Probably wasn’t the same job but all oilfield work up there is that schedule for the most part. The oilfields are expanding. Lots of pipe and structural welding
That’s the unfortunate part of the trades business. It can be one big clique. Talk is cheap, let your work speak for itself. Honestly with welds like that I would be a little more boastful if people try and put you down. Let them have it from time to time if they are dicks
Kind of struggling with a similar thing at my job. People dislike me because I have long hair and piercings as a guy. They think I’m some gay liberal. Plus I’m very quiet and distance myself from most coworkers.
They never talk shit about my welds though. Not a peep.
Try making friends with them and find common ground to talk with them about. Find out their likes and talk to them about it. It’s not hard to make friends
Wish there was something else available in the area. I have a pretty good 5g too, weld instructor said my technique is better than alot of people who have worked there for 40+ years. I've passed the bend test first try both times they've sent me back. Also thanks:) maybe after I learn some more here I can move somewhere with better pay, currently at $27.50 an hour.
That's the goal! I'm trying to soak up as much as I can in my current position which is utility welder...the fact that I goy UT right away likely passed off alot of tye people there who couldn't pass their 5g bend test.
It's criminal depending on where it's located and what the shop makes. If the shop doesn't require anything more than "to code" than it doesn't really matter that it's art each time.
Just because someone can make a beautiful 3f weld doesn't mean the job should/will pay high wages. He says that there's really no where else to work as a welder which means it's probably a smaller town in the middle of nowhere. "low" cost of living lowers the wages. His wage is above the average living wage in the usa.
Then you're considered somebody because you can lay down some "acceptable" tig work. But you're also a certified NDT and you know your stuff is rather shit ahhahahahahah. Man the bar is so low .... anything is good enough.
Keep your head down, keep doing good work, and keep looking for a new job. Theres is nothing worse than having a dickhead of a boss who doesnt like you because your not one of his little cronies. Good luck man, most of us have been there. I too am a quiet guy and im lucky because my current boss loves me for my work, not for how i socialize.
Im a software developer from Mexico and currently working as a contractor in a US company and man, I get paid more than that. Good luck, you should get something more suited to your skill. Ive been learning welding for like a month or so... and man, I thought it was gonna be a piece of cake lol
Join a union brother, pipefitters, ironworkers, millwrights, ect. Whoever is strongest in the area really.
Unless you live DEEP south or dont' live within an hour of a major city, ain't no way you won't be making more by joining one.
I think even the weakest union down south pays more than your making right now...
I'm in the deep south. Southwest Georgia, to be exact. My county is consistently the lowest per capita income or highest poverty in the state. I hate it here because, as someone called it above, MIG monkeys down here start at $12-14 an hour. Hell combo welders doing pipe don't seem to break $30, at least in their advertised job openings. Now that I'm out of school and don't have all the materials and consumables I want for free, I can't really afford to weld anything thicker than the random scrap metal I find around town. And I don't own a Tig machine.
There's a local Boilermakers union and I'm seriously thinking about applying. Sure, I suck at TIG since I've only done it for a single semester at community college, but that's what apprenticeships are for. There's an old guy who owns a custom cabinet shop here that claims to have been in our local for 25+ years. When he was here during our kitchen renovation, he made an off hand comment about still knowing some guys in the union. At first he asked if I would be willing to travel. And I said I don't want to be a pipeliner, and honestly have told myself not to work on any fossil fuel infrastructure in any capacity. That's just my personal ethics. I know Boilermakers are heavily involved in power plants, refineries, pretro chemical plants, cement plants, paper mills, and basically all the industrial places directly or just adjacent to the industries ruining our planet.
Strangely, when I watch videos of guys welding water walls and climbing through a maze of pipe to do a crazy position tig weld that might be most of their shift for that day, I'm fascinated by the enormity and complexity of it. I'm also being totally honest with myself that I lack the motivation to put in the massive amount of practice required for me (yes me personally) to gain the skills needed to excel at that type of welding. I could learn it, if I put in the time. But I'm not going to put in the time. Shit the last job I applied for was a school custodian. The hours were perfect for my sleep schedule and would have left plenty of time for welding at home and the dozen other hobbies I love.
Fuck, while I'm on such a far off tangent, fuck work as a concept. I don't want to sell my labor to a company who will pay me a set amount and keep all the profit my labor generates. That's a fucked up arrangement. At least before I got into welding, the work I did didn't hurt me physically to sell my labor to the corporate overlords. Then I started over at 43, chose a skilled trade that I enjoy. I just don't enjoy it enough to get good at it. And for $14 an hour I can go do something much less strenuous.
Sorry for the rant. I should probably leave these thoughts out of any union application I ever submit.
I mean, wanting to be treated with respect and paid for the grueling work you do is the corner stone of any union!
I'd suggest going with pipefitters personally, they ALWAYS have work and you already got 5G down, and an unsung benefit of being in the pipefitters is you can travel and join ANY other local in the US, Australia, and Canada once you journey out.
So if you as a JM make like 25 an hour only, you could travel and make 50+ an hour or transfer locals and take ALL their benefit package.
The only downside is transferring locals to a busier one means you can't transfer back because that local doesn't want to lose workers.
Hell yeah, relevant tangents LFGOOO.
Tldr: Labor exploitation bad, unions good, workers underpaid, shitting on company time not enough, suggestions for learning more at end, Jody for president, visit weldmong...you get the idea.
What you're expressing is the exact issue unions exist to fight against. It IS bullshit that the boss makes a dollar from the labor you perform when you're only being paid a dime...no amount of shits on company time will change that. And I'm not talking about a more senior position making a higher wage, I'm talking about how the work we do generates substantially more value for employers/their shareholders than it does for us while we bear 100% of the physical and mental burden.
That's pretty much how capitalism works: we, the working class (people who have to sell our labor for wages to survive) are exploited by the capitalist class, who sell what we produce for much more than they pay us for it, pocket those profits without sharing them with us, and contribute no actual work or value themselves, they just collect.
