i need some pointers

[arcstick]

has anyone done any pipe welding for natural gas companys,ive done some pipe welding in school and have natural gas well drilling exsperiance just not the welding on it what ive seen the guy i used to work for do is just butt the pipe up flush and run stringer beads on it but he was an oldtimer and great welder

[Speen]

Uhm, sounds weird. What kind of gauge thickness (is gauge used when refering to piping?) were the pipes? Is there any significant pressure or temperature?

[arcstick]

i dont no the schedule of the pipe its about 3/16 inches thick and various diameters usualy 8 inch or bigger ,it has no pressure on it its just the caseing pipe,what i learned in school was to bevel the pipe to 37 1/2 degrees ,but this guy never did that i belive its because of the thickness and no pressure on it.

[DesertRider33]

If you go to a pipe company and try welding their pipe that way, it's a safe bet you'll be going home without a job.

[arcstick]

its not a pipe company its a natural gas well drilling company the welding would be just every now and then, on the caseing pipe that goes on the outside of the pressure pipe just to hold the earth back a little and it only goes down until you hit bedrock the inside pressure pipe is threadead

[wirehunt]

I have heard of them being slapped together, but you may want to do some kind of prep to get a bit of guts into it.

[DesertRider33]

Did you see the news story on the natural gas well leaking gas into the water supply? Some neighborhood has so much gas in the water lines that they can light the water on fire as it comes out of the faucet! That's a pretty good reason to weld the well casing properly!

[bigblue]

Originally Posted by DesertRider33

Did you see the news story on the natural gas well leaking gas into the water supply? Some neighborhood has so much gas in the water lines that they can light the water on fire as it comes out of the faucet! That's a pretty good reason to weld the well casing properly!

damn, your toilet would be a sitting time bomb.

[arcstick]

Originally Posted by arcstick

its not a pipe company its a natural gas well drilling company the welding would be just every now and then, on the caseing pipe that goes on the outside of the pressure pipe just to hold the earth back a little and it only goes down until you hit bedrock the inside pressure pipe is threadead

theres no gas in the caseing pipe it only goes down to bedrock and then has cement poured in it to hold the actual gas pipe wich the wellhead goes that is threaded you cant actually weld it its 3500 to 6500 feet long in joints about 40 feet long you dont just stop and weld every section together its threaded , whoever did that gas well thats getting into peoples water supply did is one of the following didnt thread it tight and no pipe compound, used bad pipe probably second hand pipe or reused out of a well that has been plugged and the pipe pulled out, or it might be an old well and the pipe has just deteriated and started leaking usualy when this happens you run a smaller diameter pipe inside of the old pipe with a device on the first joint in the on that will end up on bottom called a packer that will hold it in place and disable the old pipe but theres alot of old gas wells that just get left unattended by independent drillers,small company

[wirehunt]

Originally Posted by DesertRider33

Did you see the news story on the natural gas well leaking gas into the water supply? Some neighborhood has so much gas in the water lines that they can light the water on fire as it comes out of the faucet! That's a pretty good reason to weld the well casing properly!

Did it make the international news??


Arcstick: A bit of a prep will give it some guts and make it easier to follow the line where you want to weld, after all it'll still get knocked about a bit getting lowered in.

[arcstick]

Originally Posted by wirehunt

Did it make the international news??


Arcstick: A bit of a prep will give it some guts and make it easier to follow the line where you want to weld, after all it'll still get knocked about a bit getting lowered in.

thanks thats what i was thinking too

[DesertRider33]

I doubt it made the international news. It made the local and national news though.

Arcstick, not to be an a$$, but it is up to you if you want to do your welds in some half-a$$ way because you think they're not important. Maybe they're truely not important and everything will 'be just fine' if you 'just weld it any old way'. Or, maybe not.

I'm not trying to 'get on my high horse here' but I try to always do my welds as properly as I can, even if they're not 'important', because I don't want somebody at some future time to look at my welds and say to themselves ''what idiot welded this??''. I guess it's a personal pride issue for me. The welds I leave behind are all my customers really know about me or will remember about me. They may not have liked my price or liked something personal about me for whatever reason, but I like them to at least know I did a good job for them.

Someone once told me to always try to make every weld my best weld. Obviously, all welds don't always turn out the greatest, but I do at least try and if they turn out that bad, I grind it out and try again. Nobody's perfect.

[arcstick]

Originally Posted by DesertRider33

I doubt it made the international news. It made the local and national news though.

Arcstick, not to be an a$$, but it is up to you if you want to do your welds in some half-a$$ way because you think they're not important. Maybe they're truely not important and everything will 'be just fine' if you 'just weld it any old way'. Or, maybe not.

I'm not trying to 'get on my high horse here' but I try to always do my welds as properly as I can, even if they're not 'important', because I don't want somebody at some future time to look at my welds and say to themselves ''what idiot welded this??''. I guess it's a personal pride issue for me. The welds I leave behind are all my customers really know about me or will remember about me. They may not have liked my price or liked something personal about me for whatever reason, but I like them to at least know I did a good job for them.

Someone once told me to always try to make every weld my best weld. Obviously, all welds don't always turn out the greatest, but I do at least try and if they turn out that bad, I grind it out and try again. Nobody's perfect.

you do sound like an a@* and it has nothing to do with my welds they look great it has to do with the prep i origonally if some new anything about natural gas well weld and i dont think you do sorry this thread ended up going the wrong way

[The Flash]

Not trying to make anyone mad or upset here, but I have to agree with what Desert said. I'm not the best welder around but I ain't bad.

If the inner gas pipe were to break for some unknown reason, where does that gas go? If the outer casing had pinholes from not properly prepping the joint & the gas were to leak into the surface area of the ground & an explosion occured, who's to blame for it?

I've never welded on pipelines but I know I'd prep it right! Like Desert, I try to do my best with my welding. I build racecars, work on heavy equip. & other various things that people use & it is their life or mine that depends on it.

Just my opinion!

Flash

[ArcBurn007]

i say prep it and weld it properly . i would because you never what might happen

[arcstick]

thats partly what im trying to figure out i know usually its 37 1/2 degree bevel but has anyone actually done this is it code what is the code for it. I went to technical college for advanced welding and recievd proper certificates, and the guy i saw doing it the way i explained earlier has been welding these up for 30 plus years he owns the drilling company hes the guy that inspired me to go to welding school for all i know that is the proper way to do it if your not for sure why shoot your mouth off and say well id do it properly no ones answered my actual question WHAT IS CODE OR PROPER FOR THIS

[DesertRider33]

I don't know what the code is for this, but I do know that to properly butt weld two pipes together where the wall thickness is 3/16", it needs to be a groove joint cause if you just put the unbeveled ends of the pipes together and weld around them, you're never going to penetrate to the root, which will cause the weld to be the weakest part of the pipe.