Welding

A welder can work for any trade.  In fact it is a trade in itself.  In the union they refer to it as a tool of the trade.  That means a plumber, an electrician, a carpenter, or a sheet metal worker (Tin Knocker) could be a welder.  But not all in a specific trade can weld, including me.

For one thing you can ruin your eyesight from the welding flash if you don’t wear proper PPE (personal protective equipment).  There are electric welders, gas welders (acetylene), and other types.  Many times in my years as an electrician, people have assumed that all electricians are welders.  Not true.

One time I was called out to a job on a farm in the back country to wire a shop.  One of the requirements was to install a receptacle for an electric welder.  That was fine.  I could do the wiring – the farmer could do the welding.

When I finished the wiring portion of the job I put my tools and left over material in the truck.  I was in a hurry to get home because it was getting late.  The farmer asked me to show him how to use the welder.  I responded that I can wire for a welder but didn’t know how to weld.

Since it was an electric welder the farmer said; “You’re an electrician, you must know how to weld.”  Most farmers I know are expert welders, but at the time the REA (Rural Electric Association) had just come into the area.

The farmer said; “You must know something about it.”  So I told him I would give it a try.

He found two pieces of iron and set one on top of the other.  I had no idea what setting I should use but took a weld … er … wild guess, put on the mask, and … everything was totally black.

Did you ever try to run a stick along a crevice when you can’t see the crevice, or the stick for that matter?  More wild guesses.

Every time the welding rod would touch one of those pieces of metal it would flash and I could see momentarily.  Then the rod would stick and I would twist it off of the metal and try again.  Each effort I got a little closer to the spot I was trying to weld.

I finally caught on to the process of holding the rod close enough to the metal that it would arc, but not so close that it would stick.  The light from the arc would tell you where to go.  I finally “welded” a few spots on those pieces of iron, took off the mask, shut down the welder and told that farmer; “That’s how you weld.”  Then I went home.

I often wondered if he thought that all of that flashing and slashing I had done was part of the process.

I felt like I was the world’s greatest pretender.  (cue music)

Screaming Hank

I don’t know what his name was, but the people on the job called him “Screaming Hank.”  He was a building contractor.  When I first met him I heard him before I saw him.  He was up on a building under construction and hollering to his helper for something or other.  We found out he wasn’t hurt, just giving loud instructions.

Some time after I first met him I wound up working on one of his projects again.  He was building houses from pre-built panels.  The pre-built sections would come in by railroad.  Screaming Hank’s crew would assemble them on prepared foundations.

My boss had the wiring contract for the houses.  The carpenters would set up the inside walls but not nail them solid.  That would come later.  I learned this one day when I inadvertently leaned on one of the walls and it moved.  I thought we were experiencing an earthquake before I figured out what was happening.

One of the first things I would do on this type of building project was get up above the ceiling level and drill holes for wire in the outside wall partitions.  After the trusses and roof were on it would be much more difficult.  Some of the inside walls came pre-sheetrocked on both sides and also needed to be drilled right away.

The process for the carpenters was to also set up scaffolding around the outside of the house so that they could work on the soffits and eaves.

One day one of the carpenters – John is all I know him by – was in the future attic putting roof sections together.  Screaming Hank came driving up, apparently John wasn’t doing something right.  Screaming Hank started hollering “John!  Oh, John!”

John didn’t answer, he just kept nailing.  He didn’t acknowledge Hank.  John acted like Hank wasn’t even there.

After calling a number of times Screaming Hank exploded.  He crawled up the scaffolding and started across the ceiling rafters toward John.  I thought to myself; “Uh oh.  There’s going to be bloodshed.”   I eyed the distance between John and me and knew I could never get there in time to help.  Besides, what could I do?  I would likely only wind up getting hurt myself.

All of a sudden Screaming Hank disappeared.  About that time John turned around with his hammer in his hand with a look that said he was really going to nail something.   I went over to where I had last seen Hank.  There he was lying on the kitchen floor staring up at the hole he had made in the sheetrock above.

I heard Screaming Hank say; “Now I have to repair that ceiling.”

Hank got up, got into his car and drove away.  Old John spit out a stream of tobacco juice and kept nailing.  He had never uttered a word.

That was the last time I ever saw Screaming Hank.

Or John.

That’ll Hold ‘Em

I have had my share of run-ins with different trades working on the same job.  For some reason electrical boxes prove to be invisible to sheet rockers.  I have been on jobs where more than one electrical box, installed at electrical rough-in, was subsequently covered by sheetrock.  In commercial jobs they can be covered by two layers of sheet rock.

Today a “tick-tracer” can be used to find a box.  Just power up the circuit and go find the hidden box by the live electricity behind the blank wall.  However, before tick-tracers were invented you could get close to the area by holding a straight edge against the wall and looking for a slight bulge.

On a job in Glasgow, Montana we were working on a three story hotel.  When we came back to do finish work on the first floor the boxes were covered and we complained to the sheetrockers.

When they rocked the second floor they went back and cut open the boxes for us.  They didn’t cut around the outside of the box.  The cuts were on the inside of the box footprint.  That did two things.  It left the sheetrock bulged out at the box location due to being hung up on the outside edge; and it chopped up the insulation on the wiring inside the box, leaving us to repair the damage to the wiring.

On the third floor when we finished the rough-in I left the power on to the circuits when we left.  When the sheetrockers started cutting into the live wires, the live circuits burned the dickens out of their saw blades.

The carpenters and sheetrockers were not all that happy with us but it was the last floor and we all lived through it.

Another thing I have run into with the guys that do taping and mudding is an electrical box full of plaster.  When perf-a-taping a joint if they had too much plaster they sometimes filled our boxes with it.

One of the men I worked with returned to a job to put in the switches and receptacles to find that all the openings in the kitchen had been filled with plaster.  The tapers (we called them “mudders”) had plugged our boxes and finished the walls so that the boxes couldn’t be found.

The electrician complained to the mudders and their reply was “That’s your problem.  You find them.”  So the electrician took a hammer and started down a horizontal pathway where the boxes should have been, pounding holes in the sheetrock.

The mudders came in screaming; “What are you doing?”

He replied; “You covered them, I’m finding them.”

I thought they were going to kill him.  But it did a good job of adjusting attitudes.

By the way – the electrician’s name was Buster.