Its only a good feeling when the last ISO (if your lucky enough to get an ISO) you completed in the jacks fits up like a glove in the field.

"1G hmmmm I wonder if they can roll a 400 mile long pipe for me to weld???"

I could'nt help LMAO!!!

What everyone is saying is right on. No way your gonna make it with dropping out of school, 8 months of experience in a shop and a 1G. My kid is 9 and hope to have him doing a 1G before long. I'm not trying to take away from your accomplishment either but you need to say I've done a 3G or 5G/6G and even then to most it won't mean anything cause they'll still test you when you roll up on the job. Everytime you do one test, you need to think about the next one and the challenge's that it offer's. That's how I push myself. Did 3G, then 4G. 5G downhand, then 6G uphand then thought about 3G with tig and figured it would be more challenging to do it on pipe. Can walk the cup on my cap, lay down awesome filler's passes and have a suckish root pass which means everything else don't mean sh_t. I still keep plugging away, get down in the shop and cut off pipe, bevel and weld most saturday's, sunday's and holidays.....like today. You've gotta have the self motivation cause there ain't nobody else gonna care if you can do a 6g tig or anything else for that matter.

I've got a rig but I already had the truck. Am I ready to hit the pipeline as a rig welder? Nope, I don't have experience on the line, I could pass the 12" butt weld but just like Joe said, layout a branch on a 45 degree angle? Ha! I guess I could but it would take awhile. This is the kind of stuff you learn from experienced hands. I'd also like to add that field experience is gonna be different than shop experience. Things are gonna happen out in the bush where you can't send your parts guy to run and grab something so you can make it happen, your gonna have to think on your toe's from time to time and make it happen. At least that's what I've discovered while working on some broke piece of equipment. "What can I use to fix this and make it safe at the same time, PLUS get the machine back up and running again?????" While your eyes scan the ground, back of your truck.....back of the other guys truck for something. It's called thinking outside the box. I think some people can't do this, at least I have met a few.

Since many work in building trades jobs when there are no main lines being built, I'd say it's a pretty good guess that between 80 and 90% are carrying UA tig papers at any one time.
I'm hoping they do know which end of the torch to grab because it'd be hard to make those tests if they didn't.

JTMcC.

rig welders don't just weld pipeline,  they also work refineries,powerplants etc.
Im not sure about 798 a straight pipeline local how many pipeliners know how to tig
thats not where they make their money. most of the rig welders I know can do it all
GTAW, SMAW,FCAW. GMAW on any type of material CS ,SS, CHROME  it don't matter.
IMHO i think every single hand out there dreams of someday being a real rig welder
Im sure alot of guys make alot of money welding on the old coral & tractor and there
is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Id like to see any single hand tig welder do
a hot tie in on a 36" lying on their back in a  crampt bellhole in 120f  weather
welcome to the real world

JTMcc is right. Im a 798 welder but since things have been slow I took my UA tig cert tests so I would be more marketable. Im sure im not the only one that has done that.

I've bounced around a few places but I'd say truely my first welding job was 17 an hour but lasted a month the next one was 10 an hour, it's all I could find at the time. The 17 an hour job was at a papermill and I still beat myself up about it, i wish I would have maybe stayed with the mill job because dam i learned so much in one months time there it was like going to school for a year but at the time i had no idea of how to weld pipe so that is why I left the mill; to go back to school for pipe and everything else. When you get outta school and can get on with a papermill or something like that I'd recommend to do it. I am so greatful I got to work with all those old timers there. I will never forget what I learned at that place. Down fall was there was no health insurance at that place and every job like that has had no health insurance.
I sometimes want to go back to work at a place like that because it was all stick and learned alot but because i didn't have the health insurance is why I never have gone back. The mill I got to see and learn how to fabricate stuff up which i am lacking, another term for it is ghetto rigging as I like to use LOL

so what was the outcome of their test? im just interested! lol

Max that was a good post! I've found out by watching students that the problem of not knowing what a 6G is or how to lay out a branch falls on the "welder" him/herself. We had a guy in school that bounced all over the place. He'd start talking big money and this and that and me and the teacher said something about 5G and he said, "which way is that?". Nice guy, talked like he'd been around the world 100 times though. He actually told me and the teacher that the welders don't talk like that out on the job anyhow, 5G/6G and all that technical talk. He went away and we both laughed. I think learning this stuff falls into the lap of the guy with the stinger/torch. In school I surely did not need to know ASME code or API but I got on here and have been learning all I can. Same with the pipe positions, they show you in a book at school but it's not pounded in your head, that's up the the future welder. Nothing in our books about the 6GR but I know what it is now and could just about tell you the allowable clearance and set up for the box from heart. Will I ever use it? Don't know but it sure is good to have that little tidbit in my head, at least for me. I think alot of it has to do with the drive of the individual and what they want to do or know. It's surprising to talk to some of the students that have been in there for a year or better and you say 6G and it's the classic deer in the headlights. It's not the teacher, he uses the technical terms all the time, either they don't want to pick it up or the just call it flat or standing up. LOL!!

I just recently learned that if your a young guy( I dont know how old you are) your **** better be perfect now days. A guy busted me the other day on ******** deal. I had a very small piece of under cut on the bottom of my 6g. He nit picked it apart I said that it was well within code and he proceeded to say we're not goin by that today because its my call. All the hands that work there told me that he busts all younger welders. So i didnt make a scene or anything I just rolled up my trck and left. There will always be another one down the road.