Getting paid above and below ground!!!
Nice
@CurSedVoyce, and yes needlers work really well for chipping heavy slag (and other stuff like peening cast iron, removing heavy rust and scale, etc. ). I have one but i seldom use it while welding, the reason being how the slag comes off can tell you a lot about how your weld is coming along. If the slag is fighting coming off that tells you that it's being held in place, usually indicating that you might not have tied in well on a side or have undercut or cold lap that is trapping it in place. By running a thin cutting wheel lightly on the edges, grinding the toe of the weld removing the slag, it'll show which side was trapping it, which allows you to adjust your technique on the next rod (and it removes the offending problem rather nicely). I personally rarely have to resort to that anymore and usually just wire wheel it to get it off quick (they usually only give us grinders and wire wheels, a needler would be a massive luxury for us
), but on harder spots where i can't really see I'll use a file to cut the edges a bit to see how it went in there. Even if i end up blasting it off with a power tool a little chipping and filing can show me a lot, not to mention the slag is often super hot and is very capable of starting a fire so removing the bulk by hand so it falls more or less straight down can really keep things safer too and is a good habit to have.
When we break in apprentice welders we let them use grinders at first so they learn how to weld, then they move up to no grinder at all unless it's absolutely necessary because you messed up that bad. They chip all slag by hand. This forces them to see where they're messing up at and work on it (not in small part because doing that by hand sucks if you mess up a bit), and before too long they can work completely without grinders on pretty much everything if they had to, removing the tools from the equation and building the skills they need when they can't get a grinder in a spot. Once they can torch cut a bevel by hand in position, beat a land on with a hammer, ream it with a file, and then weld that up to standards with a bit of water running out they're ready to go weld pretty much anything that comes their way. Obviously most people would never go that far with it normally since that's not their career, but by cutting the corners with a file or saw blade (weld a handle on a sawzall blade or similar) to see what slag falls off easy or hard you can see what the slag is saying and can see first hand what happened and really dial in your techniques faster.
Sometimes doing a 3 pass (one pass then 2 more stacked to cover it) will tie in much better and the slag will literally peel itself sometimes (very common with xxx8 rods like 7018 ). This separates the top side tie in from the bottom side tie in, and since you are building it in layers it is easier to get everything nice and in the right place. By running skinnier welds (stringer beads) in the horizontal position the rod has less chance of trapping slag, it's easier to control and place where you want, and you can set your machine so you simply drag the rod touching the plate the whole time on it's flux, simply angling the rod to a healthy drag angle and letting the rod push the weld where it's supposed to go with the force of the arc. You can run stupid hot like that, and the heat will burn the rod back into the flux so you won't stick as you gently drag the rod along, and you just have to go slow enough that it fills in all the way. If you accidently go too fast it'll undercut, so if that is happening just slow down a bit and let it fill up some more. If there's a gap feel free to fill it with 6010 or 11 first, that will give you a nice smooth surface for your heavier slag rods to weld easier, it'll penetrate at the root better, and the flux is easy to clean because it's thinner.
Sorry for the unsolicited tips, I've been looking out of a 2x4 window a whole bunch lately (nothing new there but we're busy again), and I've got a first year apprentice with me so I'm in full on weld instructor mode
He just got out of the local community college i went to and the teacher that got me going in it is still teaching there, so that's super cool. One of the most talented guys and hardest working guys I've ever met, he was done working in the field for the rest of his life but he would be in there in a booth burning rods like he had a test the next day, always staying sharp and practicing. He got an engineering degree and could have gone and made a fortune (engineers with decades of field experience as a union tradesmen are the most mythical unicorn of all), but he wanted to teach kids so he did that instead. I need to shoot up there and see him, might do that soon if i can find the time, it's been awhile.
