Enter the Trusty Sidekick

Well, it's finally happened. I've finally done it. I got another student in my section down to SLATER, and I think he's hooked. And truth be told, it was really his idea. Most people at work know what I do over my weekends, and often times I get asked about it. "Are you going down to Albany this weekend?" and other variants of that question are not uncommonly asked of me. So when an Electrician's Mate asked me if he could come along the other day, I of course immediately checked with "the Management" and told him to come along.

Due to the work schedule and corresponding screwyness of our sleep schedules, we didn't get down to Albany until about noon. The sun was too hot in my opinion to stay outside painting, and the valves in B-4 and other spaces belowdecks lacked air conditioning, so I made my way down to the mess deck instead and decided that some of the valves down there could use some work. Little did I know what I was getting myself in for.

I removed three valves. The first valve had what looked like solder or a weld bead across the stem, which made removing the handwheel on impossible. In fact, there wasn't even a nut, just these dribbles of once-molten metal fouling the threads and keeping the handwheel in place. Since the handwheel was non-period aluminum, I decided that some "machanical agitation" would not be uncalled for. So I went and retrived a "mechanical agitator" (tr. "large hammer") and proceeded to, er, "remove" the handwheel, with charm, grace, and refinement.

That having been done, I cut the threaded portion away, ground down the top, drilled and tapped the stem for a screw after having taken the various parts to the wire wheel and cleaning them up. Reassembled, the valve went back into place. And that, truth be told, is about all I got done in six hours. The rest of it, fighting with valves that didn't want to come out, didn't want to come apart, and didn't want to co-operate, is pretty much standard operating procedure, and you've heard about it all before. On one of the valves, I even encountered a handwheel nut that was truly welded into place. The handwheel is unique, so I'm going to have to finesse this one over the next few weeks.

In the middle of all of this, the "Electrician for Hire", or EM3, as I'll call him here, was busy delving into the electrical side of things. I showed him the enginerooms and the power distribution switchboards, and then he was introduced to some of the electrical bits aboard, and he spent most of the day, after having initially helped me remove the valves, reading up on and disassembling a set of synchros. Hopefully his intrest has been piqued to the point that he'll be a regular until our class leaves school here.

Well, that's about all I've got for today. The plan is to get B-4 on the tour by next month. Two months ago, I didn't think it'd be possible. But day by day, the pieces come together, and I'm tempted to say that we just might make it.