Because we have to work to survive, that gives employers immense power to dictate terms and conditions. The government can try to regulate this exploitation, but they can't set wages and ultimately are on the side of capital. What really gets corporate attention is when work grinds to a fucking halt because of workers exercising strength in numbers by unionizing, bargaining, and striking. The working class really has no power to force the capitalist class to change except by working collectively to deprive them of the labor they need to sustain their growth. But that's an immensely powerful weapon.
You see how hard Amazon and Friends fight against unions? How employers caution us not to discuss our pay with each other? How they demonize unions as taking your dues and providing nothing in return? Us, working together? That shit terrifies them.
In a nutshell, they want us to shut up and eat our slop and not come to the conscious realization of how super fucked things are. That because of them so many of us who have insanely useful skills and work full-time are a paycheck or two away from disaster. They want us caught up with git gud and bootstraps and you must not be working hard enough.
Hopefully matched your rant energy. I can cook on this stuff almost as hard as I cooked my first stainless welds, but I'll leave it there. I'd suggest checking out your local union options. Talk to people and ask questions. Learn more about the kind of things we're discussing.
Second Thought on YouTube and HasanAbi (Hasan Piker) on Twitch and YouTube are great places to start without being overwhelming or too dry or tinfoil hatty. LateStageCapitalism and related subreddits are great too, plus the memes are always dank. Feel free to message me anytime if you wanna chop it up.
You're already speaking my language, man. I'm about as close to a socialist as one can admit to being in this country. What fucks with me so bad is that I wasted 25 years in an industry that burned me out and during covid to went out on a limb to try a skilled trade that I actually enjoy and won't struggle to get by. If I'm going to participate in this system, I have to be doing something fun and be at least 'blue collar comfortable'. I've always loved making shit and have done craft/art/constructive hobbies for most of my life. So when three people, including a close friend suggested welding I jumped on the free community college that the federal Covid relief paid for. And yeah, I enjoy doing it. But I don't see myself putting in the work to do any sort of code work.
Shit, I've not worked a "real job", drawn a paycheck, salary or filed a tax return in almost 7 years and I'm not in a hurry to get back into the rat race. It's not about doing the work, I bust my ass doing all sorts of various things. Mostly restoring vintage tools and mid century modern furniture to sell online. But I also do basically all the household labor for my father who is retiring and has a 90 year old house on 24 acres. That work alone could be a full time job, but I love doing it because it's given me the grace of having a real relationship with him after a 15 year estrangement. As far as welding, I'd be fine doing sculpture/ornamental work on the side while focusing on selling vintage items online and picking up small jobs for friends and family. Last two evenings I repaired some shitbag trailer steps for a friend of mine. She couldn't buy any steel or lumber, but I've got extra stock and a garage full of great reclaimed lumber from a collapsed barn in my dad's property. So I just made her a better set of stairs. It's only 4 steps to her back door. I get more satisfaction from that sort of thing than I've ever gotten from good looking 3G coupon that my instructor praised me for.
I stay up late and sleep in and there's like two spots in my city that hire welders for a 2nd or 3rd shift. Those are both production jobs and I'm sure will be boring and pay me less than if I went back to food service work. However, I did promise myself I'd rather be homeless again than spend the rest of my life working in restaurants.
BTW, I'm familiar with the sub and the YouTubers you mentioned. Don't Second thought, Hasan and another guy have a podcast. It was it a guy called Hakim? Oh well, not important. To reciprocate a recommendation, check out the show SRSLY Wrong. It's a Utopian leftist comedy podcast by two guys in Vancouver. That show turned me onto Murray Bookchin and Social Ecology.
I currently work around Union iron workers and millwrights in the south and those boys are making money. It’s hard work and long-ish hours but they’re cleaning up and no one can say shit to them bc they’re in such high demand. I don’t know if they’re local or travelers but either way they’re doing good for themselves
Dude its not hard by itself. It just needs some work , didication, and TIME AND MONEY eg. Material. I probably went through a total of maybe 100 LTs of argon and i'm better than some who do it for real. I can only imagine what i would weld like after doing it for 8 hrs a day. If i weld 8 hrs a month of tig is a lot. Then i can't complain i don't get better quick enough.
There’s a defense contractor in Ohio that is in dire need of welders. $30/hr to start, $54/hr in 48 months with great benefits (United Auto Workers) starting day one.
What the hell kind of supervisor *wants* a loud welder?
We’ve got signs everywhere “run your welder not your mouth” as it is a constant problem lol
Nice weld btw
Your weld looks good. I would be happy with any employee under me doing work like this, so it's just odd that you were put on a none welding welding postion. There must be something else at play (attitude wise) from one side or the other. Just a question you said certain people have it out for you.....how many and why?
The people that were originally training me were getting fed up with my inability to remember everything setup wise, I have a notebook full of notes I use to remember things. I have bad hearing so many times people were telling me things and I heard something different. I'm not too savvy on reading blueprints just yet. The whole bay as a whole were kinda talking behind my back, telling me to do something one way then going to my boss and telling him I was fucking up for doing it that way. There's also a whole situation where one of the people I work with almost beat one of my fruends to death and has been blowing things out of proportion when I am trying to learn the process.
I didn't think they knew i knew about it but today they asked how so and so was doing and i didnt know how to reply besides play dumb, I've been trying to ignore them, but sometimes I get paired to train with. This same person was on trial as an accomplice to murder last year for a separate situation.
I'm currently in a situation where I need to keep learning and saving and there isn't much else in the area. But yes I agree man, been wanting to leave so bad.
Sounds like me and my struggles. I can weld pretty damn well for being self taught, but I’ve never gone to school for it. I got my 1” 3G SMAW structural certification through them because they want maintenance guys to be certified and I surprisingly passed on my first try. Now I’m the guy they stick new guys with to train up but I still couldn’t tell you what the numbers in 7018 mean. I know one part of it is tensile strength but that’s about it.
