wyattrobinson•1mo agoProlific Poster

Learned a lesson about gasket scrapers the hard way yesterday

I was cleaning a manway flange on a feedwater heater yesterday afternoon and used a cheap gasket scraper I picked up from a hardware store. About halfway through the old gasket, the blade snapped off and gouged the flange face pretty good. Now I have to spend today blending that mark out with a die grinder before I can put the new gasket on. That mistake cost me about 3 hours of extra work. Has anyone else had a cheap tool ruin a flange surface on you?

2 comments

2 Comments

uma6851mo ago

Ngl that exact thing happened to me with a cheap putty knife on a heat exchanger flange a few months back. The blade just folded over and left a nice little divot that took forever to sand out. Ever since then I only use the carbide tipped ones too and keep the cheap ones for scraping paint off concrete.

tarag281mo ago

Man I feel your pain. I switched to those carbide tipped scrapers a while back and theyll chew through gaskets without even breathing hard on the flange face. Just go slow with it though cause if you get too aggressive you can still dig in but theyre way less likely to snap on you. Also learned the hard way to hit the gasket with a heat gun first if its baked on real good, makes a world of difference.