Shipyard stories

Back in Hong Kong

Tim

You mentioned the long enlistment for the Royal Navy. The British Marines had x number of years for their basic enlistment and then did two more for the Queen.

Anytime the Queen was mentioned in a sentence, the Brits would propose a toast "To the Queen". The proper response :to the Queen"...chug a lug and so it went.

One of the tricks to keep the room from spinning was to put one foot on the floor/deck. It really worked. I was four bunks up so that wasn't going to happen, and it wasn't good etiquette to barf over the edge of your rack. I managed to man up and keep it together...didn't puke until after morning chow.

Life is good

Mort
 
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zippy06, what years were you on the Gridley? I used to drop my buddy Mike Gorchinski off at the Gridley every morning, on my way to NAS North Island!
 
Steelhead

Will be at the Griddle on Caldwell this friday around noon.

White hair and beard wearing a Boise State blue ball cap.

PM me if you can't make it.

Mort
 
jackie schmidt said:
Reduction gears on large steam and gas turbine powered vessels are very expensive and extremely precision pieces of equipment. They have to reduce RPM's of a 4000 RPM turbine down to around 200 turns for the prop shaft. Most are double reduction, and have two inputs, or pinions. One off of the high pressure turbine, one off of the low pressure.

Here is a view of a typical Turbine System from a WW-2 Destroyer. It's probably a 30,000 unit. You can see the high and low pressure turbines and the double reduction.

http://benchrest.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=20559&stc=1&d=1515888444

From what I know, the Navy, and even some commercial interest, never owned the turbine/reduction gear sets. They rented them from GE.

One good thing about these huge pieces of equipment. They were just about good for the life of the ship.
Click to expand...

Jackie

The reduction gear picture showed a jacking gear adjacent to the main shaft.

To my knowledge it was used just for checking maintenance needs or whatever....like using a 12 volt bump starter on your hot rod V8.

Again thanks for the pics....you keep my brain working.

Mort
 
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dmort said:
Jackie

The reduction gear picture showed a jacking gear adjacent to the main shaft.

To my knowledge it was used just for checking maintenance needs or whatever....like using a 12 volt bump starter on your hot rod V8.

Again thanks for the pics....you keep my brain working.

Mort
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Most large steam turbine/reduction gear sets have a "jacking gear", or to be more correct, a turning Gear. It serves three purposes. As you noted, it is used to slowly turn the shaft assembly for inspection purposes. It is also engaged when the Turbine/Gearset is shut down, to keep the innards from "taking a set" as heat is dissipated.

The third function, which might be a old wives tail, is naval ships always had the Jacking Gear engaged while the vessel was tied up for a period of time to cut down on crevis corrosion as the shaft lyed in the Bearings. It turned the shaft at an extremely slow rate, about 1/10 rpm.
 
The "turning gear" is somewhat important on a powerhouse turbine to keep the shaft from sagging (weight) when shutdown. Some smaller turbines don't have a turning gear.
 
A Ship From Down Under

We were on R and R in Subic Bay, and a ship from Australia or New Zealand was berthed near us. Both countries have a beautiful flag that features the Southern Star....so it was one or the other.

We ran into a couple of the sailors at the White Hat Club on the base....really good guys.

Don't remember much else, except the "Mum" tattoo on the arm of one of the sailors. Of course, Mum/Mom are the same...it's all how you pronounce it.

Mort
 
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Shipyard Cranes

Large shipyard cranes have been mentioned earlier on this thread.

To my knowledge, one of the largest cranes was the gantry crane at the Hunters Point shipyard.

It was large enough to lift the guns and mount off of a battleship. The mount was to be replaced by a mount/gun unit that had been rebuilt....the idea was to save time in making the ship combat ready.

The number of rounds that could be fired without effecting the accuracy of the ships guns were pretty limited.

