Careers
Career
About two years before leaving the army, I attended Maidenhead College for Plumbing and Welding, enjoying the experience that would stand me in good stead until I retired. After graduating college with a City & Guilds certificate in Plumbing and Welding, I felt I could get a job anywhere with these two degrees, this was not the case. Almost every potential employer asked "What experience do you have?" Weeks went by before I was able to secure a position welding cinema chairs out of tubular steel, using a process of oxy-acetylene brazing with the flux agent being piped directly into the flame. Consequently the odor from the brazing process was not pleasant but the work was simple enough...and it paid enough to support my wife and two children, plus enough for a trip to the pub a couple of times a week. One of my brother Christopher's friends who was a regular at the pub was interested in what I was doing for employment as he was a welder by trade. After several months he told me of an opening at "Abrey & Gerratts" for a welder where he, Tom, worked, and encouraged me to give it a try. They wanted an arc-welder, or stick welder as he called it, this was something that I had seen but never tried, I was a gas welder, but willing to try anything. My first day at Abrey and Gerratts was quite interesting, the welders, friends of Tom came over and helped me lay down my first bead on a real production part, of which I had a huge bin of them in my weld booth. I think the first twenty or thirty were so horrible and full of holes that I had burnt in them, Tom's friends only laughed and encouraged me to throw them over the fence into the high grass of a disused rail line hiding the mess I had made. Eventually I improved and became very efficient and had pride in my work. Over the following year I became proficient in Shielded Metal Arc, Innershield, and carbon-arc scarfing (which is a process of cutting or removing metal by the use of electrically charged carbon rods and forced air, the carbon rod melts the metal and the forced air oxidizes the molten metal and blows it away). I built electrical boxes for the high speed trains, large commercial ovens, and a host of other smaller jobs. Within two years of working at A&G I became the welding instructor, when needed, a most satisfying part of the job.
Tempflex, expansion joints
I emigrated to the United States hoping to become a Heating and Airconditioning technician, however, the year of emigration saw the death of Wayne Walker, my sponsor. Matt Salisbury took me under his wing upon arrival and I worked in construction for about the first year here. Living in Hawthorne, CA I would get up about 3:30am, and drive to Pasadena which was about 25 miles to pick up one of the construction workers, we then drove to Corona, another 45 miles, where we worked to noon on some concrete storage tanks for the Orange Heights company just off of Main St. Then at noon we would drive to Perris about another 30 miles to work on a run-off valve enclosure for the Perris reservoir. Temperatures were often above 100 deg F, so the 55 gallon drum filled with water would often find me touching my head to the bottom of it on the inside. I would dry off very quickly in the afternoon sun. Once the two jobs had been completed I decide to get out of construction and its average $100 per day paycheck, and go back to welding at a $3 per hour steady job in Lynwood, real close to Nickerson Gardens an area one did not wish to be. While working for Ben Higbee at his shop, I became very familiar with all kinds of equipment, including lathes, mills, and presses, as we worked on everything from truck gas tanks to piping for the Alaska Pipeline. I left Ben when he would not give me a dollar an hour raise, which would have made $4, I had been running his shop for about a year of so, and had been disappointed with my paycheck for sometime as my next door neighbor was a welder working for the shipyard and was getting $8 per hour. If I ever get $8 per hour the world would be at my fingertips. Years later when I was earning over $20 an hour, I was broker than I had ever been. I got a job at Farr Company, they build large air filtration houses, the kind that keep long tunnels and mines in clean fresh air, each unit kept many welders busy around the clock. Once again I distinguished myself in the company, a friend of mine, Dean Chesnut and I became the shift safety officers, which was funny in light of something that happened one night at work. The walls of the air filtration houses are about 20 x 16 high, and are perched on the raised floor, (about two feet off the ground) of the building supported by two by fours to prevent them from falling down. Once the fabricated roof of the building is lowered onto the four walls the building becomes secure and we can then fabricate all that goes within the building. Dean was operating the crane moving the roof into position, when one end of the roof swung a little low and hit one of the four walls causing all four walls to crash to the floor. Before the walls fell we both had seen one of the welders standing next to the building where the walls fell. Concerned for his life we unhooked the roof and connected the crane to the walls in turn to see if the welder was still alive. Upon lifting the third wall, the welder climbed out through the doorway of the fourth wall, completely unharmed. Apparently when the first wall fell the top of the doorway knocked him the ground into the space between the suspended floor and the top of the wall thereby saving his life. After Dean lifted the last wall and found there were no casualties, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Not many months after this incident, about 90 percent of our shift was laid off. My next job would be working for Tempflex in Compton, CA.
