Pipeliners were better welders back in the day...
The forefathers of our modern day pipeline workers were better welders than any we have today. I haven't seen any wooden welding rods for sale anywhere.
http://www.swiftenergy.com/PUBLICATIONS/PAPERS-AND-ARTICLES/1999/gr...
History of the Ownership of Mineral Rights
The first recorded commercial use of natural gas was in 1826, when the city of Fredonia, New York, used gas for lighting. The gas was piped to the city by a 25-mile wooden line constructed from hollowed logs.
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by jim weyland on
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some of united gas pipe line company's earliest pipes in nla were hollowed out wood. note; ugpl is now known as gulf south pipeline company. i think some of sng's, also known as southern natural gas, pipeline's early pipe was wood, also.
my first job in the business was with the 'natural gas pipeline company of america', known as ngpl. in '29 they started building ngpl. it was the first large diameter steel all welded pipeline. it ran from the texas hugoton area to chicago where it tendered its gas to sister company, peoples gas light and coke. the original pipe was torch welded.
later, it was replaced with stick welded pipe. i think they only, finally, replaced that early pipe in the '70s
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Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant on -
There is a certain talent to "welding up hill". Not every welder has it. It is a hard life living out of a trailer or motel and welding pipelines but it does pay well.
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they're the kings of the spread. and, the good ones will never have a cutout.
the last otc i attended an outfit was displaying their latest automated pipe welding machine. it was very impressive. i don't know how much market share those units are getting; it's not like they were giving them away for nothing in any event, i've not seen or heard of one being used onshore here.
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Permalink Reply by Krkyoldhag on
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I went to 12 school in second grade..that's how often we moved in our AirStream built like a yacht trailer..yes a trailer it was not called a "mobile home". My dad welded on the pipeline that went thru Texas to the coast. He made enough money working in rain, floods and cold and heat to build a welding shop of his own. I was told that if my dad put a weld in anything from a pipe to a dozier blade the metal would break anywhere but at his welds.
Some of you might have heard of him Slim or Sonny...I was so proud of him and still miss him ..since his death in 1961.
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the pl your dad welded on you said ran from tx to the coast, the east coast? and, if so, during the war?
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Permalink Reply by Krkyoldhag on
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He did some work on East Coast but the one we followed him on was down thru Vidor Tx to the gulf coast. And it was right after the war. He played baseball for army .. was injured playing ball and it always embarrassed him that he got a disability check from VA for $27 a month until he died. His brother in law was on the Bataan death march and he was injured playing ball. When he was discharged he signed onto the pipeline. It must have paid good for the time because he was able to build his welding shop and buy us a house from the money he made. I remember that we would set up a patio outside the Airstream, and several families were nearby and the women would cook out on the patio..actually we spent a lot of time on the patio. I remember that at two of the schools I was entered in they spoke mostly Spanish.
Later he did a lot of work for CoCo construction. They would send a little plane to pick him up and fly him in to do a big welding job for their equipment.
He did a job on a piece of equipment for Red Adair for his fire fighting. I have pictures of me with him when I was just a little girl. I was a daddy's girl for certain.
He would sleep with a radio on, and read himself to sleep reading western novels. He loved the Cajuns he dealt with .. we would go to visit (walking across planks onto their porches) and over a cup of coffee music always seemed to just happen ..
He took me frog gigging, squirrel hunting and fishing with him. It was a good life for a little girl ...
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Permalink Reply by Two Dogs, Pirate on
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God bless your dad, he sounds like a real American like we use to have back yonder.
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k,
it sounds like it. times might/most likely have been better back then; at least, that's how i feel when looking back.
my mom's dad was a big fan of zane grey's/louis l'amour's westerns. somewhere, here, i have his/those books in a box.
i went to high school starting in the late '60s. and, across from the south/back side of the school's athletic fields and on the other side of w. alabama street was mr. adair's office.
some time after i learned that his office was there, after school, one day, i built up courage and walked over and went in.
unfortunately, he wasn't there. but, the office was pretty much like what you'd expect if you've ever seen j. wayne's bio-picture of him: "the hellfighters".
on a related note, in the mid '60s, a guy my dad did business with bought a house in jersey village, tx from mr. adair.
one weekend day, we, the family, were invited over for dinner. their dining room was wallpapered in a shade/color that my mom later described to me as 'pigeon blood red'. it was the reddest thing i'd ever seen. note: this is true even to today.
while we were 'chowing down' my dad mentioned the room's unique color; the owner told us that when they'd bought the house, every room in the house was painted/papered in red of one shade or another and that they'd kept the dining room as it was to reflect/indicate how red did things.
p.s. vintage airstreams are most collectible. the hollywood types can't get enough of them. if you still have yours, please advise,
jim weyland
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Permalink Reply by Martin on
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Probably the pipe line workers came from the folks that also worked on the sugar maples in the North East US.
I had a job running an outside seam welder at a US Steel pipe mill back in the day. Forty foot long flat steel plates came in to the plant, forty foot pipe, up to 40 inches in diameter, came out the other. Unfortunately, foreign competition put the US pipe plants out of business by the late 70s.
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the quality of those longitudinal welds was/is today very high.
before the steel mills could make pipe that way, they'd have to take a strip of steel and wrap/spiral it around a mandrel somewhat like how they make pillsbury biscuit cans/containers and their like even today. the process worked but it called for a whole bunch of welding around that spiral. and any weld longer than necessary introduces more prospect of error.
it was a great advance with the sort of line pipe you were involved in making.
i understand there are pipe mills being contemplated/built today in the ohio valley to help meet the/our need for oilfield tubular goods and line pipe arising from shale related demands. and, in no small part, those mills are being built here, imo, because of our low cost shale gas.
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Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant on
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Got a new one in my backyard.
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