Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 91.djvu/708

 ordinary ship to permit of

��Top of stiftener

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��Weld groove

��Bottom of ships shell casting

��692

the thickness of the shell portion of the castings for greater rigidity, but the greater part will be eliminated, thereby reducing the dead weight of the vessel to below that of the ordinary fabricated type. Besides, there will be no interstices between the plates of the corrosion. The outer or skin side of the castings in contact with the wa- ter will be smoothed off by means of liquid cement and finally painted.

According to Mr. Hill's plans, the castings will be made by the machine method of block mold- ing which does not re- quire any great amount of skilled help and in which the casting loss is said to be only two and one-half per cent. Of

course the castings will have ribs, as required in the molding process, but these ribs will serve the dual purpose of providing for the longitudi- nal and transverse strength of the hull itself.

The inventor plans to weld the castings together by the Wilson process in which special V-shaped grooves along the welding edges will be filled with a manganese alloy by means of an electric arc across the end of the alloy rod held by the welder, and the casting itself. The method of keeping the melting current uniform as secured by the Wilson process is said to make it possible

��Popular Science Monthly

for a joint to be made which has a strength of one hundred and twenty-five per cent of the casting itself or a joint actually stronger than the parts joined.

As Mr. Hill has laid out his plans, he would have big foundry-shipyards at deep water where castings could be made and

then placed

Rolled-steel double-bottom ^"plates welded to tops of stiffeners

��Weld groove

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��Stiffeners between transverse castinos- welded here

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��hs

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��Water ballast or fuel oil carried here

��A Longitudinal Cross-Sectional View

This was taken in the double-bottom of the cast-iron ship looking toward the centerline and showing the transverse I-beam members and the manner in which the stiffeners cast integral with one I-beam section are welded to those adjacent to it. Note also the lightening hole in the stiffeners and the manner in which the rolled-steel plates are welded to the tops of the stiffeners to provide a water-tight floor. It is also seen that the bottom of each section forms the shell or hull of the ship with V-shaped welding grooves at the ends of each section as shown. There are no inter- Fuel oil or water ballast may be carried in the double-bottom

/Transverse stiftener or web.

���Ship's side

��Welding Grooves

��Looking Down on the Top of One of the Side Sections of the Ship

This view shows two of the transverse stiffeners corresponding to the ribs of a wooden vessel. Note also how each section is welded to that adjacent to it, and the special V-shaped welding grooves in the ship's side. These grooves will be rilled with a specially prepared manganese alloy

��directly on the launch- ing ways by means of the usual travel- ing crane outfits. After the various sections were set up in or- d e r and welded to- gether, the ship could be launched and out- fitted with engines and boilers ac- cording to present - day practice. The yards would have open-hearth furnaces capable of turning out five-hundred thousand tons of ships a month. If blast fur- naces are to be used until the open- hearth type are ready, the supply of According to one gang can

��pig iron can be drawn upon, the inventor's further plans build an open-hearth furnace in forty-five days; two blast furnaces have just been built by the Cambria Steel Co. in fifty-seven days, the electric crane outfits can be built in two months ; the launching ways in from four to five months, and the welders and the workmen trained to handle machine mold- ing in from two to three months. The plants could*be located at launching points readily accessible to railways.

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