[TheForge] Welding Liberty Ships

[Larry Brown]

Actually I don't care how great a welder a person is, if the welding 
machine is in the correct heat range you can only burn the wire so fast. So 
pay by the hour or by anticipated rod usage would probably be about the 
same. I would assume excessive rod usage would be hidden in the water under 
the dock
I worked in a shipyard where the guy patching the holes in the bottom of 
the barges had made a box he used to hold the electrode holder with the 
3/16 rod in and just let them burn while he read the paper. He said the 
boss watched the flapper on the machine to see if it was idling and if he 
wasn't welding, this way he could take a break

Larry Brown


At 01:44 PM 3/3/2005 -0500, you wrote:
>Yeah, the story kind of reeks of urban legend.  I cannot imagine even in 
>those times that a shipyard would be so foolish as to pay based upon 
>number of rods consumed.
>
>JOHN CHOBRDA wrote:
>>         My late Aunt worked building ships during the war and I never heard
>>that story, she said they got paid by the hour and how fast they could
>>produce. I thought that when the ships that did break apart, it happened
>>during the winter months in the North Atlantic and they sank, hard to
>>inspect.