CWI Course Observations- Day 5 Practical-BoS

This may not be accurate!

I have to say that I started off the day with nothing less than the highest level of excitement and anticipation that I’ve have had all week! I was going to get to start studying the world famous NEW “Part B”. I could remember back to my days of the viewmaster, plastic replicas of questionable quality, and the highly useful “Book of Specifications” from MANY years ago.

It has always been my opinion that if someone has the requirements, tools to inspect, ability to understand, they could inspect any weld there is. With that being said, as the day got later, my mind was failing to interpret the < or > symbols, read entire questions, or even use the right replica referred to in the question. I could just be getting old!

Though the information being covered is not new to me, it is still a bit to sit through. Those that are in the class that have the pressure of making sure they “get it all” are putting forth quite an effort. I hope they all do well!

With that said, its possible that my ramblings may not be too accurate!

The Book of Specifications

The day started off with a reading through of the Book of Specifications-2017 Edition and a quick review of the toolkit. The BOS is much nicer than the versions I had used in the past. I had some thoughts about some statements regarding the use of “to” in a range but decided to not confuse things.

I thought I had a printed BOS in the box of AWS books that was sent but didn’t have one handy. I may have loaned it to someone that didn’t have one since I wasn’t testing. A few things are blurry!

I printed a .pdf version at the hotel computer that was fine but a bit hard to read. If you are going to take the training or just the test, I suggest you download one RIGHT NOW. Its free to download from https://www.aws.org/library/doclib/cwi-partB-BOS-customary20170418.pdf and would be a great book to have around for casual reading.

Having the BOS as a .pdf is a great way to search for content. A single search for a specific word or phrase can let you see where they all occur. You won’t be able to do that on the test, but looking through it may help some become a little more comfortable with the requirements!

Looking at the Table of Contents, jumping to the beginning of one of the entries, looking at the outlining of the paragraphs and sub-paragraphs may help you get your brain in the habit of knowing the “context” of what you are reading. Try it, if it does nothing for you, then try something else.

The “reading over” was good and then we used both the Book of Specifications and Book of Exhibits to answer a few questions on some PowerPoint slides. A good deal of time was put into “bakeout” of welds with questions that used a P91 WPS and sample PWHT Chart that included the backout temps. I think the way it was addressed could have been improved by getting everyone up to speed on reading the WPS and also using a time/temp chart, however, that would have taken more time! The instructor has a better idea of how much has to be covered and I may be wrong in my idea. Who knows!

I was bothered by the writing of the following question and would love to hear any other comments on it.

“If the preheat or interpass temperature is 800 Deg f immediately prior to bakeout, is this acceptable?

Because a preheat temperature or interpass temperature measurement would be made BEFORE the final bead and the bakeout would start AFTER the final bead really got me a little hot. It may not bother some, but it did me.

Based on some of the practice questions I have seen, I really hope the same people didn’t write the test questions bit you know what, if there were “bad” questions on the test, would we really ever know?

As I indicated in the other posts, the level of experience prior to the training test will have a great deal to do with how easy one can “keep up”!

The actual “Hands On”

We finished up the review and broke out the good ole plastic welds! (NOTE:The weld in the picture is NOT an AWS Weld. It is home made).

I have to say that the feeling I felt when I saw the 1st set back in 90 was not the same as today. The welds all looked fine. Most of the discontinuities looked “real” except for some porosity and a couple of discontinuities on some bends. The “set consisted of items as shown in the set at https://pubs.aws.org/p/1636/rws-replica-welding-set The pipe had multiple welds and was originally in 2 halves but later glued together. Some exhibited discontinuities that jumped right out at you, some were more discreet. The “difficulty” lies in navigating the BOS and the “choices” that are presented in some of the questions. Close attention to questions keywords coupled with “best answer” decisions.

There were samples and questions related to porosity (frequency/size/sum), overlap, bead sequence (a backstep sample), weld terminations/starts, temper beads, bead widths, overlap, undercut, and others I’m sure. Nothing out of the ordinary if you have inspected a weld before. If you have never looked at a weld bead before, it may be a bit difficult.

I think someone with a good attention to detail, test taking skills, and an understanding of the terminology and inspection tools could easily “ace” the practical. Though I think that possible, I doubt I would. I would probably get aggravated by some wording that I thought didn’t meet the requirements of the “Welding World According to Gerald” and rush through so I could go out and make my notes! I actually made quite a few wrong choices as we went through the questions. I was anxious to get done and failed to put forth the attention needed. I was working with a young many new to anything welding related and maybe I didn’t get him too confused with my wrong choices.

I will continue more tomorrow. Its been a long day! I am ready to get back to Mama and the hounds!