My dad served during the early part of the Vietnam war. I was around 3 years old. Mom and I went on a tiger cruise and mom took a picture of dad holding me while I used a wrench to turn the jam nut on a watertight door. Little did I know at the time that 20 years later I would be a division damage control petty officer onboard a destroyer chalk testing and doing PM work.
Back in my shipyard day we tested tightness of tanks, voids and compartments by adding air pressure to engineering spec and using high tech soapy water on all the seams, hatches and doors. A leak would produce bubbles. Big part of my job was signing off on the test.
Oh yeah....after chalking and checking the mutton tallow packing...1/4 psi air test...haha then break out the "in calibration" soapy water...shipfitters!
When my Dad tested travel trailers for gas leaks in the gas lines, he would soap all the fitting. Over the years, he replaced a great many fitting to fix gas leaks.
@@johnbeauvais3159 the plate covering the m1 abrams engine deck the most forward up agiasnt the turret in the center as you can imagine its hard to remove there is no proper nomenclature for it......... its referred to as the bitch plate.
Good morning! An interesting video idea I had was “what are the biggest mistakes made since New Jersey had become a museum?”. Ryan often mentions if there have been massive mistakes made before he started working at the battleship and they can never change what had been done.
2:00 - Also, overtightening the dogs increases the stress on the bolt and nut threads, wearing them out more quickly and risking stripping the threads (in which case the dog won't dog anymore).
I did a tour as division damage petty officer on my 1st ship and worked on a lot of water tight doors over 22 years in the USN. Yes, putting new gaskets in WTD's and getting it right SUCKS big time.
As a tanker on M60 series tanks it was greasing the road wheels and all fittings on the tracks 36 total if memory serves. Took several grease gun refills. Next in line was punching the guntube after gunnery.
Every division had/has a person assigned to perform damage control preventative maintenance. On two ships I served on there were water tight hatches that required either the ship’s 15 or 30 ton crane to open/close. These were weapons elevators. I was often given DCPMS as a collateral assignment. The one ship there was one door that for a year at every inspection I reported, “Door failed due to lack of replacement gasket.” I retired with 23.5 years total service, with 14 being on ship.
I always replaced the gasket while using silicone to help get it in the channel. Always before the chalk test wipe the knife edge down as well to ensure clean. Did this more than a few times on LSD36 USS Anchorage as a DC3. As for compartments being air tight, lol yeah good luck with that as often times when cables are removed in the bulkheads, they often are not plugged.
How do you test the holes around the frame where the dogs go through? There has to be a seal around the rotating shafts, and the same with the shaft for the wheel on the quick-acting door.
I'm guessing the amount that could possibly leak through isn't a concern? Even for NBC some leaks are ok because the filtration systems maintain a positive pressure. As long as your air filters can flow more air than what leaks, you're good to go. Plane pressurization works the same way. There's actually specs on the permissible leakage for jets.
The dogs had packing around them in the holes. As far as I remember, they weren't tested on a periodic basis because there wasn't any convenient way to do that. A leaking dog wouldn't allow nearly as much water or smoke through as a leaking (or missing) door gasket. Shipyards tested compartments for leaks with air pressure when any modifications were made.
I chipped paint on weapons elevators while with G3 weapons division on CVN68. I actually enjoyed it until one day I raced the elevator up to the mess deck while climbing the beams and the division chief was at the door as I stepped out of the shaft... The elevator showed up about 3 seconds later.😐
"...If you're a damage control-man...." I was Jarhead aviation, and in my own service I spend only a few weeks on a carrier on a couple of occasions. One thing I do know from talking with friends who were Navy is that EVERYONE on the ship was damage control, or more accurately, firemen when the need arose at the situation. Being on "low priority" for personnel list (because of the little time we were on the ship only for pilot training purposes) I stood to the side during a Battle Stations drill to let the people who ran the place get where they were going, then made my way to my station: We were never there long enough to learn the ship layout, and they never berated us for being late-reports because of this (as well as thinking - having learned from past experience - that Jarhead can really have rocks in the brain sometimes). I figured if we got in the way they'd use us for "ablative-personnel" ship repairs by saying "Free beer over here! Just fight your way through that ammo room fire!" We'd probably fall for it too.
Hey Ryan- The door stuff makes me wonder how the bilge systems work. I'm curious on the different ways water is removed from compartments and how the technicians discover leaks in seldom traveled parts of the ship.
He has gotten so much more comfortable in front of the camera. I haven been watching a ton of his videos lately and there is a huge difference for even a couple months ago
This was a really cool video. I am a little ocd, so I am your man for chalking doors, not a drop will get through. I am finding the maintenance aspect of the New Jersey to be one of the most fascinating subjects. Maybe anchor maintenance, at some point. They need maintenance, right? Awesome channel, cheers.
No, not really. We make sure any tools left out are secured if we think it's going to rain, and we pull the flags down if we decide the wind is going to rip them down or tangle the lines enough to make it tough to get down.
Changing out a door gasket when I was the DCPO for my division was one of the most annoyingly tedious tasks I ever did. It took most of a day. Pull the old gasket out. Clean out the gasket channel. Insert the new gasket took a stupidly long time. Make sure you cut the gasket ends perfectly straight. Cut the gasket an inch or two long. Insert the other end then push the remaining gasket in so that the ends push up against each other tight, and then mash the remaining gasket in with a couple of C clamps. Then time to adjust the dogs. Loosen them all. Chalk test. tighten the dogs. repeat chalk test. tighten the dogs. Lather rinse repeat until it passes. Then tighten down all the jam nuts. Clean up everything and fetch one of the HTs to come do a chalk test and make sure everything was done right. Never want to do that again. on the subject of damage control. Maybe do a video on REFTRA and the seven deadly sins of Gitmo. My ship managed to actually do all seven of them for real just before and during our REFTRA period. Luckily, nobody got seriously hurt.