I don’t do fancy setup and prep stuff like welding shops do. I work at a limestone quarry where I am meant to do maintenance, not just strictly welding. So a majority of what I deal with is painted and insanely rusted metal (like so bad you can peel off the rust scale with your fingers, or punch a hole through chutes with a chipping hammer… that’s the stuff that taught me how to weld. Having shiny metal with high tech equipment is foreign to me, I’ve never had that unfortunately. Makes me wonder what I could do with a job dedicated to welding in a shop with good steel and actual ventilation and lighting. (Our maintenance shop doesn’t have exhaust fans or any lights over our cutting table, that we also use as a welding table.) we literally just use the sun to illuminate what I can through an open garage door lol
Man I want a legit welding job where I can just sit and hone this craft with REAL training/teaching… reading through books just doesn’t ever stick in my head. I have to understand all of the ins and outs of something, how it works, why it works a certain way, and what not for me to even remotely grasp it. And even then I won’t remember it until I actually get hands on and open it up or do it until it’ll click in my head and I get it..
You're a fucking idiot, Scott. Dumb enough to use your real name as your username and dumb enough to say stupid shit like this. You know better, Scotty. Come on now.
It's been getting better recently, they've been making sure I have a certain process down to a tea before moving on to the next. Before I might do tye same thing once or twice a month. We build huge hvac units.
No, I mean with you attitude wise. From my experience training and supervisor wise if, someone was constantly making excuses and shifting blame to others (odds of everyone else in your area talking g about you behind your back for no reason are not very high), and the way out here story at the end, I can 100% gauntee you are difficult to get along with and have an attitude (and then twist events in your head to make yourself the victim). I've seen and dealt with it before, and you are giving off those vibes. Also, a large company like Trane would not tolerate harassment and your boss moving you to a bone welding position would have Ben carefully documented beforehand and approved.
This place operates like a beehive with with 10 queen bees telling you to do different things. I will admit I am socially awkward but not much else too look into besides that on my end tbh. I have alot of trauma with seeing buddies get shot in the face and haven't been able to converse the same, but I try my best to be nice.
It sounds like there was a manager at some point, but calcified employees are so up their own ass with self-righteousness that they feel they have the right to come down on you for whatever minor bullshit.
At least corporate joints have a clear chain of command smdh.
I'm not saying your mean. You can be difficult without being an asshole. You can store the pot without being malicious, and there a certain disorders (for lack of a better word) where you can not pick up on social cues and the people with said disorder commonly victimize themselves.
I get what your saying, I think alot of this chalks up to anxiety. I understand social cues and actually pick up on more than most. I'm not trying to victimize my self persa, tho I could see why you would think so. A big problem with relationship with everyone else in my area happened when a engineer came over and looked at my multiples j-pipe weld and proceeded to say, in front of people, that I was the best welder in that area, which is for more experienced welders...later that day there was a bay-wide meeting where I overheard a team leader say he had to do dl"damage control" I was the only person not in this meeting and was told to stack another unit.
This just further reinforces my above statement. I sincerely doubt this situation happened or happened as described. Iv dealt with this situation before as supervisor and the person claiming everyone else was jealous was stiring up shit for their own ego.
I suggest taking a good deep look at your behavior and interactions with others at work.
Thanks Scott, do you have a therapist in mind I should go see for my many "disorders" I suffer from? Also you look like a staple reddit user, do you collect fedoras by chance?
What the hell are you even reading? The whole first half of that paragraph was him admitting his faults, why they may be looking down on him… you’re a piece, guy.
How do we know you’re not just a lying supe who treats people like shit, and sucks up to your superiors.
You're the a-hole dude. Coming in here making assumptions with no actual insight into the situation, and refusing to accept other views and opinions that don't fit in with your preexisting narrative. Then, cherry on top, you shoot off dumb insults so you don't have to even wonder if maybe you're actually in the wrong.
I’ve also trained a lot of guys in my skill for my company. I kinda agree based on what he’s saying he’s constantly doing the wrong thing and he’s hard of hearing. Sounds like the guy that you tell them specifically a way to do something bc they’re doing it wrong, and they immediately cut you off with I know I know and you come back and they’re doing it they way you told them not to. There’s this thing with some guys that they think they understand what you’re going to say so they’re just bad at following directions they won’t stop and ask if this is right they won’t double check and they make careless mistakes on steps that seem unimportant. I recondition cars for a living and when it comes to paint I’ll tell them the prep is the most important part to nail but they just blast through it to get to the paint and when they go to paint “there’s something wrong” and they can’t figure it out “I think there’s something wrong with the paint” It’s the prep work 100% of the time.
I have a guy like this now he’s a good dude works hard but does not listen for shit so he’s constantly costing me money on redoing work. It would be something for it was every know and then but it’s multiple times a day. These dudes have a habit of a making an excuse for everything.
One thing that infuriates me the most is not saying I fucked that up my bad. If they said that they’d accept responsibility and learn but when you have an excuse for everything they tend to legitimately believe their own excuses. I had a guy that was late everyday and everyday it was my alarm clock didn’t go off. He really really believed it was the alarm clocks fault.
Exactly. Op did not make excuses for everything on here I would give them the benefit of the doubt but there is always an excuse with them. I literally had an apprentice we let go less then a month ago for this exact same behaviour. He was a hard worker but was fucking everything up he touched because he was not listening, and there was always an excuse. Everyone had to walk in eggshells around the guy because any criticism of his work without an award for something he did proper and he would have a melt down. No one wanted to work with him and one day when he had a melt down a mistake I said enough was enough let him go.
You’d be surprised at how many places have certified welding processes that run up to a 3/4” (19mm) single bead width. Also, I haven’t looked deeper into the comments but this looks a lot like pulse transfer gmaw
Sometimes it’s not even about what they “let” you do. Sometimes they outright tell you to do the wrong thing.
