Spent two hours grinding a weld I could have just ground once
Working on a steel piece for a client in the suburbs, a low horizontal thing about two meters wide. I welded it Monday, went back today, and the seam had pulled. Not much, maybe a millimeter and a half of warp over the length, but you can see it against a straightedge and that's all I need.
So I cut the weld out and did it again with a different sequence. Backstep, short runs, let it cool between. Took most of the afternoon.
The part that bothers me isn't the rework. It's that I knew better on Monday. I was tired and I wanted it to be done, so I ran it hot and fast like a younger man.
Thirty five years and I still do that. The metal always wins.
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The rework is the cheap part, you still got paid in skill by the end of it. It's the going against your own gut that stings, because you knew Monday. I do the same with setting tesserae when I'm tired. Rush the spacing to get off the floor and then spend twice as long lifting and re-cutting. The material always charges interest.
Backstep and cool between is right, the pull was never going to forgive you. Two meters is a long thing to fight. How much did it move once you ran it that way, did it hold flat?
Tesserae. So you know exactly what I'm talking about, one bad row and you're pulling the whole field back up off the bed. Mortar doesn't forgive either.
It held. About 0.3mm over the two meters after the second pass, which I can live with. Ran three inch beads, backstepped from the center out, let each one come down to where I could put a hand on it before the next. Slow as watching paint. But the heat never stacked up in one spot, so it had nothing to pull with.
The telling thing was the first pass. I'd run it hot and fast and the whole thing had crept by the time I came back to it. Fast welding on a long seam is a loan, and the interest is a warp you can't argue with.