CORRODED BY SEA-WATER

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 151, 27 June 1914, Page 8

CORRODED BY SEA-WATER

THE WALKURE'S BOILERS. " . EXTENSIVE" REP AIRS. The German steamer Walkure. lying at the Clyde-quay Wharf, is at present having extensive repairs effected to her boilers and tubes, which were somewhat seriously damaged as the result of the accidental - introduction of salt water. Somewhere between Durban and New Plymouth, on the outward voyage, the evaporator broke down, and the sea-water entered the tubes and boilers, causing them to| corrode. The trouble was noticed at New Plymouth, where the vessel was given a charter to come to Wellington to have repairs effected. The work was entrusted to Messrs. J. J. Niven and Co., and is being car« ried out under the control of Mr. H. A. Luke, works manager for the firm. Operations were commenced on Wednesday morning, and though the work is of a difficult nature and the job one of the biggest of the kind that has been done in Wellington, it is already more than half accomplished. The stipulated time was ten days. The magnitude of the work will be realised when it is stated that the interior of each of the three boilers had to be "scaled," and about 100 tubes in each boiler cut away and replaced. Opportunity is also being taken to renew rivets and weld up some cracks in the furnace. The work of une twenty-five or thirty men employed on' the repairs has been greatly facilitated by the use of acetone gas for cutting out the pipes and welding the cracks. By this process work that would have taken two or three days to accomplish by hand has been accomplished in as 'many hours. The plant is portable and the application of the process simple. The gas, which is manufactured in Napier, is compressed into cylinders, 1 and being directed through special nozzles gives such an extremeheat that the metal on which the flame is played melts like so much wax. The firm anticipates that the work will be carried out well within the time provided. The Walkure subsequently proceeds to Lytelton for bunker coal betore taking her departure for the island, of Makatea to load phosphates for Denmark.