Chapter 10

After he made his way over to Valkyrie, he noticed she’d stopped the excavation of the weld midway. “I found the lack of fusion so I paused to see what you wanted to do.”

Kneeling down, he took a closer look. He saw what she was talking about. The entire column side of the weld had a line of lack of fusion. He said to her, “This is supposed to be used as a production qualification weld for me, so the whole thing needs to go. Don’t worry about it though, I’ll finish it, just move on to the next one.”

He turned and waved Al over, “I’ll need you to verify the joint geometry when I finish grinding this turd out in a few minutes.” Dropping his hood, but keeping the welding glass up, he commenced grinding. After finishing, he pulled out his gauges to verify he had it right, then passed the gauges over to Al as he got up to drag over the rod box and welding leads. Al was waiting and handed his gauges back to him after John clipped his safety harness off on the retention wire.

Clamping off the ground, he pulled out a hand-held anemometer to assure the wind was within tolerance. John looked up at Al and Al nodded for him to proceed. Scratching off of the backing bar, which was still attached, he once again lost himself in the world of plasma gases and arc dragons. When he got to the end, he racked the slag off, then hit it with a grinder, then did it again. After a short while, he was putting the final touches on the cap, then cleared the slag and smoothed the cap. Standing up, he felt the stiffness from leaning so long and said “I’m getting too old for this shit.”

Al, standing behind him said “Getting old is not for pussies, that’s a fact.”

Looking behind him he saw Mary standing there with a Krautkramer Ultrasonic flaw detection machine.

He knew the metal would be too hot for a few minutes so he relocated everything to where Valkyrie was working.

She looked up at him and said, “The dumb fuck that melted this metal, must have had his talent gene leak down the crack of his mama’s ass. Everything but Waldo was in this son of bitch.”

John said “Fuck it, let’s just cut them all out and not worry about finding what’s in them. Go ahead and move on to the next one, I’ll finish this one. Just don’t let the backing bars drop, I need to reutilize those.”

The day went on like this until all the welds cleared exam. Al walked up to them, and said “We’ve bounded what that dipshit fucked up. Mary is on her way here from the shop with some MT&E* equipment I need to check some of the bolting he’s signed off on for torque. Other than that, it’s just banging studs, left.”

John looked at Valkyrie and said, “You up for some batting practice Gunny?” She nodded her assent.

John said, “we need another chipping hammer, and three full handled sledge hammers. They don’t happen to have that here, do they?”

Al shrugged his shoulders, then said, “I don’t know, but if not, they will be soon.”

John then said “Gunny, my wife doesn’t have a book for the iron workers. You going to be OK with her helping us bang studs?”

“She’s a union fitter and welder. I don’t personally have an issue with it, but if the steward shows up, you’re answering for her Mr. Journeyman.” John just nodded.

“Al, add another hard hat and gloves to the equipment list.”

Half an hour later, everyone and everything was in place. Valkyrie looked at Pixy and says, “These are the only studs I’ll ever bang” with a wink.

Pixy looked at her and said “To each their own. I like a good banging from a stud myself” as she eyeballed John’s crotch.

At John’s embarrassed look, Valkyrie just horse laughed and said “You’ve got a good one here John. Too bad you saw her first.”

John said “Yes I do, Gunny, but I’d like to be done with this soon. So, let’s focus here.”

They divided up the floor between then, John going east, and Gunny going west.

John picked a line, then slammed one of the studs with the sledge hammer. There was a high-pitched ting noise at the impact. He looked at Pixy and said, “Now hit that same one, but pay attention to what you hear.”

She hit the same stud, and got the same tone.

“That was a good hit. That tone you heard means it’s good.”

“What are these things used for? And what’s with this deck?” Pixy asked.

“Nelson Studs, got the name from the resistance weld device that was invented to weld ‘shear studs’ to decks like this. As far as the deck goes, you’ve looked at corrugated cardboard, right?” She nodded her head.

The accordion looking core has two sheets of paper glued to the outside which gives it the strength to hold weight that just a paper wrap could not. It’s an example of a composite material. The corrugation you see here combines with these shear studs, and the concrete they will pour over it later this week to make it a composite floor system. It reduces the overall amount of concrete needed without reduction of the strength. The shear studs work in concert with this deck to help mitigate shear stresses from movement.” He finished as he demonstrated by putting his hands together and rubbing them back and forth. “Without them, the floor risk collapse during seismic or other vibrational movement.”

The light bulb turned on in her head as she banged the next stud hearing the distinct ting tone. As she moved on to the next one, she heard more of a thud than a ting.

John looked at her and said, “That’s a bad one, mark it and move on.”

He went back to where they started, moving over a row, and began swinging his own hammer. After an hour, they were done with this side of the building. They then walked over to Valkyrie’s side. Watching her mark up a failure, he asked “How many over here?”