Bath Iron Works welding-over-paint trials

Brief reference — "about eight years ago they were trying to do it." Part of Tom's account of the 50-year unsolved problem of welding over primer paint.

So one of my first projects was: "Tom, how can we come up with a weld metal that can weld over paint?" People had been trying to do this for 50 years, and I didn't solve it either. What people have done is gone to different composition paints, but it still doesn't work very well. When I was in Japan in the 1980s visiting shipyards, they were trying to do it. About eight years ago up here at Bath Iron Works, they were trying to do it. In general the best thing is to grind the paint off for three inches on either side, weld it, then repaint it. But sometimes those paint jobs aren't good, and that's why we see the corrosion picture you folks have been showing us — a lot of times it starts in that repainted area because it's not as good a paint job.