Welding Safely on Closed Vessels

Video Transcript

" Hello, My name is Mac and on behalf of expertvillage.com I am going to give you some tips and techniques on welding safety. I think it is appropriate at this time to touch a little bit on some of the things that are dangerous to actually weld on. Closed cylinders or pressure vessels or any kind of a fuel tank that has contained a liquid hydrocarbon fuel is extremely dangerous. Welding on leaking gas tanks for instance of automobiles or pickup trucks cutting holes in service station gas tanks. These things are extremely dangerous. It is recommended that you not do anything like that. Do not run a bead of weld on it, do not weld anything to it. What can happen is even if it is an old tank and you are pretty sure there is nothing inside of it, the heat of the welding process can drive vaporized fuel out of the molecules of the steel; and inside of the tank it can ignite and cause an explosion; the resulting explosions can kill you or maim you. So unless you know the exact procedure for filling the tanks with either water or inert gas before you cut or weld on them please avoid doing that. "