[TheForge] Re: trade secrets

[Woolley]

>>Many years ago (Early 70's) I was cutting out of school and working in a
>>body shop, mainly sanding cars, and I used to watch this old guy who came 
>>to do the lead work on the old classic cars. I watched him a couple of 
>>times and he came over and yelled at me ........


I started working as a boilermaker in 1974, pretty much right out of high 
school.  I started out in a small boiler repair shop, then oil refineries on 
big turnarounds when an inexperienced kid could be of some help, then power 
plants, mostly coal fired boilers. When I started meeting and getting to 
know some of the older guys who had been in the business since the 50's they 
told me that if you approached Tig welders working on a tube repair or 
replacement they would just stop working till you left so that you wouldn't 
see the process.  Weldors have always been more valuable than mechanics and 
riggers etc to the contractors cause they always assumed a weldor could also 
do their work. Tig weldors even more so.  Thus they protected their special 
station within the field as long as they could.  That hasn't been the case 
since I became involved but it's part of  field contruction history in the 
Philadelphia area and probably in many other areas of the country.

Best,
Bill Woolley