That one week in Sudbury where everything went sideways on a refinery job

It was a 12 hour shift on a Wednesday last July. We were retrofitting a section of a hydrotreater and I was working a 4 inch schedule 80 pipe. I cut the first bevel on site and it was perfect, but then my grinder seized up and I had to borrow a backup from a guy named Dave. He handed me a 7 inch Milwaukee that was older than me and it worked fine until the disc exploded on the second pass. I spent the next 5 hours cleaning up a puddle of water from a burst hose that flooded the staging area. By Friday my hands were tore up and I still had 3 welds left to finish. Anyone else ever have a tool chain fail on you like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

julia9220d ago

Did you keep the old grinder? I learned the hard way you gotta check those backup tools yourself before you start cutting, sounds like Dave's Milwaukee was just waiting to grenade on you.

the_jason20d ago

Milwaukee makes solid tools though @julia92, that grinder probably had years of abuse before Dave touched it.

ray_king18d ago

Isn't it funny how we always blame the last person who touched something, @julia92?