War stories!

[exophyusical]

Last night I had a doosy of a job. I had to repair the framework on a cut off saw, a 72" circular saw is supported on a pendulum inside a frame work, a big hydraulic ram kicks it back and forward as needed to buck up logs. The framework sits over a shaft which sawdust and wood chunks can fall down onto a conveyor. The cracks were right through the frame work and needed to be gouged and the back gouged. Getting at the inside involved climbing halfway down that shaft, I could get my back against a drive belt and wedge myself there by bracing my left foot against a vertical support beam, and put a little weight on a hydraulic hose with my right foot, I worked thus suspended for about 2 hours.

I don't mind air arc gouging when there is a clear path to shoot the molten metal safely away from myself, several of the cracks however I was forced to blow the slag directly into my lap,I for some reason I had thought it wise to wear knee pads, the slag got trapped between my knee pads and my knees and I've got big blisters all over my knees, I also burned most of my ***** off.

Anyways it got me thinking, welders have pretty much the best war storys of anyone, this situation probably doesn't even make top 10 for me. So here is the official war story thread.. let er rip.

 

[91bronc300]

I also burned most of ***** off.

I've just got to ask, why didn't you bother to climb down and put a cowhide apron on?

 

[exophyusical]

I've just got to ask, why didn't you bother to climb down and put a cowhide apron on?

I don't have a cowhide apron. If I did have one it would have been in the millwright shop at the other end of the mill and I wouldn't have stopped working to go get it anyways.

Since that one doesn't make top ten heres a couple that do..

I used to build mud tanks which all have a valve called a "sand trap" Pretty much picture a coffin, stood vertical, with a valve running down the center. The only way to get the inside welded was to wrap a strap around your ankles and get somebody to drop you in head first with the overhead crane. In those tight confines I was always worried I would somehow get wedged and the crane operator would rip my legs off...

One time I was taking care of 3 drilling rigs and I picked up some extra work building a picker truck. Building the picker truck was 10 hour days, as luck would have it I had to do casing bowls for the rigs 3 nights in a row, after 72 hours without sleep I finaly had to give the picker job to somebody else. I pulled into a roadside pullout, turned off my cellphone and slept for about 10 hours. I was woke up by cop who told me my wife had sent them looking for me...

 

[zkling]

Two of my worst ones.

-Doing some heavy mig on 3/8" plate overhead position. Spatter was pouring off. I was wearing one of those cheap green welding jackets. Buzzing along and suddenly my elbow was in immense pain. A good size ball of spatter dropped into the crotch of my elbow, through the jacket and "melted" its self ~half way into the joint. I turned my arm over and the piece fell out. Left a good ~3/16" hole straight down totally cauterized from the heat. It finally healed up with no after effects, but left a good size scar of course.

-Welding up some aluminum tubes with a bulky piece on the end. I was doing a bunch of them, had them laying on the floor. Some welded, some needed to be welded. Gloves and jacket off for a short break to sort out the pile. Yep, I ended up grabbing a freshly welded one. With the bulky piece on the end it pivoted in my hand and ended up burning my hand, but mostly the entire underside of my forearm.

I try to be safe, but accidents do happen.

 

[jhn9840]

I was inside the gunwall of an old coal barge cutting some angle support pieces out for replacement. A piece of slag burnt a hole thourgh my blue jean pant leg, somehow got down inside my high top boot and burned a hole through 2 pair of cotton socks. Left a scar about the size of a fifty cent piece on the outside of my right foot. I coundnt put a shoe on that foot for almost a week.

jhn9840
John

 

[Thumper68]

Not overly painful but very embarrassing, The Monday after my wedding, I had to do some test welds in 2 1/2 in plate to prove the process (damn engineers) anyhow I set one of the test pieces down on the work table and set it up to tack it to the 2nd piece. after I got the first 10 or so passes done my finger was throbbing, I pulled off my glove and I had crushed my new wedding ring around my finger.

The emt had to cut it off. I haven't worn a ring since that day.

 

[BoostAddiction]

In my mis-spent youth I worked as a weldor repairing and updating an orange juice plant.

The job was mostly all TIG welding on stainless, and in one case, I had to shlep the gear up 50 or 60 feet inside an evaporator, then crawl in upside down and weld a large (20"?) tube on a tangent to the top of the evaporator column. My head and most of my torso was in the small tube coming in on the tangent, and my legs were just dangling on the ladder that I used to brace myself.