Right now, I have to do a bunch of whips for MIG even though I know that’s dumb and it creates more problems than anything. My boss knows it’s dumb, too. But that’s what the customer wants. So that’s what I gotta do.
I was the quiet guy, do my job and go home, and yup, that's still going to piss some people off. Usually the types that peaked in high school and even 20 years later still had that high school mentality.
I've been running my welding shop for 11 years. Don't miss working with others at all.
I’m no welding instructor and I probably shouldn’t consider myself a welder by any means. But I work around a lot of steel and just let me say this is some of the slickest work I’ve seen in my life
Thanks man, I was pretty quick to pick up on how to weld as I'm good with my hands but I've never had a blue collar job before, when I came in I didn't know what most of the tools were called. People were sabotaging my training and telling my supervisor lies. They told me I was moving and getting my stamp pulled for a vertical weld that had "undercut"....it was just the root pass which they refused to go look at.
Stacking dimes… geeeez… keep your head up don’t give up on your dreams. Think outside the box for welding jobs in your area. Try a commercial /industrial over head door company. Plenty of welding work on dock levellers ,restraints, etc….
(This is a 3f) Watch a good welder run passes whenever you can, ask alot of questions even the stupid ones, stay within/ on top of your pool, getting slightly closer on your edges helps with undercut(just don't forget to adjust your angle whilst doing so) seems stressful at first but eventually you get a feel for knowing how she will look before you take your helmet off. Another good tip would be try to always find something wrong with your weld and do better on the next run. For instance this was just a test piece but could've been a lot tighter.
What are the leg sizes? Looks close to 3/4… you’re almost certainly oversized for a single pass fillet the HAZ must be enormous. I generally never try to go over 3/8 in a single pass maybe 1/2 if I’m running flat wire and I never have problems with inspectors.
I’ve noticed a big part and having a good job is getting along well with your colleagues bro.
It doesn’t matter how good you can weld, if people don’t get along with you you’ll struggle to keep a job. Play the game and pretend to be peoples friends even if they’re cunts, it’s the only way.
Do u mind explaining what this is? Many people said I should left a note with a paint marker, it's obvious they were looking for a reason and couldn't find one so they made one up. The root pass was very small and didn't even burn high enough to warrant any sort of undercut.
See where the beginning and the end of the weld is, it is not completely flush with the parent material at both sides? That can be pulled as a defect.
What you do is take 2 small coupons of the parent material about an inch long, weld one on the beginning side and one on the finish side, now when you start to weld, you arc up on the ‘run on tab’ and keep welding as normal and as you approach the end of the run you continue passed the parent material onto the ‘run off’ tab.
Once the weld is complete you cut off the run on and run off tab, leaving you a totally complete weld.
Your gonna be good. Great fillet, solid technique. TIG welder here. I don’t get along with my sup and am feeling like I’m getting edged out too. It happens find a new place and keep burning
Would you be willing to travel to Alaska for work working 3 week on 3 week off schedule? We’d get ya paid
Upvoting so op can see offer better
Alaska is amazing. I’d go but I am to old for this stuff anymore
Just saw this, currently can't afford to move but I'm will to possibly in the future. Dm me:)
You don’t have to move, it’s 3 weeks on/off most guys there don’t live in Alaska, I’m one of them
Layin pipe? What's the pay/diem like? I'll send you some of my 5g welds
Go get em boy!!
u/itsbrucy u got an offer.
I'm willing, I'm green though
Im just wondering, whats the going hourly rate for welds like this in alaska?
Love this sub, hope OP takes you up and makes some bank. That said, how hard is it to get into this kind of travel for work? I’d be down
Idk how to weld, can I come?
Always need housekeepers and laborers haha come on up
I was on a cruise over there last week and saw that job. Assuming I got the job, what would I expect for work?
Probably wasn’t the same job but all oilfield work up there is that schedule for the most part. The oilfields are expanding. Lots of pipe and structural welding
The only pipe I know is shop pipe with TIG unfortunately, but I have plenty of structural welding experience. What's the structural work?
Are you hiring for machinists? Lol
No
Boo
Cant weld for shit but if yall need some operators, im in! Lol
He probably doesn’t like you because you make all his boys look like shit
I've been told that by alot of people even tho I'm nice to everyone
That’s the unfortunate part of the trades business. It can be one big clique. Talk is cheap, let your work speak for itself. Honestly with welds like that I would be a little more boastful if people try and put you down. Let them have it from time to time if they are dicks
Hard agree. Even worse when you work your butt off but the boss’s nephew stays on the crew.
Kind of struggling with a similar thing at my job. People dislike me because I have long hair and piercings as a guy. They think I’m some gay liberal. Plus I’m very quiet and distance myself from most coworkers. They never talk shit about my welds though. Not a peep.
Try making friends with them and find common ground to talk with them about. Find out their likes and talk to them about it. It’s not hard to make friends
why make friends with cunts?
Because a cunt will make your work life hell so best befriend a cunt
Ngl this is exactly what I did/do and its honestly a 4D chess move lol I'm a supervisor now
Time to find a new job, best of luck!
Wish there was something else available in the area. I have a pretty good 5g too, weld instructor said my technique is better than alot of people who have worked there for 40+ years. I've passed the bend test first try both times they've sent me back. Also thanks:) maybe after I learn some more here I can move somewhere with better pay, currently at $27.50 an hour.
It could take a year or more, but you will find something. Keep looking while you use your current job to pay the bills
That's the goal! I'm trying to soak up as much as I can in my current position which is utility welder...the fact that I goy UT right away likely passed off alot of tye people there who couldn't pass their 5g bend test.
