Preciousblue1965,
Nice drawing. Point noted. I was willing to let it go, but since we can't seem to do that, let's go a little deeper.
Honeycomb,
In your last post to me, you interchanged strengthening steel with hardening steel. They're clearly not the same thing. Some steel needs to be hard (e.g., a file or the cutting edge of a sword), but with hardness it becomes brittle. Have you ever used a file as a prying tool. I have. I had to buy a new file. Hard and brittle isn't always good for all applications. Once again, as someone pointed out, this goes back to quenching.
Now I wasn't going to digress with the steel analogy any further, but since we have so many enthusiasts, what the heck. I don't have a degree in metallurgy, so all this transitional temperature stuff is beyond my personal experience. I grew up in the woods with a dad who was a part-time gunsmith. After school, while he was working at the factory, I'd make repair parts so that he could fix people's guns when he got home. I'd make springs, and case harden frames, but my favorite activity was making Damascus-steel shotgun barrels. Now that takes a lot of tries to get it right. You metallurgists should try it some time. Nothing like watching barrel split under the pressure of a double or triple load of powder to put your theories to the test. I guess my point is, it takes all kinds and tempers of steel to make a shotgun [or a valve for that matter, though I've never made a valve from scratch].
I want HY100 (or 80 depending) that has been tested for ALL flaws. And, excluded for the smallest imperfection.
Over the last twenty years in this business, I've supervised and/or managed hundreds of nuclear workers. I'm yet to meet the perfect employee [in or out of the Navy]. I've had a few who at least always tried to do the right thing, and I've had several who thought that they were perfect. I prefer the former to the latter, since I've found that ego is generally inversely proportional to performance. Over those twenty years, I've found very few who I couldn't train and/or find some useful way for them to contribute to the cause, and above all, we've gotten more than our share of the work done, without incident. Of those few that I wasn't a good enough manager to make useful, most went on to find useful jobs elsewhere.
There's no such thing as bad steel, just poor preparation techniques or misapplication. A good metal worker rarely throws steel away. It always has a use [even TAD is a use, since the non-nukes are always going to insist on nukes pulling their fair share of those billets].
Lastly,
I'm really kind of disturbed by all of this talk about how the United States Navy is just moments away from a nuclear accident. This is an open forum where anyone can log on to read the opinions of "nuke workers." The last thing we need is some California antinuclear freak accessing the site and quoting this kind of bitch session about how these whippersnappers aren't as good as we were back when the control rods were made of wood. If you're that concerned, that, in your professional opinion, the Navy Nuclear program's standards have sunk so low that an impending accident is likely, then please contact you Senator or Representative so that we can cut it off. If you're right, you need to do something about it [as a good nuke and a good citizen of country that needs nuclear power]. If you're not that convinced, then please consider whether you should be saying it on such a public forum.
Thanks,
mgm