As I started welding overhead while laying on my back, I came upon a poorly fit portion where there was a large gap to weld. You can guess what happened next- as I was working the puddle, a big glob of molten stainless fell off and landed on my neck.

I learned that day just how much a scream echoed in a large stainless tube.

And the next day I was up there again, but this time with a leather bib around my neck.

Of course, the bib served it's purpose, which was to ensure that another glob of molten stainless never fell off on me again.

But I felt better for wearing it as the wound on my neck slowly healed.

 

[exophyusical]

In my mis-spent youth I worked as a weldor repairing and updating an orange juice plant.

The job was mostly all TIG welding on stainless, and in one case, I had to shlep the gear up 50 or 60 feet inside an evaporator, then crawl in upside down and weld a large (20"?) tube on a tangent to the top of the evaporator column. My head and most of my torso was in the small tube coming in on the tangent, and my legs were just dangling on the ladder that I used to brace myself.

As I started welding overhead while laying on my back, I came upon a poorly fit portion where there was a large gap to weld. You can guess what happened next- as I was working the puddle, a big glob of molten stainless fell off and landed on my neck.

I learned that day just how much a scream echoed in a large stainless tube.

And the next day I was up there again, but this time with a leather bib around my neck.

Of course, the bib served it's purpose, which was to ensure that another glob of molten stainless never fell off on me again.

But I felt better for wearing it as the wound on my neck slowly healed.

Now that's what I'm talkin' bout. You can tell this guy is a real welder by the fact that he cant spell welder

 

[BoostAddiction]

Now that's what I'm talkin' bout. You can tell this guy is a real welder by the fact that he cant spell welder

Welder: a machine that is used to join metal, using an electric arc or other heat source.

Weldor: a person operating such a machine.

Original poster: a pedantic sort, who appreciates good grammar, and spelling.

 

[Tinner]

Welder, a word.

Weldor, not a word.

 

[ZRX61]

I worked in a farm workshop for 2 years. There was a duck pond out front. I'm walking in one morning & the guy who did most of the welding came running out of the shop & jumped straight into the pond.
He liked to wear those Dutch firemans boots, got a big ol ball of slag in one boot & decided the quickest way to stop the burning was jump into the pond

 

[exophyusical]

Welder: a machine that is used to join metal, using an electric arc or other heat source.

Weldor: a person operating such a machine.

Original poster: a pedantic sort, who appreciates good grammar, and spelling.

I take back my comment, mostly based on this sentence.

 

[neonnblack]

"A couple of tacks" turned into my face being on fire for 2 days, then 3 days of peeling skin.

 

[that-guy]

migging up my racecar during a hot summer, was wearing a tank top, shorts, and shoes with no socks. sitting on a stool welding away, i have my heels pointed up, so i am on my toes. i had been wearing these shoes in the garage for years, and they are a little beaten and worn. well, they are quite loose, so as my heel is pointed up, the only contact my foot is making with the shoe is the joint of my big toe. well, with sparks flying everywhere, mostly over my head as i am leaned over, an ember goes over my shoulder and into the opening of my shoe, roles down and rests right at the joint of my big toe. burned like a son-of-a-***** for about a week

good friend of mine is about a 40 year welder and does alot of custom racecar stuff. he also has full sleeve tattoos on both arms. we are welding frame stiffeners into a Fox Body Mustang up on the lift, so these are over head welds, when an ember comes down and hits his bisep, and for the second or so it was on his arm, it pulled the ink right out and now has a bare spot on his bisep the size of a nickel

 

[Kevin54]

Last night I had a doosy of a job. I had to repair the framework on a cut off saw, a 72" circular saw is supported on a pendulum inside a frame work, a big hydraulic ram kicks it back and forward as needed to buck up logs. The framework sits over a shaft which sawdust and wood chunks can fall down onto a conveyor. The cracks were right through the frame work and needed to be gouged and the back gouged. Getting at the inside involved climbing halfway down that shaft, I could get my back against a drive belt and wedge myself there by bracing my left foot against a vertical support beam, and put a little weight on a hydraulic hose with my right foot, I worked thus suspended for about 2 hours.

I don't mind air arc gouging when there is a clear path to shoot the molten metal safely away from myself, several of the cracks however I was forced to blow the slag directly into my lap,I for some reason I had thought it wise to wear knee pads, the slag got trapped between my knee pads and my knees and I've got big blisters all over my knees, I also burned most of my ***** off.