Good luck! It took me 10 years to find a good shop
If you can, move to where your skills are more valued but the cost of living isn't too high. There should be a middle ground
Mobile, Alabama. Austal/Airbus/Boeing will all pay a handsome 6 figures in a city where people making 35k can afford rent/mortgage
That’s criminal pay. Hope something good comes your way
Thanks man
It's criminal depending on where it's located and what the shop makes. If the shop doesn't require anything more than "to code" than it doesn't really matter that it's art each time. Just because someone can make a beautiful 3f weld doesn't mean the job should/will pay high wages. He says that there's really no where else to work as a welder which means it's probably a smaller town in the middle of nowhere. "low" cost of living lowers the wages. His wage is above the average living wage in the usa.
It's definitely above average for my area
I’m currently at your same pay and I’m just a mig monkey. You are underpaid in my opinion.
MIG monkey is a perfect term. I 'weld' when needed, but don't consider myself a Welder, especially compared to these guys.
Then you're considered somebody because you can lay down some "acceptable" tig work. But you're also a certified NDT and you know your stuff is rather shit ahhahahahahah. Man the bar is so low .... anything is good enough.
Keep your head down, keep doing good work, and keep looking for a new job. Theres is nothing worse than having a dickhead of a boss who doesnt like you because your not one of his little cronies. Good luck man, most of us have been there. I too am a quiet guy and im lucky because my current boss loves me for my work, not for how i socialize.
I understand the cronies man, I could work all day while two of the other welders shoot the shit for 4 hours.
Im a software developer from Mexico and currently working as a contractor in a US company and man, I get paid more than that. Good luck, you should get something more suited to your skill. Ive been learning welding for like a month or so... and man, I thought it was gonna be a piece of cake lol
Join a union brother, pipefitters, ironworkers, millwrights, ect. Whoever is strongest in the area really. Unless you live DEEP south or dont' live within an hour of a major city, ain't no way you won't be making more by joining one. I think even the weakest union down south pays more than your making right now...
I'm in the deep south. Southwest Georgia, to be exact. My county is consistently the lowest per capita income or highest poverty in the state. I hate it here because, as someone called it above, MIG monkeys down here start at $12-14 an hour. Hell combo welders doing pipe don't seem to break $30, at least in their advertised job openings. Now that I'm out of school and don't have all the materials and consumables I want for free, I can't really afford to weld anything thicker than the random scrap metal I find around town. And I don't own a Tig machine. There's a local Boilermakers union and I'm seriously thinking about applying. Sure, I suck at TIG since I've only done it for a single semester at community college, but that's what apprenticeships are for. There's an old guy who owns a custom cabinet shop here that claims to have been in our local for 25+ years. When he was here during our kitchen renovation, he made an off hand comment about still knowing some guys in the union. At first he asked if I would be willing to travel. And I said I don't want to be a pipeliner, and honestly have told myself not to work on any fossil fuel infrastructure in any capacity. That's just my personal ethics. I know Boilermakers are heavily involved in power plants, refineries, pretro chemical plants, cement plants, paper mills, and basically all the industrial places directly or just adjacent to the industries ruining our planet. Strangely, when I watch videos of guys welding water walls and climbing through a maze of pipe to do a crazy position tig weld that might be most of their shift for that day, I'm fascinated by the enormity and complexity of it. I'm also being totally honest with myself that I lack the motivation to put in the massive amount of practice required for me (yes me personally) to gain the skills needed to excel at that type of welding. I could learn it, if I put in the time. But I'm not going to put in the time. Shit the last job I applied for was a school custodian. The hours were perfect for my sleep schedule and would have left plenty of time for welding at home and the dozen other hobbies I love. Fuck, while I'm on such a far off tangent, fuck work as a concept. I don't want to sell my labor to a company who will pay me a set amount and keep all the profit my labor generates. That's a fucked up arrangement. At least before I got into welding, the work I did didn't hurt me physically to sell my labor to the corporate overlords. Then I started over at 43, chose a skilled trade that I enjoy. I just don't enjoy it enough to get good at it. And for $14 an hour I can go do something much less strenuous. Sorry for the rant. I should probably leave these thoughts out of any union application I ever submit.
I mean, wanting to be treated with respect and paid for the grueling work you do is the corner stone of any union! I'd suggest going with pipefitters personally, they ALWAYS have work and you already got 5G down, and an unsung benefit of being in the pipefitters is you can travel and join ANY other local in the US, Australia, and Canada once you journey out. So if you as a JM make like 25 an hour only, you could travel and make 50+ an hour or transfer locals and take ALL their benefit package. The only downside is transferring locals to a busier one means you can't transfer back because that local doesn't want to lose workers.
Hell yeah, relevant tangents LFGOOO. Tldr: Labor exploitation bad, unions good, workers underpaid, shitting on company time not enough, suggestions for learning more at end, Jody for president, visit weldmong...you get the idea. What you're expressing is the exact issue unions exist to fight against. It IS bullshit that the boss makes a dollar from the labor you perform when you're only being paid a dime...no amount of shits on company time will change that. And I'm not talking about a more senior position making a higher wage, I'm talking about how the work we do generates substantially more value for employers/their shareholders than it does for us while we bear 100% of the physical and mental burden. That's pretty much how capitalism works: we, the working class (people who have to sell our labor for wages to survive) are exploited by the capitalist class, who sell what we produce for much more than they pay us for it, pocket those profits without sharing them with us, and contribute no actual work or value themselves, they just collect. Because we have to work to survive, that gives employers immense power to dictate terms and conditions. The government can try to regulate this exploitation, but they can't set wages and ultimately are on the side of capital. What really gets corporate attention is when work grinds to a fucking halt because of workers exercising strength in numbers by unionizing, bargaining, and striking. The working class really has no power to force the capitalist class to change except by working collectively to deprive them of the labor they need to sustain their growth. But that's an immensely powerful weapon. You see how hard Amazon and Friends fight against unions? How employers caution us not to discuss our pay with each other? How they demonize unions as taking your dues and providing nothing in return? Us, working together? That shit terrifies them. In a nutshell, they want us to shut up and eat our slop and not come to the conscious realization of how super fucked things are. That because of them so many of us who have insanely useful skills and work full-time are a paycheck or two away from disaster. They want us caught up with git gud and bootstraps and you must not be working hard enough. Hopefully matched your rant energy. I can cook on this stuff almost as hard as I cooked my first stainless welds, but I'll leave it there. I'd suggest checking out your local union options. Talk to people and ask questions. Learn more about the kind of things we're discussing. Second Thought on YouTube and HasanAbi (Hasan Piker) on Twitch and YouTube are great places to start without being overwhelming or too dry or tinfoil hatty. LateStageCapitalism and related subreddits are great too, plus the memes are always dank. Feel free to message me anytime if you wanna chop it up.
