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Cutting steel with a chain

It's a diamond segmented chain. Kind of like they use for cutting through concrete structures.....but a lot bigger and longer.

I thought this was an R until I saw the date. I watched this little documentary of them doing the same thing on another car freighter like 10 years ago.

 
scooter2374 said:
Just looked like normal chain, but moving all the time.
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Holy shit....I didn't scroll all the way down. I just saw the animation pics and assumed they were done by someone that didn't have a clue. 🤣


That's some serious fucking force to rip a regular old chain....through a ship.
 
Kyle said:
Yeah that’s wild. Is the chain sharpened? Or just the mass involved rips?
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From the pics, it looks like normal chain. Well, foot-and-a-half links, but normal.

What an odd thing to do! It's cheaper to smelt it and build a whole new structure than to refurb that one? It just sank, it didn't hit an iceberg!
 
subybaja said:
From the pics, it looks like normal chain. Well, foot-and-a-half links, but normal.

What an odd thing to do! It's cheaper to smelt it and build a whole new structure than to refurb that one? It just sank, it didn't hit an iceberg!
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Guaranteed the multiple insurance companies involved decided that fate
 
bgaidan said:
Holy shit....I didn't scroll all the way down. I just saw the animation pics and assumed they were done by someone that didn't have a clue. 🤣


That's some serious fucking force to rip a regular old chain....through a ship.
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Chain cross section is like what, a foot? Ship hill plating is maybe 5/8 or 1" at most. Of course the chain wins. It dents and shreds the hull plating and anything else it hits.
 
That's cool. I've worked with the VB1000 a few times in the Gulf and pictures don't do justice to how big it actually is. It's fucking huge. We used it to cut and reef platforms, and pickup toppled platforms after Katrina/Rita.

I can understand them just going with just a big ass chain. A diamond wire wouldn't last very long. With each link being clocked 90* from the next, it will literally rip the metal apart.

How would you like to be the divers who had to jet out the tunnels under that ship to get the chains under it? Jet tunnel, pull through tugger wire, connect tugger wire to huge chain and they drag the chain through from topside.

If I remember correctly, dayrate on the VB10000 was 300k-400k. Not a cheap piece of equipment.
 
arse_sidewards said:
Chain cross section is like what, a foot? Ship hill plating is maybe 5/8 or 1" at most. Of course the chain wins. It dents and shreds the hull plating and anything else it hits.
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ive worked on allot of 3-400ft ships. most are .25" and nose section .5", bulbous bow. they all have double bottoms and such too.


i know this thing is massive but im guessing still .25" hull
 
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tracyb said:
ive worked on allot of 3-400ft ships. most are .25" and nose section .5", bulbous bow. they all have double bottoms and such too.


i know this thing is massive but im guessing still .25" hull
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I assume on a ship that big there will be some thicker spots in the keep area.
 
arse_sidewards said:
I assume on a ship that big there will be some thicker spots in the keep area.
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definitely, but the way are usually ran is port/ starboard not for/ aft. so the chain would miss them.

i wouldn't be surprised its only regular chain, if they even make 'regular' chain that size. i imagine you order that type of chain and spec its materiel. my guess is its equivalent to a T1/ a514 or AR steel, similar to a buckets cutting edge. that shit is tough and would rip through a ship like that easy.


if you look at that cross section picture, i'd bet there is very little steel that it had to rip through that was greater than .25" i'd be wouldn't be surprised if nothing was over .5"
 
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gt1guy said:
That's cool. I've worked with the VB1000 a few times in the Gulf and pictures don't do justice to how big it actually is. It's fucking huge. We used it to cut and reef platforms, and pickup toppled platforms after Katrina/Rita.

I can understand them just going with just a big ass chain. A diamond wire wouldn't last very long. With each link being clocked 90* from the next, it will literally rip the metal apart.

How would you like to be the divers who had to jet out the tunnels under that ship to get the chains under it? Jet tunnel, pull through tugger wire, connect tugger wire to huge chain and they drag the chain through from topside.

If I remember correctly, dayrate on the VB10000 was 300k-400k. Not a cheap piece of equipment.
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Commercial divers are crazy. Nothing they do is remotely safe. The 2 I worked with both did illegal MMA fights for fun :laughing:
 
i just watched the video, its not cutting as i originally thought. its tearing through the thing, basicallay lifting thru. not a sawing action like i had imagined
 
YotaAtieToo said:
Commercial divers are crazy. Nothing they do is remotely safe. The 2 I worked with both did illegal MMA fights for fun :laughing:
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Now now. Everything we do is done as safely as you can do an unsafe thing. That pretty much sums it up.


Side note: That's anchor chain they're using to cut that ship. Very strong stuff.
 
gt1guy said:
Now now. Everything we do is done as safely as you can do an unsafe thing. That pretty much sums it up.