I was an HT/DC on the USS Coral Sea from 82-89. The armored doors and hatches were a challenge when maintenance had been gun decked for years. I also did air pressure tests on compartments and voids.
I noticed the Circle Z label plate, could you do a quick video on the various damage control closure classification across the ship? I love this channel! *Update* Never mind I found you already made such video, You guys are AWESOME!!!
As a Machinery Repairman (MR) the worst maintenance I had was the water-tight roller curtain doors leading to the flight deck on our ammo ship (AE). There were no blueprints for the rollers that took the brunt of the wear, nor were there any samples. They had to be measured in place, for inside diameter (while the stud was still in place), outside diameter (while still in its track), thickness (again, while still in its track), and radius to fit into the track. The senior chief thought he knew better than anyone else, but was never able to answer simple questions such as how to measure in place without proper tools. He would just rant and rave like I'd committed murder, then walk away. He did the same with the bearing rings on the fire pumps, water pumps, and air dehydrators. Just like the doors, they had no samples or blueprints.
Nice video. I was reading an article on the New Jersey from 1984 that during refitting for Vietnam all of the 40mm gun tubes were removed except for two, which were converted into swimming pools for the crew. If true I would like to see you talk about that subject.
My least favorite preventive maintenance task I had to accomplish when I was in the military was the stripping, priming, and painting of AIM-9 Siderwinder missile captive trainers. Every so often, the missiles would have to be broken down and the rocket motor, warhead, and target detector would get a healthy coating of a industrial-strength paint stripper we nicknamed "elephant snot", which would remove the paint down to the bare metal. Then we would wash and dry the components, as well as tape all mating surfaces. Next would prime, then paint. The would process was labor intensive, plus the primer was toxic (thank god for breathing masks and filters!). The elephant snot got dumped down a hill behind the missile shop... of course, that was in the pre-OHSA days.
The momentary split second pause before saying "glory hole" in a serious monologue.................... And look, before aaaanybody says something wise, yes, I know it's an actual thing on a ship. Still funny.
@@davidburroughs2244 I worked with a guy (Navy Ret.) for a while that used to say something like "if you can't handle those kind of jokes, you've got no business being in the Navy". Still makes me smile when I think about it. :)
0:45 You lied to me, Ryan. I've now been up for over 48 hours looking over metallurgic data, hydrodynamics testing, structural analysis, damage control doctrine and other variables to determine how fast the USS New Jersey could go with flooded compartments. I just now ran out of coffee and I'm having hallucinations of you and Drachinifel discussing it with me.
The DCs were not the only sailors that tested WT doors. R Division's ER09 workshop supported a 3-M (Material Maintenance Management, if I recall correctly) program on damage control items throughout the ship, with the maintenance being performed by sailors in the division responsible for the space (the reason the division is posted on the space "bullseye"). So many sailors will remember the WT door and hatch chalk test, and many chiefs and division officers will remember checking to see if it was properly performed and passed. The most difficult chalk tests were on the armored doors and hatches. If a regular WT door or hatch needed adjustment to pass the test, it was usually a matter of adjusting the dogs, or less often replacing a strip of worn rubber gasket. If the ribbed gasket on an armored hatch didn't show chalk all the way around, the only recourse was to adjust or replace the gasket, which was more difficult and took more time. The mating surfaces of armored doors and hatches were finely machined but didn't make a perfect seal without some help.
Years back I heard a story about that. Forgive me because it's been a while and the whole thing might be made up, but a young dude was given a wooden mallet and told to test for metal fatigue just like you were. He went around the whole ship pounding on things and suddenly found a spot where instead of the regular thud sound, there was a dull thunk noise. Turns out the paint had been improperly applied and a decent chunk of the ship was rusting away and needed to be drydocked for repairs.
@@mintyfreshmetagross5437 LOL. At least they drydocked it. I was thinking you'd say they brought out the nail guns, air hoses and fixed it all at sea. That would be a hell of a job.
Least-favorite? Being a deck-ape we were tasked with chipping rust by hand with a chipping hammer, cleaning with a steel brush, and then trying to get red-lead from the Forward Division paint locker. :D
I imagine it's mentally taxing after a few days of doing it all day but the chipping and brushing off of rust is IMO some of the more fun work you do when welding stuff. I fondly remember helping my dad patch the rusted-out fender of his truck and I actually hated the Bondo work a lot more than the meticulous chipping and brushing to get every last speck of rust before welding in the patch.
Least favorite maintenance i had to do; climb a 305 meter tower to replace multiple microwave dishes at 220~260m. The dishes where not broken nor malfunctioning but they where up there for 10 years so had to be replaced. So one dish per day, 19 dishes total, they where 1.2m in diameter.
I talked to a sailor that was on the LST 1166 said he polish every brass tag on board then shellac over then, well they tarnished still so he had to strip it all off and repollish them
one thing about keeping those doors maintained is forbid a fire breaks out despite being a museum is that I imagine you can atleast try and keep it contained.
That chalk is a piece of old fashioned carpenter's chalk. Before they had chalk boxes with string line in them at the hardware store, carpenters would use that block of chalk and a string to snap a straight line. Typically on a floor. Now they have a bottle of chalk powder, dump that in the chalk box and reel out the line.