Tempflex, Associated Piping & Engineering, Johnson Controls
Tempflex, was two companies under one name, each had their own local union. One part fabricated expansion joints. Joints which are fabricated into convoluted metal bellows made from exotic metals like Tantalum, and Inconel. These expansion joints were used in any industry that used metal piping. The oil and chemical processing industries were our major customers. We also built the associated steel piping configurations for those industries. The other part of Tempflex built piping strictly for the Nuclear industry, the welders were part of the same union but were of a different local, men who worked 'out of the hall' who did not have to be fired, they were just sent back to the hall if management had a problem with them. In the eighties they were earning about $25 per hour, most enjoyed a lavish lifestyle and carried quite a bit of debt. When the Nuclear part of Tempflex moved to New Braunfels, Texas, these welders were sent back to the hall to seek new jobs. The commercial part, now called Associated Piping and Engineering, concentrated on piping both regular and stainless steel configurations. Occasionally we would do small Nuclear jobs like those pictured above. Except for the machining I fabricated these units for Duke Power Nuclear generators. Often these jobs were required to be shipped with a very short ship time, requiring overtime by the builders. One such occasion will be burned into my memory forever, normally I would start my overtime at 5am, but on this one job I was required to come in at 3am because the job had to be completed. There were two of us working on the job, myself and John Veloz (pictured in Tempflex picture above, second from the left). John was a good welder, and was developing into a good fitter, he was also a hard worker and clean-cut young man. John had recently become a proud father so the overtime was definately helping out. At 3am I started work, John had not yet shown up, I assumed he had overslept and would be in soon, 4am, no John, 5am, no John, then about 5:30am Senji Osaka, the plant supervisor came in and told me that John would not be in. He said that Johns wife had called and said that she was up tending the baby when two masked men broke into the house and shot John in bed with multiple shotgun blasts. Nothing appeared in the paper about the incident, and to this day do not know if the killers were ever brought to justice. Associated Piping and Engineering which was a subsidiary of Johnson Controls took on the name of Johnson Controls in the 80's, and the work focus was shifted from Compton to New Braunfels, but we did keep and work on many interesting projects. One of those projects was building the media containment donut for Nuclear Fusion. The top picture is of me welding (not on the unit but on a piece of scrap metal for the camera) almost all the welding was done by heliarc not stick as in the picture. In the bottom picture I am pictured fitting the bellows together so they can be tacked and eventually welded together.
Nuclear Fusion
A Modified Metal
January 1987
The new nitride dispersion strengthening (NDS) furnace, built for the U.S. Army recuperator program, is due to start up this month. Reviewing final steps in construction of the unique furnace are (from left) Lynn Kindlimann, materials consultant; Mary Gerstner, engineering program manager; Jim Orman, welder; and Steve White, construction coordinator, preliminary design. AiResearch personnel designed and built the furnace, which uses a conventional process but must run 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit hotter. -- Photo by Larry Underhill
This picture is of the nitride dispersion strengthening furnace, that I had the honor to fabricate for AiResearch Manufacturing corp. Lynn, Mary, and Steve were all there to offer pointers, or when I needed questions answered. This project was one of the most fun projects I have been involved in. I was basically given a free hand in the construction of it. The following article appeared in our AiResearch newsletter the Monitory. The new recuperator will handle exhaust gas at 1,850 degrees Fahrenheit, 300 degrees hotter than current recuperators are capable of handling, according to Mary Gerstner.
But the difference is much more than a matter of degrees, it was explained by metallurgist Lynn Kindliman. The 1,850-degree capability is required if you are going to recuperate advanced technology engines.
That operating temperature range might have been possible to achieve in the past, but only at the exorbitant price of using superalloys requiring a high content of strategic metals like chromium and cobalt.
AiResearch Manufacturing corp. is achieving a cost breakthrough by developing a special processing technique to give a common stainless steel great strength without brittleness at high temperatures. The process also allows brazing manufacturing techniques to be employed for lower cost, high quality metal joining.