Anyways it got me thinking, welders have pretty much the best war storys of anyone, this situation probably doesn't even make top 10 for me. So here is the official war story thread.. let er rip.

That just saved you money from not having to get the bikini wax.

 

[Kevin54]

When I was younger, I wrecked my '66 Impala. I needed to have new frame horns put on. My dad was a hell of a welded with an OXy-Acet outfit. He borrowed a set from a friend, but was having a real hard time keeping it lit. It was constantly wanting to backfire and go out. He finally was on a run welding the last horn up when the torched popped and I saw a red hot piece of slag go up in the air and disappear. It went right down my dads ear. He had a glass of Coke setting close so he poured it into the side of his ear.

For better than a year, anytime that he blew his nose, he had to stick his finger in his ear. I would have never believed it if it wasn't my dad, but his eardrum healed up and up until the day he died, he had excellent hearing. Probably better than most people today.

Growing up watching my dad do things made it all the easier for me to accept safety gear. I could go on and on about accidents my dad had. I'm really surprised he made it to the ripe age of 95.

 

[A_Pmech]

I don't have a cowhide apron. If I did have one it would have been in the millwright shop at the other end of the mill and I wouldn't have stopped working to go get it anyways.

Remember:

Your body first.

Their work second.

 

[cbrxfr67]

My first job was welding for a door company. Boss brought me a door one day and told me 'fix it.' It looked like someone ran over it on a site. I tried to tell him I couldn't fix that, but he just yelled at me to 'fix it!' and left.
I slapped bondo all over it and got out the sander. bzzzzzz bzzzzz, this *****. Looked across the street at the big wood door sander and got the brilliant idea to carry it over there and ask the operator to hit it with the big belt. We passed it through one time and then for some reason he set the clearance really low. Belt hit the steel and sparks went everywhere, vacuum system sucked them up across the ceiling in a fireball through the wood dust collecting tubes. The fire hit the plastic bags and blew them out like they were full of gas. Guy hit the emergency button and cut the power, we both ran for extinguishers while everyone else ran out of the building in terror, haha. We managed to get it under control, fire department showed up outside, smoke everywhere,....giant mess to clean up.
They didn't fire me though, incredibly. Well I did tell him I couldn't fix it.

 

[Heavy Metal Doctor]

18 years of machinery dealer work -- I have many stories

Hot job (as in the boss saying "hurry up, a new machine sale hangs in the balance of fixing their old one first") -- Part of this job was to patch up the power unit engine's exhaust. I had just a pair of basic work gloves handy and didn't take time to go find the actual welding gloves. So, I'm sitting on top oif this machine, mig gun in my right hand, gloved left hand holding the exhaust pipe up to the muffler where it broke loose. I pulled the trigger and the wire arced a bit and the skipped off the work. Drove the red hot ball of weld on the end of the mig wire through the glove and into the tip of my left middle finger - felt like all the way to the bone. I stopped and the auto mask went clear again and I held my breath for second and yanked the two apart......took a long time for the nerve to regenerate and get feeling back in that fingertip.


I can't count the number of time I have had hot slag in the ear drum. Or trapped all contorted inside a machine when spatter burned through somewhere that can even be reached to swat the hot stuff away and all I can do is grit my teeth and keep going.

Welding on top of a machine (12 feet off the ground) and catch a reflection of something behind me in the welding mask. Stop weling and look behind me to see the sparked went down into the parts washer and it's now making a nice little campfire on that side of the shop.

 

[exophyusical]

18 years of machinery dealer work -- I have many stories

Hot job (as in the boss saying "hurry up, a new machine sale hangs in the balance of fixing their old one first") -- Part of this job was to patch up the power unit engine's exhaust. I had just a pair of basic work gloves handy and didn't take time to go find the actual welding gloves. So, I'm sitting on top oif this machine, mig gun in my right hand, gloved left hand holding the exhaust pipe up to the muffler where it broke loose. I pulled the trigger and the wire arced a bit and the skipped off the work. Drove the red hot ball of weld on the end of the mig wire through the glove and into the tip of my left middle finger - felt like all the way to the bone. I stopped and the auto mask went clear again and I held my breath for second and yanked the two apart......took a long time for the nerve to regenerate and get feeling back in that fingertip.


