Re: Gasket / Flange Question and Urban Legends

Not a piping story, but a good one. I have a colleague whose first job was as metallurgist supporting GM's manufacture of 50 cal. machine guns in 1942. The heat treating facility had a large tank of molten lead which was used as a tempering bath. One day, for safety reasons, they were showing him how to heat parts in liquid salt baths and lead baths. He was asked to wire up medium carbon alloy steel parts (like hammer heads) to be processed in a lead bath. He was warned to wire the hammer heads properly and carefully because if any came loose the whole plant would have to stop operations for a couple of days--a serious matter in wartime.

He wired the parts and lowered them into the bath, which was operating at 1500 degrees F and held them about five minutes. When he lifted them out to quench them in an everything was gone! Only wires that had once held the hammer heads remained. Norm went pale with the thought of being the cause of a plant shut-down.

The entire Metallurgical Department who'd been watching burst into laughter--he'd been had. The 'hammer heads' had been made of lead for his benefit and they'd melted almost instantly when he'd lowered them into the bath.

Christopher Wright P.E.    |"They couldn't hit an elephant at
chrisw@skypoint.com        | this distance"   (last words of Gen.
___________________________| John Sedgwick, Spotsylvania 1864)