Chapter 17

By 0500, the excitement was over. A federal bomb squad arrived from parts unknown to disarm the device on John’s truck. John and the girls were asked to clear out, so they all hopped in Pixy’s rig dressed for work and drove over to the Armadillo Cafe. By 0800, John got the all-clear call, and they returned. The same agents were still there, with the BATF agents approaching John to let him know it was a different explosive than what was used on the pumping station. There was a tow truck standing by to take his rig to their facilities for processing, so John got busy.

Firing up the air compressor, he then used an air wrench to unbolt some panels that were covering jack legs.

Using a deep well socket, he turned a bolt that extended the jacks out sideways, dropped the cotter pin that held them in the horizontal position, and then twisted them to the vertical position.

Going to the bed, he removed some access panels in the floor; then unbolted four large bolts freeing the tool bed from the frame. Afterwards, he used the air wrench to turn the jacks down lifting the bed.

He signaled the tow driver to pull his truck forward which left his bed standing on the jacks.

“That was faster than I expected” one agent said. Then he asked “Out of curiosity, why go through the trouble of setting that up?”

“Flexibility mostly” John answered. “The money-making end of the rig is all in that bed. If something happens to the truck, like a blown engine, I can just buy another truck nearly anywhere, but the machinery in this bed is nowhere near as common.” The agent just nodded, then took some pictures of the underside of the bed, and the bed as a whole. John then said “Just so you know, I have a patent on that design.”

John knew he’d guessed right by the look on the man’s face.

John then pulled the air hose and wrench forward and took the mounting blocks off his truck frame. After that his truck was pulled out to parts unknown.

Once the circus left town, Mary pulled her truck over and they got busy removing the bed. By 11:45, John’s bed was mounted and secured.

Jose pulled up in his truck looking askance at the rig asking “Something happen to your rig boss?”

“It’s a long story, I’ll tell you later. For now, we need to get moving” John replied.

Mary, dressed in work boots and attire, got in Pixy’s rig with her, while John got in his temporary rig and followed the procession out. Ten minutes later, they were pulling up to the Job Trailer where three men in a gas company truck waited.

The first man introduced the crew and himself as field services management.

The spokesman, ‘Zane’, asked to be shown where they had left off. He was professional enough not to be eyeballing Pixy and Mary unlike the other two were.

John said “Let us load our filler first.”

Jose walked over unlocking the work shack, then checked the power logs for interrupted power to the rod oven.

All was well, so he pulled out two portable rod oven caddies and signed them out with some 6010 packs to John and Pixy.

John could see up the line that Ben’s crew had been busy already. Several pipe segments awaited them.

Zane walked up to John and said, “We heard the plan from Carl, but these two doubt it. It would be better just to see you in action to put this to bed.”

John called Jose up to the line to standby for visuals. Ben lifted the first segment into place and used the hydrologic positioner to butt it up to the previous segment at Pixy’s direction. Once she had the gap set, she waited for Jose’s check, then fired up making the root pass. When she was done, John signaled Ben to do the same at the next segment, while Pixy went to work on the fill out for the first weld of the day.

John was halfway through his fill passes when Pixy signaled Jose to final her weld. At this, Mary got out the UT equipment from Pixy’s truck and calibrated while she waited for the metal to cool. Once it was cool enough according to Pixy, she jumped in the ditch, set up, and scanned the weld. By the time she was done with Pixy’s first weld, John was ready for Mary, and Pixy had leap frogged John’s position to the next weld location starting the process over. Zane then asked about Mary’s presence.

“Al left her embedded with us so we didn’t need to wait for results. Should a weld fail for any reason, we can address it immediately.”

Zane said, “An efficient method, we will probably write that into the next contract.”

John just nodded.

By 1600 hours Zane stopped John and asked “When will you stop for the day?”

John replied “When we lose light to work.”

Zane then said, “That girl welding is impressive, but can she work that long?”

John stood and said “That ‘girl’ happens to be my wife and she can hang with any welder you care to put her up against.”

Zane, realizing he’d inadvertently stepped in shit, just nodded his head.

After another thirty minutes, Zane said “Your speed is impressive, but by my calculations, you’ll not be able to meet schedule. What can you do to speed up the process?”

John replied “The slow down is the fitting process, if we run a production weld test together, the PQR and WPS allows two welders on the same weld. That would allow one of us to run ahead running fit ups and roots. The end weld will be a combination of two welders, thus the need for the qualification.”

Zane said, “I’ve never seen that done before?”

“Usually there are six or more welders involved. Since failures are normally docked against their day rates, they get agitated at the prospect of paying for someone else’s shoddy work. Therefore, the method isn’t normally used. However, in this situation, it would be ideal” John finally finished.

John had just finished a root, so he had Pixy come over and finish his weld. Then told Jose and Mary to run it as a production qualification weld and write up the cert accordingly.

When Mary was done, she thumbed up to signal it was good.

John called Ben over and gave him the new plan.

By 1700, it was in action. Ben’s crew were humping over block after block of wooden stands for the pipe, while John and Ben raced ahead with the fit-ups and roots. By 1800, it was clear this method was much faster, especially with Pixy running the ragged edge of the WPS travel speed and amperage. Her caps were not as pretty but they met code.