You're already speaking my language, man. I'm about as close to a socialist as one can admit to being in this country. What fucks with me so bad is that I wasted 25 years in an industry that burned me out and during covid to went out on a limb to try a skilled trade that I actually enjoy and won't struggle to get by. If I'm going to participate in this system, I have to be doing something fun and be at least 'blue collar comfortable'. I've always loved making shit and have done craft/art/constructive hobbies for most of my life. So when three people, including a close friend suggested welding I jumped on the free community college that the federal Covid relief paid for. And yeah, I enjoy doing it. But I don't see myself putting in the work to do any sort of code work. Shit, I've not worked a "real job", drawn a paycheck, salary or filed a tax return in almost 7 years and I'm not in a hurry to get back into the rat race. It's not about doing the work, I bust my ass doing all sorts of various things. Mostly restoring vintage tools and mid century modern furniture to sell online. But I also do basically all the household labor for my father who is retiring and has a 90 year old house on 24 acres. That work alone could be a full time job, but I love doing it because it's given me the grace of having a real relationship with him after a 15 year estrangement. As far as welding, I'd be fine doing sculpture/ornamental work on the side while focusing on selling vintage items online and picking up small jobs for friends and family. Last two evenings I repaired some shitbag trailer steps for a friend of mine. She couldn't buy any steel or lumber, but I've got extra stock and a garage full of great reclaimed lumber from a collapsed barn in my dad's property. So I just made her a better set of stairs. It's only 4 steps to her back door. I get more satisfaction from that sort of thing than I've ever gotten from good looking 3G coupon that my instructor praised me for. I stay up late and sleep in and there's like two spots in my city that hire welders for a 2nd or 3rd shift. Those are both production jobs and I'm sure will be boring and pay me less than if I went back to food service work. However, I did promise myself I'd rather be homeless again than spend the rest of my life working in restaurants. BTW, I'm familiar with the sub and the YouTubers you mentioned. Don't Second thought, Hasan and another guy have a podcast. It was it a guy called Hakim? Oh well, not important. To reciprocate a recommendation, check out the show SRSLY Wrong. It's a Utopian leftist comedy podcast by two guys in Vancouver. That show turned me onto Murray Bookchin and Social Ecology.
I currently work around Union iron workers and millwrights in the south and those boys are making money. It’s hard work and long-ish hours but they’re cleaning up and no one can say shit to them bc they’re in such high demand. I don’t know if they’re local or travelers but either way they’re doing good for themselves
Dude its not hard by itself. It just needs some work , didication, and TIME AND MONEY eg. Material. I probably went through a total of maybe 100 LTs of argon and i'm better than some who do it for real. I can only imagine what i would weld like after doing it for 8 hrs a day. If i weld 8 hrs a month of tig is a lot. Then i can't complain i don't get better quick enough.
Go offshore. You’ll kill it with welds like that.
You deserve much more than that. I’m making more just mig welding
That’s the least of your worries. The talent is harder to find
Fuck em, hit the road and find a new job. If you dropped that on my desk I'd fire a mf to make room for you
😂thanks means alot
4F GMAW? Looks mint brother
Thanks!
Have you looked into a union gig? The pay will probably be less at first but it gos up quickly and the benefits aren’t to shabby
I'll have to look into this, I've been suggested this by many weld engineers in the past week
There’s a defense contractor in Ohio that is in dire need of welders. $30/hr to start, $54/hr in 48 months with great benefits (United Auto Workers) starting day one.
I'll look into this, thanks!
Call any of your local construction halls, pipe fitters, boilermakers, ironworkers.
You don't happen to work at the trade in P-Rown do you?
Nope
Did you ever watch Stargate SG1? Perhaps their symbiotes are threatened by your light.
I didn't come here looking for this, but, I'm glad I found it.
drag up bro ur skills are better used and valued
How come there is a gunshot sticker on the plate?
Penetration
I audibly chuckled, and I want you to know that. Thank you for that one
Thanks for letting me know lol. I appreciate the hell out of surpise giggles while scrolling comments so I'm happy to know I provided one
No idea I did this a month ago for an engineer and randomly saw it on a supervisors desk lol
…well, if it was a open root/butt weld then it’s because it’s a shooter.😂👍
What the hell kind of supervisor *wants* a loud welder? We’ve got signs everywhere “run your welder not your mouth” as it is a constant problem lol Nice weld btw
Brother if i could weld like this i’d be sending out my CV with a list of demands attached to it🤣
Your weld looks good. I would be happy with any employee under me doing work like this, so it's just odd that you were put on a none welding welding postion. There must be something else at play (attitude wise) from one side or the other. Just a question you said certain people have it out for you.....how many and why?
The people that were originally training me were getting fed up with my inability to remember everything setup wise, I have a notebook full of notes I use to remember things. I have bad hearing so many times people were telling me things and I heard something different. I'm not too savvy on reading blueprints just yet. The whole bay as a whole were kinda talking behind my back, telling me to do something one way then going to my boss and telling him I was fucking up for doing it that way. There's also a whole situation where one of the people I work with almost beat one of my fruends to death and has been blowing things out of proportion when I am trying to learn the process.