Mort
 
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dmort said:
We were on R and R in Subic Bay, and a ship from Australia or New Zealand was berthed near us. Both countries have a beautiful flag that features the Southern Star....so it was one or the other.

We ran into a couple of the sailors at the White Hat Club on the base....really good guys.

Don't remember much else, except the "Mum" tattoo on the arm of one of the sailors. Of course, Mum/Mom are the same...it's all how you pronounce it.

Mort
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One of the funniest things about Tattoo's was when a GI woke up in the barracks after a "night on the town" & wondered why he had a gauze patch on his arm !!
 
I will be 71 years old in Feb. I have been to many places. I was in the Army.

But through it all, I never got drunk enough, or stupid enough, to get a tattoo.
 
Check this out.......having a bad day

I went and looked this yesterday. One of G&H's big single screw Harbor Tugs broke it's shaft. The shaft is 12.5 inches in diameter.

Why is the big question. It turns out they did not drydock the vessel this past year ago, but did a whole bunch of "hot work" in the area surrounding the stern tube. They never even uncoupled the shaft. It ran for about a 2 months and the shaft broke.

Upon anylizing it, I determined the shaft formed a crack, and it kept growing untill failure. I suggested running a laser to check the alignment of the strut and stern tube.

We found the stern tube to be out of alignment with the strut by a total of 7/8 of an inch. That's a lot. A whole lot. The shaft was running in a severe deflection.

We are going to machine a new shaft, and I am going to align bore the stern tube to get it in line, and sleeve it.

The shaft will be $64,000 dollars, not counting fitting the Prop and Coupling.

http://benchrest.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=20578&stc=1&d=1516400170

http://benchrest.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=20579&stc=1&d=1516400235

http://benchrest.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=20581&stc=1&d=1516400302
 

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Jackie how much in additional costs do you think will be accumulated just by the down time and that is indeed a hard lesson learned.

JLouis
 
Louis.J said:
Jackie how much in additional costs do you think will be accumulated just by the down time and that is indeed a hard lesson learned.

JLouis
Click to expand...

This whole thing goes under the heading of things you do not do

The reason they did not pull the shaft was the boat had been on stand buy duty for a while, and it didn't have a lot of hours. They did quite a bit of hot work around and above the Stern Tube, including replacing a bulkhead that extended to the main deck.

There was a lot of welding, replacing longitudinal and transverse framing. The power of shrinking weld will overcome anything.

What they are out is a good shaft, plus the downtime having it built.

By the way, this shaft is powered by a 16 cylinder Turbo Intercooler 645 EMD at 3400 HP.
 
jackie schmidt said:
This whole thing goes under the heading of things you do not do

The reason they did not pull the shaft was the boat had been on stand buy duty for a while, and it didn't have a lot of hours. They did quite a bit of hot work around and above the Stern Tube, including replacing a bulkhead that extended to the main deck.

There was a lot of welding, replacing longitudinal and transverse framing. The power of shrinking weld will overcome anything.

What they are out is a good shaft, plus the downtime having it built.

By the way, this shaft is powered by a 16 cylinder Turbo Intercooler 645 EMD at 3400 HP.
Click to expand...

"hot work" = welding on fitments?
 
Bad Day

You seem to do a lot of business with that company.

The center photo looks like the butt end of a log with some serious heart rot.

Did they feel any vibration/harmonic before it broke?

Mort
 
dmort said:
You seem to do a lot of business with that company.

The center photo looks like the butt end of a log with some serious heart rot.

Did they feel any vibration/harmonic before it broke?

Mort
Click to expand...

We do a lot of business with just about all of the Towing Companies and Shipyards on the Gulf Coast.

G&H has the contract for handling ships in the Gulf Coast Area from Corpus Christi to Orange. Their fleet consist of single screw tugs in the 2500 to 3400 HP range, twin screw tugs in the 4000 hp range, and Z Drive "Tractor Tugs" with Rolls Royce and Shottle Z Drive Units as high as 5000 HP.
 
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