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Talking to an old riveter from Granite City changed my approach
Was on a job outside St. Louis last week and got to shoot the breeze with this 68 year old guy who spent 30 years riveting on water towers. He said he never once used a hammer to check his rivets, just listened to the ring and could tell a bad set from 10 feet away. That hit different because I've been relying on torque specs and gauges for so long, I forgot the basic feel side of this trade. Anyone else picked up something from the older guys that your foreman never taught you?
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davis.casey1mo ago
The part about "could tell a bad set from 10 feet away" got me. I've met plenty of old timers who swear by stuff like that, and half the time it's just them being proud of doing things the hard way. A bad rivet is a bad rivet, and your ear isn't going to catch a hairline crack that a gauge will. I'm not saying the guy was lying, but hearing a ring doesn't tell you about the metal underneath, just the surface sound. We have torque specs for a reason, and they didn't invent those to make the job harder. If listening was really that reliable, we wouldn't see so many towers fail over the years. I'd trust a calibrated tool over a guy's nostalgia every time.
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