"watertight" at the kinds of pressures we're talking about on a ship is very different from "watertight" when we're talking about a tupperware container. These watertight doors are supposed to be able to theoretically have the compartment on one side totally flooded, while the compartment on the other side is still totally dry and relatively safely usable (AFAIK, I'm not a sailor). They're definitely airtight at atmospheric pressure, although some "slippery" molecules might be able to skirt past.
There's a permissible amount of leak through on those dogs, but there is a water repellent packing material that is packed in the holes those dogs go through when you service them. Part of the chalk test is adjusting the dogs, if enough time has passed, you are supposed to fully remove the dogs and clean and repack the passageways.
Hatch maintenance wasn't strictly the job of a Damage Controlman. As a new Interior Communications Electrician, I maintained the main and escape trunk doors in the IC/Gyro Shop, as well as the hatch on the Pitsword Trunk. Also maintained the battle lanterns and the FF hose station in the P-way outside the shop. Least favorite maintenance task? That would have been maintenance on the batteries which supplied backup power to the main gyrocompass, the aux gyrocompass, and the phone system. It was a weekly PMS check to top off all cells of each battery with distilled water, and to test Specific Gravity in one cell for each battery, rotating through the cells at each check. Problem was that the battery backup for the equipment was 120VDC from 6-volt batteries. That's 3 separate cabinets, each with 20 batteries in series. 60 batteries. 60 SG tests. 180 visual level checks. Most terrifying task? Annual cleaning/inspect/test/calibrate on the sending units for the Wind Speed and Direction system...a.k.a "Windbirds". These are the little things that look like an airplane with no wings, mounted out on one of the yards off of the mast high enough that no part of the superstructure could interfere with the wind patterns. This PMS task was performed in the shop, which meant that somebody had to go up the mast, out on the yard, unbolt the unit, and lower it down to the deck on a rope. I do -NOT- do heights...
Least Favorite ? Ryan I hated sanding paint off of JP5 pipes, could not use any needle guns or power tools all by sand paper by hand. Hated it. V4 Div. Chucky V.
I have a beast of a livestock guardian that could use dogging down occasionally, especially when in need of a trip to the vet. Let us know how it goes... :P
There are some excellent rubber conditioners that would bring those seals that are beginning to become brittle back to life or something as simple as wiping them down with the little bit of brake fluid does wonders at keeping rubber soft and pliable as most of you brake system components are made of rubber
Kind of a related question... If you are on a ship that has flooded compartments, how can you tell if the compartment on the other side of a closed-door is flooded or safe to enter?
Worst job? Mucking tanks on an AO. Now for the doors. I was an HTCS and have been retired since 82. I have done PMS on the WTD's but cannot remember the periodicity of the test, but on the bottom edge of a door, there used to be a nipple welded to the bulkhead (wall) and a pipe cap threaded to the nipple. The nipple was open to the next compartment. This allowed air to be pressurized in the compartment to 2 psi. Not much, but you can hear a leak around the door, and if there is 2 psi in the compartment and if the door swings inward, you can undog the dogs and you can NOT get the door to open up. We would connect an air hose with a gauge to tell the pressure. I have replaced the gasket on doors and it is not easy, but can be done.
Most people think a boat or ship is totally leakproof, but that isn’t so. Some water always gets in when outside hatches are open or the seals to the through hulls leak. I’d love to see an episode on the stuffing boxes.
Yeah, replacing the gasket sucks ... seating it properly takes time and is a major pain in the posterior. They not only can dry out but one of my young sailors learned the hard way that you never paint the gasket OR the knife edge. Doing the 'chalk test' can be a pain also, especially with older doors that have warped slightly and you have to adjust the dogs to hold it tight against the knife edge.
My uncle was a sapper in the Australian Army and he always talked about "the chalk test" they would carry out on APC before taking them for a swim. It good to finally understand what the hell he's was talking about. Btw half the time his story would end "so after the bastard sunk like a Stone" Apparently its not a very good test to his opinion.
Most disagreeable sort of preventive maintenance I've ever done: oil (engine & diff) changes on a 25 year old vehicle. Not so bad if done on time, but if you wait to long that stuff can just about qualify for chemical warfare by the smell. Also inevitably gets one of my gloves soaked with oil when I do the engine.
@@md4luckycharms only if you jack or lift the vehicle up till you can stand under it, the vehicle in question has enough ground clearance for me to slide under without jacking or lifting.
@@can_hauler shit that makes it even worse in my experience, at least you can dodge on a lift. If you're under the car it's getting somewhere and it's staying for a week
It might be that toxic. Take complex mix of organics, stick in metal pot and heat while stirring for hundreds of hours. That's a recipe for making for making all kinds of noxious compounds. I once heard of a farmer who ran out of mineral oil and used used motor oil as a base for an insect repellent treatment for his cows, and a few hours later they were all dead.
@@evensgrey Thats more because motor oil isn't mineral oil. Had he done that with fresh motor oil it still would have killed most of them. The residuals in motor oil is really just slightly corrosive combustion byproducts (not even to the level of salt water though), lots of carbon, some diesel or gas. The toxic part is the additive packages in the oil for dealing with these things, the anti-foaming agents, and seal conditioners, lubricity modifiers, temperature stabilizers, etc. Things that are in the oil fresh or used. Oil itself when heated is incredibly stable, it's oil because it was heated for millions of years under pressure to stabilize it into oil.