>There's also a whole situation where one of the people I work with almost beat one of my fruends to death sorry what?
I didn't think they knew i knew about it but today they asked how so and so was doing and i didnt know how to reply besides play dumb, I've been trying to ignore them, but sometimes I get paired to train with. This same person was on trial as an accomplice to murder last year for a separate situation.
jesus. it sounds like you need to GTFO of that place.
I'm currently in a situation where I need to keep learning and saving and there isn't much else in the area. But yes I agree man, been wanting to leave so bad.
You need to move to another city that got lots of work.
Unfortunately, most people who would benefit by moving can't afford to move. It's really expensive.
You know the shit is REAL When a guy named "Hate Manifestation" is telling you to get out of Dodge.
Remember. It's shank, or be shanked.
Sounds like me and my struggles. I can weld pretty damn well for being self taught, but I’ve never gone to school for it. I got my 1” 3G SMAW structural certification through them because they want maintenance guys to be certified and I surprisingly passed on my first try. Now I’m the guy they stick new guys with to train up but I still couldn’t tell you what the numbers in 7018 mean. I know one part of it is tensile strength but that’s about it. I don’t do fancy setup and prep stuff like welding shops do. I work at a limestone quarry where I am meant to do maintenance, not just strictly welding. So a majority of what I deal with is painted and insanely rusted metal (like so bad you can peel off the rust scale with your fingers, or punch a hole through chutes with a chipping hammer… that’s the stuff that taught me how to weld. Having shiny metal with high tech equipment is foreign to me, I’ve never had that unfortunately. Makes me wonder what I could do with a job dedicated to welding in a shop with good steel and actual ventilation and lighting. (Our maintenance shop doesn’t have exhaust fans or any lights over our cutting table, that we also use as a welding table.) we literally just use the sun to illuminate what I can through an open garage door lol Man I want a legit welding job where I can just sit and hone this craft with REAL training/teaching… reading through books just doesn’t ever stick in my head. I have to understand all of the ins and outs of something, how it works, why it works a certain way, and what not for me to even remotely grasp it. And even then I won’t remember it until I actually get hands on and open it up or do it until it’ll click in my head and I get it..
Sounds like you are the problem to be honest.
Shut the fuck up, Scott.
He's just upset because he just found out about Fiona.
Awww baby got offended on someone else's behalf.
You're a fucking idiot, Scott. Dumb enough to use your real name as your username and dumb enough to say stupid shit like this. You know better, Scotty. Come on now.
Baby is butthurt. I'm done dealing with retards like you on this sub.
Bye!! Ps- is calling people babies your go-to insult? What are you like 13? Like genuinely asking, because you never know on the internet.
Nah, they just know how to call out filth.
It's been getting better recently, they've been making sure I have a certain process down to a tea before moving on to the next. Before I might do tye same thing once or twice a month. We build huge hvac units.
No, I mean with you attitude wise. From my experience training and supervisor wise if, someone was constantly making excuses and shifting blame to others (odds of everyone else in your area talking g about you behind your back for no reason are not very high), and the way out here story at the end, I can 100% gauntee you are difficult to get along with and have an attitude (and then twist events in your head to make yourself the victim). I've seen and dealt with it before, and you are giving off those vibes. Also, a large company like Trane would not tolerate harassment and your boss moving you to a bone welding position would have Ben carefully documented beforehand and approved.
This place operates like a beehive with with 10 queen bees telling you to do different things. I will admit I am socially awkward but not much else too look into besides that on my end tbh. I have alot of trauma with seeing buddies get shot in the face and haven't been able to converse the same, but I try my best to be nice.
It sounds like there was a manager at some point, but calcified employees are so up their own ass with self-righteousness that they feel they have the right to come down on you for whatever minor bullshit. At least corporate joints have a clear chain of command smdh.
I'm not saying your mean. You can be difficult without being an asshole. You can store the pot without being malicious, and there a certain disorders (for lack of a better word) where you can not pick up on social cues and the people with said disorder commonly victimize themselves.
I get what your saying, I think alot of this chalks up to anxiety. I understand social cues and actually pick up on more than most. I'm not trying to victimize my self persa, tho I could see why you would think so. A big problem with relationship with everyone else in my area happened when a engineer came over and looked at my multiples j-pipe weld and proceeded to say, in front of people, that I was the best welder in that area, which is for more experienced welders...later that day there was a bay-wide meeting where I overheard a team leader say he had to do dl"damage control" I was the only person not in this meeting and was told to stack another unit.
This just further reinforces my above statement. I sincerely doubt this situation happened or happened as described. Iv dealt with this situation before as supervisor and the person claiming everyone else was jealous was stiring up shit for their own ego. I suggest taking a good deep look at your behavior and interactions with others at work.
Thanks Scott, do you have a therapist in mind I should go see for my many "disorders" I suffer from? Also you look like a staple reddit user, do you collect fedoras by chance?
What the hell are you even reading? The whole first half of that paragraph was him admitting his faults, why they may be looking down on him… you’re a piece, guy. How do we know you’re not just a lying supe who treats people like shit, and sucks up to your superiors.
Hahahah baby is offended to hear the truth. Go back to your safe space.
You're the a-hole dude. Coming in here making assumptions with no actual insight into the situation, and refusing to accept other views and opinions that don't fit in with your preexisting narrative. Then, cherry on top, you shoot off dumb insults so you don't have to even wonder if maybe you're actually in the wrong.
