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Hit 3,000 pours without a single cold shut and I still can't believe it
Started keeping a log back when I was just a helper at a shop outside Phoenix. Figured I'd check my numbers last night and saw 3,012 pours with zero cold shuts. That felt huge because my first year I had like 15 of them and my mentor chewed me out every time. Anybody else track their defect stats or am I just weird about it?
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the_patricia1mo ago
That "first year I had like 15 of them" part hit close to home. I had a buddy back in Texas who worked at a fab shop outside Houston. He told me he used to keep a little spiral notebook in his front pocket, writing down every defect he saw. One day he got so frustrated after his third cold shut in a week that he threw the notebook across the shop and it hit a bin of scrap metal. His coworker picked it up and started reading it out loud to everyone. He said he wanted to crawl under the welding table and hide. But then the foreman came over, took the notebook, and started using it as a training tool for the new guys. That notebook ended up on a shelf in the break room for years.
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holly_walker761mo ago
Wait, I gotta stop you there real quick - it's "cold shut," not "cold shut"? Actually no, you're right, that's welding slang. But I think you meant "three cold shuts in a week." And yeah, that part about the notebook hitting the scrap bin? That's funny because at my old shop we had a guy who would write his defects on the back of old receipts and stick them to the foreman's toolbox. His handwriting was so bad nobody could read them anyway, so they'd just pile up and get thrown away. But that foreman turning it into a training tool is smart, honestly. Too many guys keep their mistakes to themselves, you know? Like it's some kind of secret shame instead of just part of learning.
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