Least favorite? How about crawling around in the bilges, on you hands and knees with a dust pan in your hand scooping up sludge, in a boiler room that is already 126 degrees. Then wipe all of the metal around you with a rag soaked with JP5 so you can paint the bilges once clean. But you're not done.....Now that all of your clothes are soaked with bunker C, JP5 and just plain sludge, you strip down, wash your body off with JP5 because that's the only thing that will cut through with what's all over your body, and have a friend with a hose on the deck above you rinse you off with sea water. Now you are clean enough to hit the shower. Yes, the above is what we had to do many time and there is no exaggeration in this event. Fun times ! Charles R. Ware, DD 865..Middle East cruise. Temp topside was 110 degrees. Barry
I remember being sent with a wrench into the void below a scuttle hatch in the well deck of a 44'mlb(USCG)after a re-gasket job as an E2. The guy holding the water hose told me I had it adjusted correctly when the water stopped coming in. He was correct...
Absolutely hated vent filter cleaning! Tag the vent electricals out that was a job all in it's own. Take out the vent screens, filters etc. make sure the filter shop is open. take the things to the filter shop, get clean replacements, or wait till they have been cleaned. Replace the vent parts (This usually sucked more as the screws never wanted to go in right). Tag the vent system back in. And repeat! 3M system.
Not gonna lie, I did watch that door video in hopes it would put me to sleep. It had the opposite effect. “Oh shit what happens if you’re taking a shit and you’re on the wrong side of the waterproof door?”
My dad served during the early part of the Vietnam war. I was around 3 years old. Mom and I went on a tiger cruise and mom took a picture of dad holding me while I used a wrench to turn the jam nut on a watertight door. Little did I know at the time that 20 years later I would be a division damage control petty officer onboard a destroyer chalk testing and doing PM work.
Hope you are well!
Fuck yeah that’s a legacy right alright!
Gaskets are also integral to firefighting by keeping smoke out of the rest of the ship and keeping fresh oxygen from getting into the fire.
That went through my mind as well. Those doors serve so many purposes it's unreal.
You definitely need to add a “chalk test” t-shirt to the ship’s store.
"My wife passed the chalk test"
Definitely. Two versions, a Pass and a Fail, with complete and broken outlines of the door.
Back in my shipyard day we tested tightness of tanks, voids and compartments by adding air pressure to engineering spec and using high tech soapy water on all the seams, hatches and doors. A leak would produce bubbles. Big part of my job was signing off on the test.
I did this to a set of fuel tanks on my second ship when we came out of dry dock. Mostly sucked, but it worked.
Oh yeah....after chalking and checking the mutton tallow packing...1/4 psi air test...haha then break out the "in calibration" soapy water...shipfitters!
yes soapy water tests and die penetration tests... fun with metal...
When my Dad tested travel trailers for gas leaks in the gas lines, he would soap all the fitting. Over the years, he replaced a great many fitting to fix gas leaks.
Bunch of military guys sitting around with a clipboard watching for bubbles.
Taxes lmao
FYI: The nut on the outside of a stacked pair is called a “jam nut”
On the Mark V diving helmet there’s a stud that is longer to secure the air regulator to, the nut for that stud is called the bastard nut.
@@johnbeauvais3159 the plate covering the m1 abrams engine deck the most forward up agiasnt the turret in the center as you can imagine its hard to remove there is no proper nomenclature for it......... its referred to as the bitch plate.
@@justnsaliga8518 😂🤣😂
That's what she said 😅
And here was me thinking the nut on the outside was called "a civilian"
Be careful when saying, “man, I got to tighten my dog’s nuts for the chalk test.” I think he can be taken more than one way!
If a sailor says a thing that can only be taken one way, they're probably going to get pink bellied repeatedly until they learn to double entendre.
Also advise against "something something something meet me down in the gloryhole for some R&R."
Also "dogging" is a British slang term for something nasty, so be careful of saying that
Good morning! An interesting video idea I had was “what are the biggest mistakes made since New Jersey had become a museum?”. Ryan often mentions if there have been massive mistakes made before he started working at the battleship and they can never change what had been done.
I love the self depreciating humour at the beginning. Made me chuckle.
That's also why these videos will not help me to sleep.
2:00 - Also, overtightening the dogs increases the stress on the bolt and nut threads, wearing them out more quickly and risking stripping the threads (in which case the dog won't dog anymore).
That brings back memories when I served on the USS PREBLE (DDG-46) as an HT from 83-87. Thanks for sharing Ryan.
@Drakos of random I'm curious what is the name of the ship you served on?
We probably saw each other, I was an HT on the Puget Sound AD38. We tended Preble once or twice. I was on her 82-84
@@TheWarthogInstitute That's cool, we probably did. What shop did you work in? No more AD'S in commission.
@@364pgr I was in R-DIV vent shop right off the midship brow near the chow line. I wish they had never gotten rid of the tenders.
I did a tour as division damage petty officer on my 1st ship and worked on a lot of water tight doors over 22 years in the USN.
Yes, putting new gaskets in WTD's and getting it right SUCKS big time.
I helped re-gasket the watertight doors on the Battleship Texas 1987 to 1988 to get her ready for the tow to Galveston in 1988.
Many doors? I found that after about 25 your fingertips are apparently both on fire and being attacked by tiny tiny sharks.
@@Grimmwoldds Right you are. I did about 12 doors over a period of six months working only weekends as part of The First Texas Volunteers, BB 35.
