John,
I can see where that paragraph could make us "jump to confusions". I have "mis-remembered" things before. My thought was that welding introduces heat also, probably more that the cutting would (depending on the torch operator). So if the stud could pass the bend test, it shouldn't be a great concern.
thqci,
I like to think of it this way.... have you ever seen a traffic snarl up ahead and saw that you could take the side road and get past the mess? It makes you feel good that you could bypass the problem, and it's even better when you were the first to do it and now everyone else is following. It gives a bit of satisfaction.
Bypassing inspectors gives the same feeling to many people. They don't mean anything personal by it, it's just a challenge to them. Most of the time, workers know how to do the job right because they have done it numerous times. To them, waiting for an inspector is a waste of time.
Those people don't cut corners because they want to aggravate inspectors (usually). They do it because they can't see where shortcuts makes a difference- they still get to where they're going.
The difficult part for us is not to take things personally. That is hard to do when you have reviewed a job, qualified procedures, and worked your tail off to try to make everything go smoothly, then have all that work ignored. It can be demoralizing when the "attaboys" are given to people who fought you all the way and nobody recognizes how QC helped the job.
But as you mentioned, what we do is still important. Somehow, someway, QC inspectors get satisfaction from a job well done.
A few years ago, I saw this quote: "Arguing with a welding inspector is like wrestling with a pig in the mud. You soon realize that the pig actually enjoys it!"
Chet Guilford