I'm Going to Have to Refer You to a Specialist...

Well, it's been a quiet week aboard the USS SLATER, my weekend retreat. (For those of you who can place that opening, good for you!) The end of the week had been crummy weather-wise, but I was pleased to see clear skies when I awoke at 7 Saturday morning (which is late for me), and despite mild backups on I-87 due to construction, the drive to Albany was as pleasant as ever. Or it would have been were it not for the problem that I knew would still be confronting me when I arrived: the broken pipe end in the reducer.

Arriving as usual, I made my change from mild-mannered, street-roaming civilian to The Mechanic For Hire, stepping into the Engineer's Office in civvies and re-emerging moments later, blue coveralls spotless, black boots gleaming, third class crow pin in NAVY ballcap shining, ready to take on 60 years of rust, crud, corrosion, and paint!

First up, my arch enemy from last week, the reducer. There were no larger extractors to be found. The largest one I could find was just barely too narrow to be wedged inside the pipe like I needed it to be. I tried bending washers and wedging them in, making the hole smaller. The extractor slipped. I tried wrapping it in thin sheet copper. The extractor slipped. In desparation, I put a wood shim in. The extractor slipped. I had no choice. I was licked. I had to call in the experts.

The experts, wisened beyond their years, came and looked at my problem. I described the efforts I had made, and they nodded gravely. I detailed the ways in which I had tried to gently finesse the broken end of pipe out of the reducer. They scratched their chins and frowned. I offered suggestions of alternatives for consideration. They reached for a hammer and chisel. But by bit, the experts tapped, tinkered, and finally, they showed me what they were up to. How they were gently chiseling the pipe in on itself to make removal possible. Then they handed the chisel and hammer to me, at which time I tried to replicate their detailed work. And I failed. The small piece of pipe that had me licked for the better part of two weeks came out, but the threads in the brass reducer were so marred and mauled that I thought at first that the reducer was a total loss. But, in the spirit of giving it the old college try, I pulled out a tap and did what I could to make the threads serviceable again; I must say that I was pleased with the result.

With the reducer finally back in one piece, it was time to find a way to replace or fabricate the piece of piping and union that I had broken previously. I decided that the easiest way to go for several reasons (not the least of which being that I had left the broken-off piece to be replicated at home) was to install a new piece of pipe, remove the old union and put a new one in. Digging throught the plumbing storage area that is after steering (not to mention unventilated and extremely hot), I found the union I needed and returned to the machine shop to make the changes.

First, to remove the unbroken half of the union. I decided the way to go would be to remove the smaller piece from the overhead in the engineroom and take it up to the machine shop and work on it with the vice. However, when I put the wrench on and turned, it was not the coupling I was expecting that loosened, but one about three feet away. Try as I might, with only those two wrenches, either the whole three feet of pipe was coming out, or nothing at all. Five minutes later, I returned to the Machine Shop with three feet of pipe...

Five minutes with the vice, and the piping section came apart: about 8" of pipe with the union, a moisture separator, another 10" of pipe, and a valve. I put the part with the union in the vice, turned, and no dice. I got a larger wrench. No dice. Enter Erik Collin, who, without a word entered, picked up a blowtorch, heated the union, and then handed me the wrench. The union came right off. It's one of those principles that seems to get pushed to the back of your mind when learning about nuclear power: metal expands when heated. The Experts: 2; Mechanic For Hire: 0. So all the bits and parts got disassembled, the globe valve reconditioned and its stem tapped for a new handwheel, and reinstalled. It is at this point I will pause, because it was about this time I was interrupted by someone calling my name from down in the engineroom.


Gus, the Expert on the right in the first photo, had been rearranging some boxes in the engineroom (which I will call by it's designator of B-4, since if you're still reading this, you're initated enough to know what it's really called). He came across two plastic cases that he thought I should look in. I of course opened the two boxes, each one about the size of a sandwich, and in each one were about half a dozen extractors, all large enough to have been useful earlier when trying to take that piece of pipe out of the reducer! Talk about a useful discovery that would have been better found 3 hours prior!

So, after that bit of news, I was ready to put the reducer back in and be done with it. So bit by bit, piece by piece, the jigsaw puzzle I had removed over the past few days of work was reassembled. Once it was done, I can't say that it looked bad.


Okay, well that's about all I've got for you now. There is more, of course, but I'm going to save it. There's no guarantee that I'll have time over my next days off to return to Albany, and in that eventuality, I want to have some material left over for next weekend. Unless something else comes to mind, I'm thinking a brief lesson on electrical theory? Don't worry, I won't make you do homework; but, just like when I give a tour, no one is safe from a pop-quiz...