Recalcitrant Welds

Where Next?
Bob Williams
Fri 21 Feb 2020 14:10

We have been on the hard for almost two weeks now and while progress has been slower than I had hoped, primarily due to my poor welding skills, yesterday was a something of a setback. I had been dealing with a particularly difficult weld that I could not access from inside the hull so had to do all the welding from outside in a sloping upside-down position. Naturally the molten weld material wants to obey the laws of nature and fall towards the centre of the Earth (generally with me in between the two). Despite these difficulties, as of Thursday evening I thought I was close to completing the weld … BUT … yesterday morning I noticed a hairline crack extended a good ten of so inches along the weld that I had been working on for the past two days.  There was nothing for it but to grind the entire weld out and start again.

So, as of yesterday, Sylph’s refit has gone considerably backwards which means my scheduled completion date has likely slipped a good week to the right (I have created a GANTT chart to track critical paths). I am now guessing a completion date of late May to early June. I confess that I turned in last night in something of a state of despair. But now, having slept on the problem, I have come up with what I hope will be a solution; namely, remove the water tank so as to give access to the recalcitrant weld from within. While some professionals might claim that in principle an overhead weld should be no more difficult than a right way up weld, I will say that, for me at least, in practice they are much more difficult.

Today is another day. Hopefully it will go better than yesterday.

All is well.