Three years before this picture was taken, I was working for Associated Piping and Engineering, a Johnson Controls company. The project I was working on was welding a flange to a 30 inch diameter pipe, 3 inches wall thickness. The pipe was centrifically cast and the material was inconel 600. Inconel 600 generally is not much of a problem to weld, but when the pipe has been centrifically cast, all sorts of stresses are set up in the material. What is centrifically cast, first a short lesson in metallurgy, when metal is heated it expands, and when cooled shrinks, so normally when a pipe is made, the pipe is cooled from the inside allowing the exterior of the pipe to shrink naturally around the cooled inner thereby reducing stresses. Just the opposite happens with centrifically cast, the outside is cooled first causing the inner metal to be unnaturally compressed creating multiple stresses in the material, and at the same time creating lots of positive properties, like greater strength, heat, and corrosion resistance. The project was for AiResearch Manufacturing. Each weld was die penetrant tested, an was found to have multiple cracks in the weld. Lynn Kindliman was called in to assess the situation. It was decided to machine a C dimension in the pipe, which is to machine on the inside of the pipe, and the flange thereby machining out the greatest stress areas. This however proved of little help, so it was decided to fly a welder out from Texas who was very familiar with this type of material and weld. He arrived, stayed a week, made two welds in that week, and achieved far worse results, the company sent him back to Texas. Lynn and I became friends and he was amazed at the cosmetic quality, or the looks of my welding. We discussed the project and decided to change the procedure slightly, instead of die penetrant inspection of the first pass of welding, we would weld a second pass, and die penetrant both sides of the weld. We found the the second pass had only a few cracks, and the third pass had none. We completed a weld, which required a lot of welding, machined the passes which contained the cracks, re-die penetrant inspection to ensure the weld was free from cracks, then X-ray the joint to ensure a sound joint.
The new nitride dispersion strengthening (NDS) furnace, built for the U.S. Army recuperator program, is due to start up this month. Reviewing final steps in construction of the unique furnace are (from left) Lynn Kindlimann, materials consultant; Mary Gerstner, engineering program manager; Jim Orman, welder; and Steve White, construction coordinator, preliminary design. AiResearch personnel designed and built the furnace, which uses a conventional process but must run 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit hotter. -- Photo by Larry Underhill
This picture is of the nitride dispersion strengthening furnace, that I had the honor to fabricate for AiResearch Manufacturing corp. Lynn, Mary, and Steve were all there to offer pointers, or when I needed questions answered. This project was one of the most fun projects I have been involved in. I was basically given a free hand in the construction of it. The following article appeared in our AiResearch newsletter the Monitory. The new recuperator will handle exhaust gas at 1,850 degrees Fahrenheit, 300 degrees hotter than current recuperators are capable of handling, according to Mary Gerstner.
But the difference is much more than a matter of degrees, it was explained by metallurgist Lynn Kindliman. The 1,850-degree capability is required if you are going to recuperate advanced technology engines.
That operating temperature range might have been possible to achieve in the past, but only at the exorbitant price of using superalloys requiring a high content of strategic metals like chromium and cobalt.
AiResearch Manufacturing corp. is achieving a cost breakthrough by developing a special processing technique to give a common stainless steel great strength without brittleness at high temperatures. The process also allows brazing manufacturing techniques to be employed for lower cost, high quality metal joining.
Three years before this picture was taken, I was working for Associated Piping and Engineering, a Johnson Controls company. The project I was working on was welding a flange to a 30 inch diameter pipe, 3 inches wall thickness. The pipe was centrifically cast and the material was inconel 600. Inconel 600 generally is not much of a problem to weld, but when the pipe has been centrifically cast, all sorts of stresses are set up in the material. What is centrifically cast, first a short lesson in metallurgy, when metal is heated it expands, and when cooled shrinks, so normally when a pipe is made, the pipe is cooled from the inside allowing the exterior of the pipe to shrink naturally around the cooled inner thereby reducing stresses. Just the opposite happens with centrifically cast, the outside is cooled first causing the inner metal to be unnaturally compressed creating multiple stresses in the material, and at the same time creating lots of positive properties, like greater strength, heat, and corrosion resistance. The project was for AiResearch Manufacturing. Each weld was die penetrant tested, an was found to have multiple cracks in the weld. Lynn Kindliman was called in to assess the situation. It was decided to machine a C dimension in the pipe, which is to machine on the inside of the pipe, and the flange thereby machining out the greatest stress areas. This however proved of little help, so it was decided to fly a welder out from Texas who was very familiar with this type of material and weld. He arrived, stayed a week, made two welds in that week, and achieved far worse results, the company sent him back to Texas. Lynn and I became friends and he was amazed at the cosmetic quality, or the looks of my welding. We discussed the project and decided to change the procedure slightly, instead of die penetrant inspection of the first pass of welding, we would weld a second pass, and die penetrant both sides of the weld. We found the the second pass had only a few cracks, and the third pass had none. We completed a weld, which required a lot of welding, machined the passes which contained the cracks, re-die penetrant inspection to ensure the weld was free from cracks, then X-ray the joint to ensure a sound joint.
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