Forging press weld repair (Pennsylvania, 17-inch thick steel)

Stage-direction case — Tom passes around a section of the repair weld to demonstrate the ~100 stick-electrode passes required to weld through 17 inches.

So Tom Schultz's question — your question was, why did we run into all these problems? It was the first really massive use of welding of steel, and they didn't know how to do it. And since we're talking about that, I can tell you another thing we don't know how to do, in general. [Tom passes around a sample.] This is a weld in a 17-inch-thick piece of steel. It was part of a forging press they were trying to repair in Pennsylvania some time ago. I didn't count exactly, but there'd be 400, a hundred-and-something passes in here. Weld passes laid by stick electrodes.