I had an opportunity to get my "card" with a large energy company. All I needed to do was pass a few tests, do some online training and did I mention, pass a few welding tests? Welding tests? I believe that is an understatement. 12 inch butt, 12 inch branch and 12 inch "In Service" or water test with sleeve.
The only test I have ever done, 12 inch butt weld. Spent a few hours fitting my branch, getting the edges lined up how I wanted and the pipe lifted off the other using some 3/32 welding rod worked out quite well. I thought the gap was a bit excessive looking at it but in the end it worked out very well. Complete fusion all the way around, nice bead on the inside. Was actually really cool and was not nearly as difficult as I had led myself to believe. The welding portion of it. Two 5 gallon buckets for chairs, welding rod in a rod bag, UE Boom speaker near me playing my tunes and no big deal.
The infamous water test. Fabricate your test tube. Fabricate your mounts for said test tube and install ports for water inlet and outlets. More time spent fabricating stuff to destroy.
Sleeves fit great until you put the backing strip in then the sleeve opened up around the edge. Procedures called out a maximum gap so after checking all was well. Welded up the sides, moved to the bottom, seemed more difficult due to the location being lower to the ground. Weld the top and sit back and look at it. Again, not bad at all.
Destructive testing. Six coupons on the butt, 4 coupons on the branch and 8 coupons on the water test. Wishing I had the airpak on my Vantage so I could run my plasma. I did use a coupon cutter the lab has. That was really slick. Use your torch for your pipe beveler and cut out coupons. The coupons on the water test a little more difficult because of the double layer. After two days of welding, cutting it was in to the lab. Tensile tests, bends, nick tests done on everything and wa la, I'm one of dem' thar approved welders!!
All in all it wasn't that bad. Will have some pics up in a bit, have to resize everything.