Electroplated bicycle tube fatality

Brief callback ("we talked about electroplating of bicycle tubes") used to anchor the 375°F bake-out rule. If the tube had been baked within an hour of plating, no hydrogen crack would have formed, no fatigue propagation, no paraplegia.

So this quantifies it. I've been telling you that with hydrogen cracking, you have to do something about getting rid of the hydrogen within about an hour to four hours. This quantifies, at least for hydrogen stress corrosion cracking, but we know it for other things, that you've got to get rid of the hydrogen fairly quickly. But because hydrogen takes time to diffuse to the crack, you have time to heat the steel up and get the hydrogen out. That's why if you electroplate — we talked about electroplating of bicycle tubes — if they had plated the bicycle tube and gotten it into a 375-degree Fahrenheit furnace, which is the standard temperature, within an hour, they wouldn't have formed a crack, and the bicyclist wouldn't have become a paraplegic. A crack formed, and a fatigue crack grew from that.