Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 91.djvu/706

 Building Ships of Cast-Steel

Six million tons of such vessels could be turned out in a year By Joseph Brinker

��NOW comes the cast-steel ship. The purpose behind its proposed con- struction is* to enable a large ocean- going tonnage to be built rapidly without further straining the much-overtaxed steel rolling mills of this country. According to its inventor, Myron F. Hill, a New York city patent attorney, standardized cast- steel ships can be built in much less time and at a much smaller cost than the ordi- nary fabricated steel-plate type. He fur- ther predicts that 6,000,000 tons of such ships could be turned out in one year if built according to a standard plan.

While the use of cast-steel in ship con- struction is entirely new so far as merchant vessels in any part of the world are con- cerned, it has been stated by Lord Yarrow of the British Admiralty that the latest U-boats are being rushed to completion at a surprising rate by the use of standardized cast-steel sections put together in much the same fashion as Mr. Hill proposes for the cast-steel cargo boat.

According to the present plans, which have been recommended for trial by the ranking naval architect of the Shipping Board and are now being drawn up for a rating by the Lloyds, the standard cast- steel cargo steamer will be a vessel four hundred and two feet long, fifty-three feet beam and thirty-four feet molded depth. She will have a displacement of approxi- mately twelve thousand two hundred tons when fully loaded and a cargo capacity of nine thousand, one hundred

����Employing the Electrical Welding Process The inventor proposes to use the Wilson electric process for welding together the various sections of the cast- steel ship. Above is shown a workman with the weld- ing tool, used in this process, in one hand, and a wire screen guard to protect his eyes from the intense light and heat in the other. He is welding the tubes of a locomotive into the boiler headsheet

tons. She will not differ from the ordinary cargo steamer in shape, propelling engines or other machinery but simply in the hull and the bulkheads, all of which will be made of cast-steel sections welded together by the special Wilson process, which has proved very successful in commercial work and is now being extensively employed in restor- ing the damaged and broken parts of the many German ships taken over by our Government.

The straight-sided portion of the cast- steel ships, or that central three-fifths of the length of the vessel amidships, will be made up of sections from ten to twelve feet wide in the lengthwise dimension of the ship. For an ordinary two-decked vessel, each of these sections will be formed of five steel castings welded together at six points in the same transverse plane in addition to the welding required to join one section to those

��Before and After the Welding

At the left, a cracked bell with the crack cut into the form of a V to admit the welding material. At the right, the same bell after the crack has been repaired. Note the laminations of the welded material and its rough surface. The roughness may be ground almost entirely away. In the center above, is the Wilson welding tool showing the bar of manganese alloy which is welded in the grooves

��fion

�� �