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Pile Drivers / RufusLazarus-1
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RufusLazarus-1

 

Rufus Lazarus, journeyman welder

It’s something different all the time. We hardly ever do the same thing twice. Today I’m putting rails together, next week I might be working on a crane, and the week after that I might be doing piles. It’s challenging welding out here. Everything is so diverse. Like this rail: one day the iron’s rusty, the next day shining smooth. You’ve got to prep right before you weld it each time because of the sea air.  We don’t weld this with stick. You make a mold around it. Then you put a heater in to get it to 520 degrees and then set off calarite. It burns to 3800 degrees and makes a 1-inch weld in 6 seconds. You can’t have any water in the mold or it will expand so fast it will blow up, with the equivalent force of 2 sticks of dynamite. It would annihilate everyone standing here. I have to make everyone stand back, but it’s only dangerous for 30 seconds. I’ve been doing this for over 30 years, and I wouldn’t want to do anything else.

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