I don't need sleep I need answers
As a tanker on M60 series tanks it was greasing the road wheels and all fittings on the tracks 36 total if memory serves. Took several grease gun refills. Next in line was punching the guntube after gunnery.
That mic is such an improvement the production values keep getting better and better
Every division had/has a person assigned to perform damage control preventative maintenance. On two ships I served on there were water tight hatches that required either the ship’s 15 or 30 ton crane to open/close. These were weapons elevators. I was often given DCPMS as a collateral assignment.
The one ship there was one door that for a year at every inspection I reported, “Door failed due to lack of replacement gasket.”
I retired with 23.5 years total service, with 14 being on ship.
"Help getting to sleep" as I'm literally watching this in bed as I'm about to go to sleep. Hahaha
Just got home at midnight after an evening shift, so me too mate
"most of our rooms are not gloryholes" yea that would suck to have to plug all the holes in the walls.
I always replaced the gasket while using silicone to help get it in the channel. Always before the chalk test wipe the knife edge down as well to ensure clean. Did this more than a few times on LSD36 USS Anchorage as a DC3. As for compartments being air tight, lol yeah good luck with that as often times when cables are removed in the bulkheads, they often are not plugged.
How do you test the holes around the frame where the dogs go through? There has to be a seal around the rotating shafts, and the same with the shaft for the wheel on the quick-acting door.
I'm guessing the amount that could possibly leak through isn't a concern? Even for NBC some leaks are ok because the filtration systems maintain a positive pressure. As long as your air filters can flow more air than what leaks, you're good to go. Plane pressurization works the same way. There's actually specs on the permissible leakage for jets.
The dogs had packing around them in the holes. As far as I remember, they weren't tested on a periodic basis because there wasn't any convenient way to do that. A leaking dog wouldn't allow nearly as much water or smoke through as a leaking (or missing) door gasket. Shipyards tested compartments for leaks with air pressure when any modifications were made.
"If you need help getting to sleep tonight..." On top form today, Ryan!
I chipped paint on weapons elevators while with G3 weapons division on CVN68. I actually enjoyed it until one day I raced the elevator up to the mess deck while climbing the beams and the division chief was at the door as I stepped out of the shaft... The elevator showed up about 3 seconds later.😐
"...If you're a damage control-man...." I was Jarhead aviation, and in my own service I spend only a few weeks on a carrier on a couple of occasions. One thing I do know from talking with friends who were Navy is that EVERYONE on the ship was damage control, or more accurately, firemen when the need arose at the situation. Being on "low priority" for personnel list (because of the little time we were on the ship only for pilot training purposes) I stood to the side during a Battle Stations drill to let the people who ran the place get where they were going, then made my way to my station: We were never there long enough to learn the ship layout, and they never berated us for being late-reports because of this (as well as thinking - having learned from past experience - that Jarhead can really have rocks in the brain sometimes). I figured if we got in the way they'd use us for "ablative-personnel" ship repairs by saying "Free beer over here! Just fight your way through that ammo room fire!" We'd probably fall for it too.
“Ablative personnel” had me in stitches. Bravo!
Hey Ryan- The door stuff makes me wonder how the bilge systems work. I'm curious on the different ways water is removed from compartments and how the technicians discover leaks in seldom traveled parts of the ship.
Ya I really agree!! Would love a video about it
I have seen some ships that have test pipes that weighted measuring tapes are dropped into.
basic way is a small float switch that rises as the water rises. it sends a signal back and says hey i was raised which means there is probably a leak
You have gotten much more confident in your delivery!
He has gotten so much more comfortable in front of the camera. I haven been watching a ton of his videos lately and there is a huge difference for even a couple months ago
Yes I do agree. It's quite noticeable. But I'm glad and happy for Ryan that he's quite comfortable now speaking to mass audience.
I think it’s hard to keep 6 doors working and watertight on boat! The number of doors on a battleship is mind boggling
The most entertaining museum ship curator on youtube. I like your honesty! 👍yes "simple!" .. (plus some funny innuendos) 😉
This was a really cool video. I am a little ocd, so I am your man for chalking doors, not a drop will get through. I am finding the maintenance aspect of the New Jersey to be one of the most fascinating subjects. Maybe anchor maintenance, at some point. They need maintenance, right? Awesome channel, cheers.
In the case of severe weather (Hurricane), do you secure the ship in any special way, i.e. closing certain hatches that you normally wouldnt, etc. ?
No, not really. We make sure any tools left out are secured if we think it's going to rain, and we pull the flags down if we decide the wind is going to rip them down or tangle the lines enough to make it tough to get down.
The X, Y and Z codes cover some of that.
You suppose to dog those doors in a criss cross pattern like changing a tire or you can worp the door
Hehe, I noticed that, too
Changing out a door gasket when I was the DCPO for my division was one of the most annoyingly tedious tasks I ever did. It took most of a day. Pull the old gasket out. Clean out the gasket channel. Insert the new gasket took a stupidly long time. Make sure you cut the gasket ends perfectly straight. Cut the gasket an inch or two long. Insert the other end then push the remaining gasket in so that the ends push up against each other tight, and then mash the remaining gasket in with a couple of C clamps. Then time to adjust the dogs. Loosen them all. Chalk test. tighten the dogs. repeat chalk test. tighten the dogs. Lather rinse repeat until it passes. Then tighten down all the jam nuts. Clean up everything and fetch one of the HTs to come do a chalk test and make sure everything was done right. Never want to do that again.
on the subject of damage control. Maybe do a video on REFTRA and the seven deadly sins of Gitmo. My ship managed to actually do all seven of them for real just before and during our REFTRA period. Luckily, nobody got seriously hurt.
