Shortwave Sportfishing ) wrote:
: On Tue, 02 Aug 2005 13:33:18 GMT, Gene Kearns
: wrote:

: On Tue, 02 Aug 2005 05:16:54 GMT, "Bill McKee"
: wrote:
:
:
: "Gene Kearns" wrote in message
: . ..
:
: Neat stories about their construction, too, from my dad. He worked at
: Newport News building them, until he was conscripted in WWII.
:
: Liberty ships were steel, as well as the Victory ships. My dad spent the
: war building them in Richmond, CA and my mom spent the time as a nurse at
: the shipyard hospital. The hospital became the first Kaiser hospital. I
: remember the small stamped models that we had at home. Probably worth a lot
: of money now. First boat I got to pilot.
:
:
: I have to assume that he saw what he saw...
:
: Apparently, as steel became scarce they, experimented with other forms
: of material. One of the stories he recounted was the, to him,
: excessive number of hours spent in vibrating the mix in the mold....
: sometimes two shifts. He always expected to see the hull come out with
: aggregate on the bottom and sand and cement on top.... though he never
: saw one come out that way.
:
: I assume vibrating a steel ship would just be loud....

: That same technique was used on Hoover Dam. When we were out there a
: few years ago, one of the documentaries we saw mentioned that
: sometimes whole gangs of ten/fifteen men would continuously vibrate
: the cement mixture for as long as 36 hours.

Any application of cement requires vibrating it to get the air bubbles out
for a smooth consistant pore.
Back to my original posting. I guess nobody knows of any boats that were
scuttled and left in a field somewhere. I'd like to get one about 50'LOA.
I just missed out on a deal last may on a 50' coastal cruiser, nice boat.
It had a new coat of bottom and hull paint, engine was end of life, no
interior, decking, or rigging. It would have been a big job to refit it.
If anyone knew of something similar I'd like to hear about it.

Tom

--