The battleship USS Texas gets repaired in a floating drydock in Galveston

[kingofnerf]

The ship was originally commissioned in 1914, so a bunch of teaching points in the video.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2ecilb3A3A

The Texas was not at Pearl Harbor during the attack, but the historical note here is that the battleships that were on Battleship Row there had many of the manhole covers used to inspect the voids in the ships either removed or loosened for a Sunday inspection.

The void between the blisters and the hull of the ship was usually filled with fuel oil that was supposed to absorb most of the blast damage and protect the main hull of a ship.

The torpedo blisters on the USS California actually worked as designed when she was struck by a Japanese torpedo, but the removed/loosened manhole covers caused the flooding to gradually spread throughout the show, causing her to sink. This was also true in varying degrees for the other battleships that were sunk during the attack as well.

 

[JimG]

The Texas..

Brings back lots of memories. I spent many hours in the dry docks at the Charleston Naval Shipyard.

This was our world (below). This is a floating dry dock on H pier at the old Charleston Navy base. The Batfish was stationed in CHS. She has fresh paint and ready to go.

 

[kingofnerf]

Brings back lots of memories. I spent many hours in the dry docks at the Charleston Naval Shipyard.

This was our world (below). This is a floating dry dock on H pier at the old Charleston Navy base. The Batfish was stationed in CHS. She has fresh paint and ready to go.

I taught myself how to MIG weld about 15 years ago.

This is the driver's side door jamb plate off of an old car I was patching at the time. I drilled the spot welds to get it off of the donor car section.

I made some poster paper templates to help me figure out how to do it.

This was a paper template for a metal jig I welded together. I was working on my welding techniques and welding the jig together was a good way to get my techniques down. The jig looks a lot the shape of a ship's hull from this angle.

Then I formed a paper patch section around the paper jig and the actual metal to help me out, too.

This is what I ended up with.

I ended up not using this piece, but it was great for getting my welding techniques down. The salvage teams at Pearl Harbor first made templates for metal patches for the Nevada from the overturned hull over her sister ship, the Oklahoma. There were fitment issues with the metal patches, though. One patch extended 4 feet below the docking keels on the Nevada, so they ending up removing it and just relying on the inner bulkheads to hold long enough to get Nevada to Dry Dock #2, where she stayed for about a month. So at least I don't feel so bad about not being able to use my own patch. LOL

They ended up building wooden cofferdams around Nevada, California, and West Virginia to allow divers to make their patches and seal the ships good enough so they could be pumped-out and refloated. The hulls of the sunken battleships just needed 41 feet of draft to clear the entrance to the dry dock and also the docking blocks on the dry dock floor. They just needed to make it to the dry dock for further patching and repair.

They discovered that the Oklahoma was hit on the main deck by two torpedoes as she was capsizing and that blew out 48 feet of armor plating from her port side. Her bottom plates were also cracked from righting her 151-degree list to port. She was refloated last, but not until 1944. Even then the salvage crews were fearful that she was so weakened she would sink in Pearl's South Channel just like the Nevada was at risk of doing the morning of the attack. She was not deemed worthy of any further repairs once she was made watertight and they left her moored in the West Loch of Pearl until 1947. Knowing the above, it's not really a surprise that the Oklahoma sank while under tow between Pearl and the States in 1947.

You should read this book. You would really like it.

Resurrection: Salvaging the Battle Fleet at Pearl Harbor|Paperback

Aimed at the general reader with an interest in World War II and the U.S. Navy, this book looks at the massive salvage effort that followed the attack on Pearl Harbor, beginning with the damage control efforts aboard the sinking and damaged ships in the harbor on 7 December 1941 and ending in...

www.barnesandnoble.com

I practiced first with the flux core wire for about a year, then switched to Argon/CO2 gas, before working on the actual car parts. I am usually a very detail-oriented person, but one day I realized I forgot to replace the gasless nozzle with the correct one for gas.

I was wondering why I wasn't getting good welds despite using the settings on the welder lid. I really felt like punching myself in the face for that stupid oversight. LOL

 

[JimG]

I taught myself how to MIG weld about 15 years ago.

That's shipfitter work. That trade is what made the patches for those old battle wagons. It's highly skilled work as they have to make exact patterns of the geometrical shapes. Some of that starts out as wood, similar to your paper patterns.


Nice work learning the MIG & fixing your car part! I took a short welding class in ATL for work in my later career. We did some cutting and arc welding.

Modern robotic welders are amazing gear!

 

[FurmanCock]

I'm always impressed with the skill and patience of people who are craftsmen and work with their hands. Putting together the paper template for your metal jig is simply beyond my ken. I used to have a neighbor who had a really nice woodworking setup in his garage, and to watch him just construct different types of joints depending upon usage/need always impressed and baffled me. I would see nail/screw solutions and he would see the correct solution.

Props for teaching yourself a skill.

 

[kingofnerf]

There was a guy overseas that fabricated a similar patch using a 5-lb steel hammer and what looked like a six-inch long piece of steel railroad track in a bench vise for an anvil.

Here's the original crash damage that the car had when I first bought it. The previous owner slid into the back of a four-door sedan in the interstate.

It would have been totaled back in the day. I bought the car to learn how to work with metal.

Here are some before and after shots of the repairs I made myself. The before shots are inset on the pics.

I used a porta-power to push out the damaged section so I could weld the new piece in.

Then I hung the replacement door. It's not quite flush with the bottom rocker panel. That will be fixed when the replacement quarter panel is installed. I just tacked down the door jamb section to get the new door on. It closes securely on the latch strike plate as it should, though.

These are pics of the replacement quarter panel section I had to cut off.

Still lots of work ahead, but it's a hobby that keeps me busy.

 

[kingofnerf]

Here is something I fabricated for some stands I made out of sheet metal. I shaped the pieces using the sheet metal break tool the piece is lying on. I needed the stuff and it helped me get my welding techniques down as well.

I also fabricated the bases for the stands. L-shaped flanges were welded onto a flat piece of sheet metal to keep it from flexing due to the load on it.

Then I painted everything to keep it from rusting. The uprights are corner pieces for drywall.

 

[kingofnerf]

The stands are for a temporary paint booth that I thought of.

Here is the finished assembly. I can just add more rails for added length or width if needed.

Now with the 4-mil poly I used for the walls and roof to keep things from falling on my painted stuff and messing it up.

I can either hang parts from the top horizontal rail for painting as below.

Or I can paint the parts on stands as I decided to do in the end.

This is the original color of the car BTW. I painted the parts on a late Sunday afternoon, but then it rained while I was at work on Monday. It was single stage urethane paint with a catalyst for quick drying. Everything was dry and undamaged by water when I got home from work. No orange peel because I used a 60-gallon compressor to shoot the paint with.

 

[kingofnerf]

The latest welding technology that the Navy has starting using.

https://news.usni.org/2023/09/12/navy-expanding-cold-spray-welding-alternative-in-fleet-repair

The Navy has already seen months shaved off specific ship repairs using the technology, but the equipment can be prohibitively expensive. Now the Navy is developing a unique partnership with a company that’s developed smaller portable and deployable cold-spray systems that can be rapidly fielded and deployed.

“It’s a real advantage for getting after some repairs – not all – but it gives shipyards and local repair the option of using a different repair method,” said Lloyd, who also serves as NAVSEA’s deputy commander for ship design, integration and naval engineering (SEA-05). The Navy first used cold spray in 2019 at Norfolk Naval Shipyard, Va., and “the shipyards have been using them quite a bit,” he said.