leo107•7d ago

A 68 year old hand told me my tube rolling was too pretty and it stuck with me

I was on a shutdown over in Gary, Indiana about three weeks back helping swap out some water wall tubes in a recovery boiler, and this old hand named Ray who has been doing this since the 70s was watching me roll a joint on the lower header. I was proud of it too, nice even bead, no undercut, textbook looking roll. Ray walked up, looked at it for a second, and said "that's real pretty, but pretty dont hold 900 pounds of steam, the expansion does." I kind of brushed it off at first because I figured he was just being an old timer. But then he had me cut a sample out the next day and sure enough the roll was tight on the outside but the tube hadnt fully expanded into the seat, we caught it before hydro but it could have been a leak at startup. I have been rolling tubes for 11 years now and I got comfortable, doing it the same way because nobody ever flagged it. Ray had me run three more that shift with his method, slower on the final quarter turn and watching the feel instead of the clock, and every one passed the mic check clean. Now I am wondering how many of my past rolls looked good and were just getting by. Any of you older guys got a trick like that you learned the hard way, something that changed how you read a roll by feel instead of by the book?