I was an HT/DC on the USS Coral Sea from 82-89. The armored doors and hatches were a challenge when maintenance had been gun decked for years. I also did air pressure tests on compartments and voids.
I noticed the Circle Z label plate, could you do a quick video on the various damage control closure classification across the ship? I love this channel!
*Update* Never mind I found you already made such video, You guys are AWESOME!!!
See this, starting at page 16: www.sunymaritime.edu/sites/default/files/media/Documents/LG-10,11,%20Shipboard%20DC,%20Systems%20and%20Equip.ppt
As a Machinery Repairman (MR) the worst maintenance I had was the water-tight roller curtain doors leading to the flight deck on our ammo ship (AE). There were no blueprints for the rollers that took the brunt of the wear, nor were there any samples. They had to be measured in place, for inside diameter (while the stud was still in place), outside diameter (while still in its track), thickness (again, while still in its track), and radius to fit into the track. The senior chief thought he knew better than anyone else, but was never able to answer simple questions such as how to measure in place without proper tools. He would just rant and rave like I'd committed murder, then walk away.
He did the same with the bearing rings on the fire pumps, water pumps, and air dehydrators. Just like the doors, they had no samples or blueprints.
Nice video. I was reading an article on the New Jersey from 1984 that during refitting for Vietnam all of the 40mm gun tubes were removed except for two, which were converted into swimming pools for the crew. If true I would like to see you talk about that subject.
Heres a video on that ruclips.net/video/8qFZ_1tJXBs/видео.html
Great, thank you.
My least favorite preventive maintenance task I had to accomplish when I was in the military was the stripping, priming, and painting of AIM-9 Siderwinder missile captive trainers. Every so often, the missiles would have to be broken down and the rocket motor, warhead, and target detector would get a healthy coating of a industrial-strength paint stripper we nicknamed "elephant snot", which would remove the paint down to the bare metal. Then we would wash and dry the components, as well as tape all mating surfaces. Next would prime, then paint. The would process was labor intensive, plus the primer was toxic (thank god for breathing masks and filters!). The elephant snot got dumped down a hill behind the missile shop... of course, that was in the pre-OHSA days.
Why was this procedure necessary?
@@user2C47 Corrosion control.
Great Sound, thank you for improving it. It's soooooooo much better than the old videos
Adds more meaning to "built like a battleship"!
The momentary split second pause before saying "glory hole" in a serious monologue.................... And look, before aaaanybody says something wise, yes, I know it's an actual thing on a ship. Still funny.
It was funny back then, too. Smiling about it was limited only by who else was within hearing.
@@davidburroughs2244 I worked with a guy (Navy Ret.) for a while that used to say something like "if you can't handle those kind of jokes, you've got no business being in the Navy". Still makes me smile when I think about it. :)
0:45
You lied to me, Ryan. I've now been up for over 48 hours looking over metallurgic data, hydrodynamics testing, structural analysis, damage control doctrine and other variables to determine how fast the USS New Jersey could go with flooded compartments. I just now ran out of coffee and I'm having hallucinations of you and Drachinifel discussing it with me.
The DCs were not the only sailors that tested WT doors. R Division's ER09 workshop supported a 3-M (Material Maintenance Management, if I recall correctly) program on damage control items throughout the ship, with the maintenance being performed by sailors in the division responsible for the space (the reason the division is posted on the space "bullseye"). So many sailors will remember the WT door and hatch chalk test, and many chiefs and division officers will remember checking to see if it was properly performed and passed. The most difficult chalk tests were on the armored doors and hatches. If a regular WT door or hatch needed adjustment to pass the test, it was usually a matter of adjusting the dogs, or less often replacing a strip of worn rubber gasket. If the ribbed gasket on an armored hatch didn't show chalk all the way around, the only recourse was to adjust or replace the gasket, which was more difficult and took more time. The mating surfaces of armored doors and hatches were finely machined but didn't make a perfect seal without some help.
I was the dumb kid handed a large wooden mallet then ordered to check for metal fatigue. Sunday morning before breakfast
Years back I heard a story about that. Forgive me because it's been a while and the whole thing might be made up, but a young dude was given a wooden mallet and told to test for metal fatigue just like you were. He went around the whole ship pounding on things and suddenly found a spot where instead of the regular thud sound, there was a dull thunk noise. Turns out the paint had been improperly applied and a decent chunk of the ship was rusting away and needed to be drydocked for repairs.
@@mintyfreshmetagross5437 LOL. At least they drydocked it. I was thinking you'd say they brought out the nail guns, air hoses and fixed it all at sea. That would be a hell of a job.
Sent for a bucket of steam
Made me think of the Chieftains story in the army telling an LT to check for weak spots in the tank armor with a hammer
@@stephenfabina726 At least he wasn't asked for an exhaust check and given a trash bag to collect it
Least-favorite? Being a deck-ape we were tasked with chipping rust by hand with a chipping hammer, cleaning with a steel brush, and then trying to get red-lead from the Forward Division paint locker. :D
I imagine it's mentally taxing after a few days of doing it all day but the chipping and brushing off of rust is IMO some of the more fun work you do when welding stuff. I fondly remember helping my dad patch the rusted-out fender of his truck and I actually hated the Bondo work a lot more than the meticulous chipping and brushing to get every last speck of rust before welding in the patch.
Least favorite maintenance i had to do; climb a 305 meter tower to replace multiple microwave dishes at 220~260m.