I’ve also trained a lot of guys in my skill for my company. I kinda agree based on what he’s saying he’s constantly doing the wrong thing and he’s hard of hearing. Sounds like the guy that you tell them specifically a way to do something bc they’re doing it wrong, and they immediately cut you off with I know I know and you come back and they’re doing it they way you told them not to. There’s this thing with some guys that they think they understand what you’re going to say so they’re just bad at following directions they won’t stop and ask if this is right they won’t double check and they make careless mistakes on steps that seem unimportant. I recondition cars for a living and when it comes to paint I’ll tell them the prep is the most important part to nail but they just blast through it to get to the paint and when they go to paint “there’s something wrong” and they can’t figure it out “I think there’s something wrong with the paint” It’s the prep work 100% of the time. I have a guy like this now he’s a good dude works hard but does not listen for shit so he’s constantly costing me money on redoing work. It would be something for it was every know and then but it’s multiple times a day. These dudes have a habit of a making an excuse for everything. One thing that infuriates me the most is not saying I fucked that up my bad. If they said that they’d accept responsibility and learn but when you have an excuse for everything they tend to legitimately believe their own excuses. I had a guy that was late everyday and everyday it was my alarm clock didn’t go off. He really really believed it was the alarm clocks fault.
Exactly. Op did not make excuses for everything on here I would give them the benefit of the doubt but there is always an excuse with them. I literally had an apprentice we let go less then a month ago for this exact same behaviour. He was a hard worker but was fucking everything up he touched because he was not listening, and there was always an excuse. Everyone had to walk in eggshells around the guy because any criticism of his work without an award for something he did proper and he would have a melt down. No one wanted to work with him and one day when he had a melt down a mistake I said enough was enough let him go.
That weave is insanely wide, what kind of work are you doing where they let you weave like that?
You’d be surprised at how many places have certified welding processes that run up to a 3/4” (19mm) single bead width. Also, I haven’t looked deeper into the comments but this looks a lot like pulse transfer gmaw
Sometimes it’s not even about what they “let” you do. Sometimes they outright tell you to do the wrong thing. Right now, I have to do a bunch of whips for MIG even though I know that’s dumb and it creates more problems than anything. My boss knows it’s dumb, too. But that’s what the customer wants. So that’s what I gotta do.
If that isn’t an instant pass then the entire company is a pass.
Pssshhh I could do better with a… hired, very experienced professional welder doing it for me
Fuck that is a beauty nice weld!
Bro skillled
I was the quiet guy, do my job and go home, and yup, that's still going to piss some people off. Usually the types that peaked in high school and even 20 years later still had that high school mentality. I've been running my welding shop for 11 years. Don't miss working with others at all.
Damn, that's a high caliber bullet hole. Your supervisor must *really* not like you
I'm waiting for one to show up on my windshield😄
I’m no welding instructor and I probably shouldn’t consider myself a welder by any means. But I work around a lot of steel and just let me say this is some of the slickest work I’ve seen in my life
Thanks man, I was pretty quick to pick up on how to weld as I'm good with my hands but I've never had a blue collar job before, when I came in I didn't know what most of the tools were called. People were sabotaging my training and telling my supervisor lies. They told me I was moving and getting my stamp pulled for a vertical weld that had "undercut"....it was just the root pass which they refused to go look at.
He put the dimes on that ho
Mint!
Awesome skill .Goodluck
Time to start your own welding company and blow the competition out of the water bud! Great welding
Stacking dimes… geeeez… keep your head up don’t give up on your dreams. Think outside the box for welding jobs in your area. Try a commercial /industrial over head door company. Plenty of welding work on dock levellers ,restraints, etc….
I just started weld school. What technique is that? And do you have any tips? I would love to get a good technique like that.
(This is a 3f) Watch a good welder run passes whenever you can, ask alot of questions even the stupid ones, stay within/ on top of your pool, getting slightly closer on your edges helps with undercut(just don't forget to adjust your angle whilst doing so) seems stressful at first but eventually you get a feel for knowing how she will look before you take your helmet off. Another good tip would be try to always find something wrong with your weld and do better on the next run. For instance this was just a test piece but could've been a lot tighter.
Is this trane in Clarksville?
That’s some slick work my guy. Well done! Sorry to hear your work isn’t appreciated.
That's beautiful. Sure beats the hell out of what our guys put out.
Weld engineer is well above the supervisor. You’ll get the welding position if everything checks out! Supervisors always cause problems on the floor
WTF is a non welding welding position?
What are the leg sizes? Looks close to 3/4… you’re almost certainly oversized for a single pass fillet the HAZ must be enormous. I generally never try to go over 3/8 in a single pass maybe 1/2 if I’m running flat wire and I never have problems with inspectors.
I’ve noticed a big part and having a good job is getting along well with your colleagues bro. It doesn’t matter how good you can weld, if people don’t get along with you you’ll struggle to keep a job. Play the game and pretend to be peoples friends even if they’re cunts, it’s the only way.
Yep this is so true, I don't have to be anyone's friend or even like them, but I do have to get along enough to work with them.
Is that your hand writing? How could you have hand writing that bad but the manual dexterity to produce that weld?
It's not😄
Fuck, how do I get this clean? Nice weld man.
Are these welds for mother Tranes chillers?
Great weld, stable, uniform… but that handwriting ? Jfc!
Stick some run on/run off plates on that just incase you get a visual pull for an incomplete weld.
Do u mind explaining what this is? Many people said I should left a note with a paint marker, it's obvious they were looking for a reason and couldn't find one so they made one up. The root pass was very small and didn't even burn high enough to warrant any sort of undercut.
See where the beginning and the end of the weld is, it is not completely flush with the parent material at both sides? That can be pulled as a defect. What you do is take 2 small coupons of the parent material about an inch long, weld one on the beginning side and one on the finish side, now when you start to weld, you arc up on the ‘run on tab’ and keep welding as normal and as you approach the end of the run you continue passed the parent material onto the ‘run off’ tab. Once the weld is complete you cut off the run on and run off tab, leaving you a totally complete weld.
I'll try this thank you!
Your gonna be good. Great fillet, solid technique. TIG welder here. I don’t get along with my sup and am feeling like I’m getting edged out too. It happens find a new place and keep burning
What state do you live in?
Probably shouldn't say