my judgement in almost any issue (though when we disagree, their judgement is final, of course, and there's never an argument, just healthy debate), and are very good at rewarding my efforts. Most of the crew are given tasks, where I'm usually given a list of goals (and their relative priorities) to meet in the order and method I find most efficient.

I wouldn't trade this job for 4X the money with some bosshole.

Steve S

Otto Nobedder wrote:Yep, I've experienced bossholes before. Often. Thank goodness I don't deal with that now. My shop manager and the company owner have become friends I can rely on, though we intentionally don't associate outside of work (except maybe lunch). We all know how and why to keep those boundaries. They've come to trust my judgement in almost any issue (though when we disagree, their judgement is final, of course, and there's never an argument, just healthy debate), and are very good at rewarding my efforts. Most of the crew are given tasks, where I'm usually given a list of goals (and their relative priorities) to meet in the order and method I find most efficient.

I wouldn't trade this job for 4X the money with some bosshole.

Steve S

Having like-minded people on the same page does wonders for morale. It's nice to have a say-so in the daily workload and have your superiors value your opinion. If I was to ever go to work for someone again, your situation sounds like exactly what I would like to be involved with. Until then...peck peck peck

Coldman wrote:All the body parts got together and had a meeting one day to decide who was going to be boss.
The brain said he should be boss because of his intelligence and decision making ability,
the heart said he should be boss because he pumped life giving blood all over the body,
the lungs said he should be boss because he gives air to the other parts,
the legs said he should be boss because without them the body would go nowhere.

Then the rectum piped up and said he wanted to be boss, at this all the other parts laughed and laughed. This made the rectum very angry so he closed up.

After some days had passed the legs became wobbly at the knees, the lungs were panting and gasping, the heart was palpitating and the brain became all fuzzy and confused. In the end they couldn't stand it anymore and cried out to the rectum "OK OK we give in, you can be the boss".

Which just goes to show that to be the boss you don't have to be a brain, just an asshole.

Ah damn....hard to get a good boss like that!!

i was a boss for 35 plus years and the only times
i had to be a bosshole was when my crews needed
to get their heads out of their own workholes.
Craig

Otto Nobedder wrote:I will present the other side of the coin here, from my own perspective. I'm forever a student, but I'm not in school.

I have found that I learn as much from teaching as I do from being taught. Teaching a thing forces me to see it under a different light, to think it through as a set of individual sub-skills and bits of knowledge and experience I don't think about when I'm just doing the task.

I would say, as a student doing well enough to be respected by the other students, you need to find a balance between what you learn directly and what you can learn from sharing with and tutoring others.

I would also say, since other students gravitate toward you, you might try to take advantage of supervision/management classes. If you're a natural leader, now's the time to find out and expand on it. It will pay off handsomely later.

Steve S

+ one, many times while laying a job out or discussing a procedure with the team a light will come on and I'll suddenly think of a better way of getting it done.