Electric Boat welding humidity specification violation

Newport News bay-doors-closed humidity practice. Navy spec prohibits welding above 80% humidity; shipyards keep doors closed even in temperate weather to control atmospheric moisture exposure.

When you're welding — you're never supposed to weld in a shipyard, part of the Navy spec, if you're above eighty percent humidity. Were you ever in Newport News? How many days did you shut down operations of welding because you were over eighty percent humidity? That proves that they never get above eighty percent humidity in Newport News, right? They have the bay doors over there — in the wintertime, of course, all closed, it's freezing cold outside, and they have a nice comfortable 70 degrees inside, and they have all the doors closed. Why would they open them? They don't want the atmospheric interference happening with what they're doing.

One good example of dissolved gases is aluminum alloys and hydrogen. Hydrogen is everywhere. We call it water. There's humidity in the air. If you go down to Electric Boat, you want to keep hydrogen out of your steel welds. NAVSEA has a spec that you cannot weld on days that have more than a certain percent humidity. I don't remember the numbers — they're probably classified anyway. A certain level of humidity and a certain temperature in the air tells you how much moisture is in the air. If you're doing stick-electrode welding, you're going to pick up some of that air, get hydrogen into the steel, and you can get cracking.