The dishes where not broken nor malfunctioning but they where up there for 10 years so had to be replaced. So one dish per day, 19 dishes total, they where 1.2m in diameter.
Retired USCG DCC here and yes, I have done a few chalk tests. Fun times.
I love how he talks like we all have Iowa class ships in out backyard that we need to test our own doors on
I do not think you could do a boring video. Everything you show is so fascinating.
LOL at Ryan plugging another video for people needing help with falling asleep.
0:45 Shit you caught me. You know why I watch your videos. I love history and the videos are super calming
I talked to a sailor that was on the LST 1166 said he polish every brass tag on board then shellac over then, well they tarnished still so he had to strip it all off and repollish them
Thanks, I wasn’t sure if my battleship was watertight until I watched this video!
one thing about keeping those doors maintained is forbid a fire breaks out despite being a museum is that I imagine you can atleast try and keep it contained.
At 6;54 " On This Side of the Door there is a Pair of Nutz " Let me say that the Camera Operator is perfectly Sane . Thank you for this Video .
Don't forget the skyhooks and left handed wrenches...
That chalk is a piece of old fashioned carpenter's chalk. Before they had chalk boxes with string line in them at the hardware store, carpenters would use that block of chalk and a string to snap a straight line. Typically on a floor. Now they have a bottle of chalk powder, dump that in the chalk box and reel out the line.
Airtight and watertight are different things though. Although the airtightness required for NBC protection must hold out very big molecules.
"watertight" at the kinds of pressures we're talking about on a ship is very different from "watertight" when we're talking about a tupperware container. These watertight doors are supposed to be able to theoretically have the compartment on one side totally flooded, while the compartment on the other side is still totally dry and relatively safely usable (AFAIK, I'm not a sailor). They're definitely airtight at atmospheric pressure, although some "slippery" molecules might be able to skirt past.
I love all these videos. So interesting. And so well explained.
"if you need some help falling asleep" LOL
I love how they just called those "dogs"
Things I learned in this video
1. Chalk Test
2. We’ve got a pair of nuts.
The dogs each have a shaft going through the door (or frame)- how are those seals tested for leaks? Or are the seals just replaced on a schedule?
There's a permissible amount of leak through on those dogs, but there is a water repellent packing material that is packed in the holes those dogs go through when you service them. Part of the chalk test is adjusting the dogs, if enough time has passed, you are supposed to fully remove the dogs and clean and repack the passageways.
I have to imagine it would be a truly _awesome_ experience to sail out on the high seas on an Iowa-class. Maybe one day...
Chalk the knife edge...
"Help getting sleep tonight..." Funny.
I expect that chalk testing doors would have been used as a punishment detail for wayward sailors back in the day.
At around 9:42 I was briefly convinced he was going to say "the Red Door of Courage"
The Royal Navy of the Pre Dreadnought era had trouble with the crews polishing the door frames so much they were no longer watertight!
in our army reserve we had to wash trucks with bar soap and a common disposable dishcloth lol
That is just normal chalk line chalk. I learned something today. Easier than any other way to test the door.
Hatch maintenance wasn't strictly the job of a Damage Controlman. As a new Interior Communications Electrician, I maintained the main and escape trunk doors in the IC/Gyro Shop, as well as the hatch on the Pitsword Trunk. Also maintained the battle lanterns and the FF hose station in the P-way outside the shop.
Least favorite maintenance task? That would have been maintenance on the batteries which supplied backup power to the main gyrocompass, the aux gyrocompass, and the phone system. It was a weekly PMS check to top off all cells of each battery with distilled water, and to test Specific Gravity in one cell for each battery, rotating through the cells at each check. Problem was that the battery backup for the equipment was 120VDC from 6-volt batteries. That's 3 separate cabinets, each with 20 batteries in series. 60 batteries. 60 SG tests. 180 visual level checks.
Most terrifying task? Annual cleaning/inspect/test/calibrate on the sending units for the Wind Speed and Direction system...a.k.a "Windbirds". These are the little things that look like an airplane with no wings, mounted out on one of the yards off of the mast high enough that no part of the superstructure could interfere with the wind patterns. This PMS task was performed in the shop, which meant that somebody had to go up the mast, out on the yard, unbolt the unit, and lower it down to the deck on a rope. I do -NOT- do heights...
Least Favorite ? Ryan I hated sanding paint off of JP5 pipes, could not use any needle guns or power tools all by sand paper by hand. Hated it. V4 Div. Chucky V.
gonna chalk test my dogs gasket tonight.... will report back... Ryan...making the mundane, interesting!
May want to ask your dog before doing that.
Lmao
I have a beast of a livestock guardian that could use dogging down occasionally, especially when in need of a trip to the vet. Let us know how it goes... :P
There are some excellent rubber conditioners that would bring those seals that are beginning to become brittle back to life or something as simple as wiping them down with the little bit of brake fluid does wonders at keeping rubber soft and pliable as most of you brake system components are made of rubber
AT-205 Scotty Kilmer swears by it
I always crack up when he mentions gloryholes!
Kind of a related question...
If you are on a ship that has flooded compartments, how can you tell if the compartment on the other side of a closed-door is flooded or safe to enter?
Probably the water that starts spewing in when you open the door
I'd say "Take a shot every time he says 'chalk test'," but you'd either have the bottle run dry or black-out before the video is over
We had to chalk test every door and hatch on the USS Orleck before she goes to dry dock. The USGC inspected every one.
