any full time welders in here?

[Foxfan88]

Heya i am working at a alum fab shop making alum oil pans and valve covers and going to a tech school all day for welding.

i had expierence tig welding aluminum at work and picked up carbon steel faily easy. havent welded on any stainless yet.
stick arc and mig came super easy.

i have been tig welding carbon pipe for the last month or so. i got it down. i can run a nice root pass and i can run the cap.

i can and have run joints that would pass job tests. just havent mastered the technique. still sort of iffy.

i am sort of torn on what to do. staying around here, work at the shop i am now, i make 8.50$/hr now and will go up once i start producing welds that can be sold. all i do now is fabricate and bend the parts and weld the rails which get milled and machined anyways.

or i can try to pick up a pipe welding job, go ont he road and make over 20$ and hour. but i would be afraid of being away from home. i also think there is a pipe job about 80 miles away that stays in house and tigs pipe on rollers and they make 20 i think.

just getting some opinions from some of u welders if there are any. what sort of jobs do u have and what are u making? it just seems hard to find good jobs.

 

[Roland69]

I welded carbon pipe with a TIG for about 8 months strait.......had to hold 85+ psi after I was done and the inspector would X-ray the welds....I picked up on the tig almost instant. I than worked in a Brewery working with stainless. Now I work at a Nune plant and a Garage in town on my days off from the plant.

 

[Roland69]

hey foxfan.....want to make me some valve covers lol. Oh and my boss at the shop was welding aluminum with the TIG so I asked to try it out and when he checked out my weld he said.....well you made that look pretty easy.....It was my first time welding aluminum. I was stoked

 

[Foxfan88]

aluminum isnt much different that steel. alum has a rep for being "harder" than carbon or stainless. but its just a little diff and people dont know how to do it.


btw how much did u make welding pipe???

and heres the site for valve covers heh

www.propan.net

 

[Roland69]

sallary....725 a week.cdn....till the job was done (took about 8 months)

 

[bynummustang]

Come down to NC, and sign on with PSNC or Progress Energy. Either a gas or power company. My intructor for my welding class started off with them. They send you to learn, pay for that, and then you work for them. He said he got 110K per year. Now the hours weren't great, but he likes to travel anyways.

 

[niklid05]

Come down to NC, and sign on with PSNC or Progress Energy. Either a gas or power company. My intructor for my welding class started off with them. They send you to learn, pay for that, and then you work for them. He said he got 110K per year. Now the hours weren't great, but he likes to travel anyways.

My dad was a pipeline welder for 25 years. He stopped doing it because he was tired of it so now hes an inspects pipe damage. He told me that the welders rate right now starts at about 40/hour You have to travel a lot and work long hours but that just means free food, free room(per diem) and more money.