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Some of the lessons we learn best are taught in tlie School of Hard Knocks. I'd like to recount one such lesson that I remember vividly.
While I was welding superintendent at Globe Shipbuilding during World War II, we built 29 ocean-going vessels. Included in this total were 1 1 cargo vessels: 338 foot ships with 1,750-hp diesel engines. They were built for long-range merchant marine service, and had a top speed of 1 1 knots.
The masts of these cargo vessels had a masthead, as shown in Figure 1 . It contained the block or sheaves for the hoisting cables. It was quite a weldment, all held together with 0.25-in. fillet welds. Normally, we used E60 1 2 electrode for these welds, and we had never had any problems when welding with this filler metal.
During WWII, we fought shortages of everything: steel, acetylene, oxygen, welding consumables you name it, we probably needed it and couldn't get it when we needed it. The ongoing shortages had prompted an informal bartering system. When we weren't trading, we were borrowing.
One day, we ran out of E6012 electrode. We contacted a nearby shipyard; they were out of E6012, too, but they had some...