Welding Tips and Tricks

Hi guys & gals,

I'm the new guy today. I was installing signs -- like those big ones in Vegas -- for 20 years. Now I'm taking it easy working aboard the 14,000 deadweight ton, WWII Liberty Ship, SS Jeremiah O'Brien, located at Pier 45, Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco, CA. I'm the in-house welder. The tenacity of the welders of the Greatest Generation (and Rosie the Riveter) really shows in every inch of this ship. 441-feet long and 56-feet wide made of 5/8-plates eight feet tall and twenty feet long, welded and riveted together in the span of only fifty-four days from keel laying to launching, (Tim Allan grunt here).

She's powered by a massive, 2500 horse power, triple-expansion steam engine pushing out a quarter millions pounds of torque to spin her 16' diameter brass propeller and push the fully loaded (9000 tons of cargo) up to the blazing speed of 11 knots across the North Atlantic to London a total of 7 times (14 Atlantic crossings) and then from D-Day plus 5 make a perilous 11 trips to Omaha Beach to aid in the landing at Normandy.

It's ugly, It's raw. But it's a bad ass ship and I get to help keep it from sinking!

Anyway, thanks for letting me in the group here.

Welcome to the forum. You MUST post up pics!

Welcome aboard. As Artie said-bring pictures to this forum of this ship-or any other work you want to-some of us are how do you say-fanatics if old navy vessels.

Welcome...

Okay, you asked for pics, here they are .... The O'Brien moored at Pier 45; a few of the fine people who volunteer aboard - The one sitting (top left with hat and glasses) is our Chief Engineer, Jon Eaton.

You can sort of tell how large the ship is by it's piston connecting rods. The Rods are about 8-feet tall and 6" in dia.

The tank with the two inlets is called the "hot well". This is where very hot condensation enters the cooling and filtering (feed and filter) tanks before being reheated to steam in the boilers and reused to power the triple expansion steam engine. One of the first things I had to do when I arrived on board this year was to repair this critical element to the steam system. Without this, the O'Brien would not be able to operate.

Then there's a pic looking fore from the aft starboard gunner's house and from the bow looking aft on the port side.

You know- that is really freakin awesome! I want to do something like that once I am out of school and have settled somewhere. I saw more about the Illinois railway museum-about an hour away from me- and thought-how cool would it be to help fix and maintain those machines. Good test of kills working on old machinery and a good feeling afterwards. Keep up the work on that ship.

Now, that's the sort of thing I could see me doing in my "retirement". You couldn't pry me away from what I'm doing now, but at 48, I've become a realist and understand I can't just do this until I die and be satisfied. I also cannot be one of those "golf and fishing" retirees. That saying, "Idle hands are the Devil's playground?" Nope. An idle mind is the Devil's playground.

Steve S

Welcome to the forum! I used to live in the east bay and the wife and I would go hang out on the Embarcadero about once a month. Been on that ship, the Pompanito, Balclutha and hung out watching tourists go by while drinking Anchor Steam. Good times!

Did you see this wacko Canuckistanian getting around lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsF2Oly19bA

I imagine that ship would have large quantities of lead paint and asbestos around. Take care.