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Told the crew a torque wrench was overkill for tube plugs, ate my words on a Tuesday
I always figured a regular breaker bar was good enough for plug work, but a journeyman named Dale walked me through what happens when a plug seats uneven at 180 ft lbs and weeps during hydro. Two days later a manway on the number 3 unit at our shop in Gary leaked on the first pressure test because the torque was off by maybe 15 percent. We pulled it, cleaned the threads, and hit it with the wrench, and it held at 300 psi with no sweat. Any of you still doing plugs by feel, or has the wrench become standard on your jobs?
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the_tessa19d ago
How many of those "by feel" guys have never had to explain a leak to the boss? I watched a plug on a heat exchanger weep at 200 psi because a guy "knew" his bar was right, and we spent a whole shift draining and redoing it. The torque wrench takes ten extra seconds and saves you a day of rework. Dale was right, a plug that seats crooked at that kind of load is going to bite you every time. Let the old timers grumble, the wrench is standard on my jobs now and it stays that way.
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