Hello Kip,
I thought I had been reading this correctly for years and this other guy has a tendency to try and read all the specs (AWS, ASNT, Job specs, etc) to fit his needs, instead of reading it for what it says.
Anyway, I wanted to congratulate you on a great article in Inspection Trends!(page 4 for those of you who haven't read it yet, also see the question and answer section where Kip mentions this BBS as one of his favorite places online for Welding information)
I think we as a company ought to cut those stiffeners to fit rather than ordering by the D-2tf dim given in the W shapes books. I really like CHG's idea of ordering the stiffeners for the smaller beam sections already cut and adding 1/4 or 1/2 to the larger sections. I was just trying to figure out at what point do I quit calling it a small section and declare that it is a large section. I was looking at the W12's and there are some really light and heavy sections even in that size and it gets worst when you look at W14's. Normally most of our plates and accessories are A36, but in recent years the engineers are now specifying that they want that material to be V50 just like the main members. Which brings up another problem keeping the grades from getting mixed up in our misc. detail material dept. In our current method of ordering it is kept straight by the PO#'s which match the mill certs and etc. If I go to stocking V50 plate I'll need to keep it traceable back to mill certs and to keep a fitter from using the wrong grade by mistake.
More to think about,
John Wright
PS. Congrats again to Kip!