I can't count the number of time I have had hot slag in the ear drum. Or trapped all contorted inside a machine when spatter burned through somewhere that can even be reached to swat the hot stuff away and all I can do is grit my teeth and keep going.

Welding on top of a machine (12 feet off the ground) and catch a reflection of something behind me in the welding mask. Stop weling and look behind me to see the sparked went down into the parts washer and it's now making a nice little campfire on that side of the shop.

Yeah, the "red hot mig wire to the bone" is a real classic. Not quite as painful but more amusing is the "double whammy"... when one is chipping slag and a chunk lands somewhere near your mouth and sticks there. The victim invariably try's to spit it off and burns their tong as well. I love that one.

Heres another one, a drilling rig I was taking care of had a couple bad blow outs in a row and got shut down. When a rig gets shut down they call a welder and you weld all the doors shut so nothing gets stolen until they fire back up. It was pouring cats and dogs and I was getting crazy electrical shocks but I was determined to get all those doors welded shut and go home. The funny thing is that you get all the worst shocks when you are striking an arc and when you stick a rod, it always seems like once I get wet and start getting shocked for some reason I start sticking twice as many rods. Getting shocked is no big deal to me but in this case I got enough shocks that I felt sick to my stomach by the time I was done.

 

[Heavy Metal Doctor]

When a rig gets shut down they call a welder and you weld all the doors shut so nothing gets stolen until they fire back up. It was pouring cats and dogs and I was getting crazy electrical shocks but I was determined to get all those doors welded shut and go home. The funny thing is that you get all the worst shocks when you are striking an arc and when you stick a rod, it always seems like once I get wet and start getting shocked for some reason I start sticking twice as many rods. Getting shocked is no big deal to me but in this case I got enough shocks that I felt sick to my stomach by the time I was done.

WOW, I've never been shocked - been yelled at by others to watch out for it since I was laying on a wet floor, or just outside the shop door (machine too tall to bring inside) in the rain....I did get mildly frozen to one of the outside jobs - freaked me out how fast the heat traveled from the work, melted snow, soaked in and then froze my sleeve / glove to the machine where I was leaning on it.

Another burn: I had a hot drip of weld go down the tongue of my work boot once. Burned 3 or 4 different holes in my pant leg on the way down. It was a good sized ball of molten steel that burned in so bad I couldn't do anything but rip my boot off and stand in the shop sink / run water on it. I probably really should have seen a doctor on that one. It was a swollen mess on the top of my foot / base of the ankle which I couldn't even bare to touch for a couple days before I finally dug the ball of steel out with a knife. Litterally the size of a BB gun ball. Had a hard nasty scar I could feel against my shoe for a long time / limped a little from that one.

My wife (works with me) sometimes jokes to me when she knows there's hot work to do about me going out to the shop to set myself on fire again. "Honey, don't burn off any of the good parts!" I say "Don't worry, my wallet is in the office"

 

[03protege]

Not overly painful but very embarrassing, The Monday after my wedding, I had to do some test welds in 2 1/2 in plate to prove the process (damn engineers) anyhow I set one of the test pieces down on the work table and set it up to tack it to the 2nd piece. after I got the first 10 or so passes done my finger was throbbing, I pulled off my glove and I had crushed my new wedding ring around my finger.

The emt had to cut it off. I haven't worn a ring since that day.

Shouldn't wear a ring welding anyway, you must not have seen the pictures of guy's finger that burnt off due to a hole in his glove allowing the arc to jump to the ring and thus the finger.

 

[03protege]

My first job was welding for a door company. Boss brought me a door one day and told me 'fix it.' It looked like someone ran over it on a site. I tried to tell him I couldn't fix that, but he just yelled at me to 'fix it!' and left.
I slapped bondo all over it and got out the sander. bzzzzzz bzzzzz, this *****. Looked across the street at the big wood door sander and got the brilliant idea to carry it over there and ask the operator to hit it with the big belt. We passed it through one time and then for some reason he set the clearance really low. Belt hit the steel and sparks went everywhere, vacuum system sucked them up across the ceiling in a fireball through the wood dust collecting tubes. The fire hit the plastic bags and blew them out like they were full of gas. Guy hit the emergency button and cut the power, we both ran for extinguishers while everyone else ran out of the building in terror, haha. We managed to get it under control, fire department showed up outside, smoke everywhere,....giant mess to clean up.
They didn't fire me though, incredibly. Well I did tell him I couldn't fix it.

That is pretty hilarious.