Just realized my old boss was right about my welding

I used to think she was just being picky when she said I needed to slow down on my MIG beads. Then I looked at a photo from 3 years ago and saw the porosity was obvious. She was catching me in 4K before the term even existed.

3 comments

3 Comments

briancarter16d ago

That whole "old boss was right" thing is brutal but it's a rite of passage in this trade. I still remember the exact day my first lead man showed me the difference between my weld and his on a 3/8 plate weld test. He pointed out my toes were cold and I was running too hot on the root pass. I thought he was just flexing on the new guy. Then I got my CWI cert two years later and pulled one of those old test plates out of my scrap pile. The lack of fusion was so bad I could actually see daylight through the root face. Now I tell every new guy the same thing she told me. It's like a curse that keeps getting passed down but it saves you years of rework.

xena116d ago

Oh man this hits so hard. I had the exact same thing happen with my TIG work. My old supervisor kept telling me my filler rod angle was off and I thought she was just being a perfectionist. Then I dug up some old photos from a project last year and literally facepalmed. The undercut was so bad in some spots I can't believe I didn't see it. That feeling when you realize they were right all along is so humbling but also kind of freeing because now you know what to actually fix.

dianal9412d ago

40 hours of practice later and i still think my old boss was wrong about my technique lol. @xena1 i get why you feel that way but honestly i think sometimes older welders just get stuck in their ways and blame the new guy instead of actually looking at the joint. my friend runs a fab shop and he's seen supervisors nitpick stuff that literally doesn't affect the weld strength at all, it's just about looking right to them. don't get me wrong, undercut is real, but that "humbling" moment might just be you gaslighting yourself into thinking they were right when really your style works fine.