Worst job? Mucking tanks on an AO. Now for the doors. I was an HTCS and have been retired since 82. I have done PMS on the WTD's but cannot remember the periodicity of the test, but on the bottom edge of a door, there used to be a nipple welded to the bulkhead (wall) and a pipe cap threaded to the nipple. The nipple was open to the next compartment. This allowed air to be pressurized in the compartment to 2 psi. Not much, but you can hear a leak around the door, and if there is 2 psi in the compartment and if the door swings inward, you can undog the dogs and you can NOT get the door to open up. We would connect an air hose with a gauge to tell the pressure. I have replaced the gasket on doors and it is not easy, but can be done.
2:19 - Actually, I think I've seen pieces of sidewalk chalk shaped like that.
That particular piece of chalk was originally used with a chalk line.
Back in the old days they didn't have chalk boxes for chalk lines.
“If you would like help getting to sleep” is that a shoutout to Drach?
Most people think a boat or ship is totally leakproof, but that isn’t so. Some water always gets in when outside hatches are open or the seals to the through hulls leak. I’d love to see an episode on the stuffing boxes.
Yeah, replacing the gasket sucks ... seating it properly takes time and is a major pain in the posterior. They not only can dry out but one of my young sailors learned the hard way that you never paint the gasket OR the knife edge. Doing the 'chalk test' can be a pain also, especially with older doors that have warped slightly and you have to adjust the dogs to hold it tight against the knife edge.
How about a group photo of all the people who work there and their job titles?
7:47 which nuts? Deez nuts!
Take a shot everytime he says Chalk
I chalk-tested all the doors in my house. The wife was not amused... as a side note, the doghouse is also watertight.
"Don't even hesitate" "Don't even worry" "Don't even give it a second thought" "See it at the bottom of our screen, below out name"
My uncle was a sapper in the Australian Army and he always talked about "the chalk test" they would carry out on APC before taking them for a swim. It good to finally understand what the hell he's was talking about.
Btw half the time his story would end "so after the bastard sunk like a Stone"
Apparently its not a very good test to his opinion.
Ryan, do you remember giving a private tour of Battleship New Jersey to a Swedish metal band called @sabatonofficial
I think this was in 2018?
Most disagreeable sort of preventive maintenance I've ever done: oil (engine & diff) changes on a 25 year old vehicle.
Not so bad if done on time, but if you wait to long that stuff can just about qualify for chemical warfare by the smell.
Also inevitably gets one of my gloves soaked with oil when I do the engine.
You are guaranteed to get it in your hair at that point
@@md4luckycharms only if you jack or lift the vehicle up till you can stand under it, the vehicle in question has enough ground clearance for me to slide under without jacking or lifting.
@@can_hauler shit that makes it even worse in my experience, at least you can dodge on a lift. If you're under the car it's getting somewhere and it's staying for a week
It might be that toxic. Take complex mix of organics, stick in metal pot and heat while stirring for hundreds of hours. That's a recipe for making for making all kinds of noxious compounds. I once heard of a farmer who ran out of mineral oil and used used motor oil as a base for an insect repellent treatment for his cows, and a few hours later they were all dead.
@@evensgrey Thats more because motor oil isn't mineral oil. Had he done that with fresh motor oil it still would have killed most of them. The residuals in motor oil is really just slightly corrosive combustion byproducts (not even to the level of salt water though), lots of carbon, some diesel or gas. The toxic part is the additive packages in the oil for dealing with these things, the anti-foaming agents, and seal conditioners, lubricity modifiers, temperature stabilizers, etc. Things that are in the oil fresh or used. Oil itself when heated is incredibly stable, it's oil because it was heated for millions of years under pressure to stabilize it into oil.
I how do you close and open a “sealed” ship in moth balls. As in all the doors and hatches are closed how do you enter ?
They arent welded shut or anything, you just have to open them. They're dogged down well, but thats it.
Least favorite? How about crawling around in the bilges, on you hands and knees with a dust pan in your hand scooping up sludge, in a boiler room that is already 126 degrees. Then wipe all of the metal around you with a rag soaked with JP5 so you can paint the bilges once clean.
But you're not done.....Now that all of your clothes are soaked with bunker C, JP5 and just plain sludge, you strip down, wash your body off with JP5 because that's the only thing that will cut through with what's all over your body, and have a friend with a hose on the deck above you rinse you off with sea water. Now you are clean enough to hit the shower.
Yes, the above is what we had to do many time and there is no exaggeration in this event. Fun times !
Charles R. Ware, DD 865..Middle East cruise. Temp topside was 110 degrees.
Barry
That dog ain't gonna hunt! ;)
I remember being sent with a wrench into the void below a scuttle hatch in the well deck of a 44'mlb(USCG)after a re-gasket job as an E2. The guy holding the water hose told me I had it adjusted correctly when the water stopped coming in. He was correct...
While an E4, I was DCPO for my division for six months…was like mess cranking.
Yeah, there is a lot of doors. But damn, i would even do it myself if i was serving there
Absolutely hated vent filter cleaning! Tag the vent electricals out that was a job all in it's own. Take out the vent screens, filters etc. make sure the filter shop is open. take the things to the filter shop, get clean replacements, or wait till they have been cleaned. Replace the vent parts (This usually sucked more as the screws never wanted to go in right). Tag the vent system back in. And repeat! 3M system.
"if ud like help going to sleep tonight" lmaoo
Not gonna lie, I did watch that door video in hopes it would put me to sleep. It had the opposite effect. “Oh shit what happens if you’re taking a shit and you’re on the wrong side of the waterproof door?”