Side note: That's anchor chain they're using to cut that ship. Very strong stuff.
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If you say so :flipoff2:​​​​​​

The stories I heard from those guys in just 2 weeks were unreal. Some of the stuff they would talk about totally casually, was hilarious.

"you know how normally when you shit in your suit, you can just reach in and scoop it out?" :lmao:
 
YotaAtieToo said:
If you say so :flipoff2:​​​​​​

The stories I heard from those guys in just 2 weeks were unreal. Some of the stuff they would talk about totally casually, was hilarious.

"you know how normally when you shit in your suit, you can just reach in and scoop it out?" :lmao:
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Oh fuck ya, absolutely. Who wants a turd falling down their leg. Gotta get hands on. Have to keep a hand covering your dick too. The shit attracts all kinds of fish biting at everything.
 
gt1guy said:
Oh fuck ya, absolutely. Who wants a turd falling down their leg. Gotta get hands on. Have to keep a hand covering your dick too. The shit attracts all kinds of fish biting at everything.
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Umm, why would you shit in your suit?

I mean I get you can't just swim upto the surface to take a shit, but are you really down for so long you can't hold it?
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HillbillyDeluxe said:
Umm, why would you shit in your suit?

I mean I get you can't just swim upto the surface to take a shit, but are you really down for so long you can't hold it?
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It's not that he has to shit in his suite. He gets to shit in his suit. Not everyone can say that. :laughing:
 
HillbillyDeluxe said:
Umm, why would you shit in your suit?

I mean I get you can't just swim upto the surface to take a shit, but are you really down for so long you can't hold it?
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If you're (what we call) surface diving (that's jumping in the water from a boat or barge or whatever, then coming back to the surface) no, you wouldn't be shitting in your suit. You're not in the water for all that long. Figure a couple, maybe three hours. If you shit in your suit..................ya just wanted to.

Saturation diving is a whole different animal. That's 6hrs in the water of nonstop working. Think driving drift pins in a 36" flange with a 20lb maul..............underwater. It can be hard work at times.

Here's the kicker that will make it all make sense:grinpimp:

In SAT they wake you up for your dive with your breakfast and coffee 1 hr prior to launching the bell. If I was going to be the first diver to lock out, I'd have a dip on the way down to depth. Coffee and a dip works great to launch that first turd of the day. Sometimes you got to do what you gotta do. Many times I've gone as far as taking my bailout bottle/harness off and pull down the hot water suit when I thought it was going to be a shit like tooth paste.

So ya, there are modes of diving that you're in the water for a long time. The longest I've personally spent in the water was just shy of 9hrs.
 
HillbillyDeluxe said:
Umm, why would you shit in your suit?

I mean I get you can't just swim upto the surface to take a shit, but are you really down for so long you can't hold it?
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I'd imagine the pressure of being 100's of feet underwater makes things happen.

Btw, that quote from a few stories of guys having diarrhea in their suits :laughing: one dude said it wasn't him, but his partner, who was super Harry and he had the pleasure of hosing them off. Apparently it made all the way up to his neck :barf::lmao:

They talked a lot about dams being super dangerous, a small leak a few hundred feet down can rip you hand off.

Another crazy thing was underwater gas lines. Once they get so far under, the pressure of the water becomes greater than the gas pressure. So a leak is actually a vacuum. They showed me a video of a robotic saw cutting into the pipe, a huge king crab gets too close and gets sucked in like it's a cotton ball, through a ~1/8" gap :eek:

I'll see if I can find the video.......

Edit: found it. Not sure why in the fuck he had to loop it for a hour, but whatever. His response to the first person who asked why it was an hour "because a 10 hour video would have taken too long to up load" :laughing:


​​​​​https://youtu.be/eECq1qg30h4
 
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gt1guy said:
If you're (what we call) surface diving (that's jumping in the water from a boat or barge or whatever, then coming back to the surface) no, you wouldn't be shitting in your suit. You're not in the water for all that long. Figure a couple, maybe three hours. If you shit in your suit..................ya just wanted to.

Saturation diving is a whole different animal. That's 6hrs in the water of nonstop working. Think driving drift pins in a 36" flange with a 20lb maul..............underwater. It can be hard work at times.

Here's the kicker that will make it all make sense:grinpimp:

In SAT they wake you up for your dive with your breakfast and coffee 1 hr prior to launching the bell. If I was going to be the first diver to lock out, I'd have a dip on the way down to depth. Coffee and a dip works great to launch that first turd of the day. Sometimes you got to do what you gotta do. Many times I've gone as far as taking my bailout bottle/harness off and pull down the hot water suit when I thought it was going to be a shit like tooth paste.

So ya, there are modes of diving that you're in the water for a long time. The longest I've personally spent in the water was just shy of 9hrs.
Click to expand...

By the way, it sounds corny, but thank you for doing what you do. That is a job that I think a lot of people think they can do, but in reality very few can. Even $100/hr isn't enough :flipoff2:​​​​​​

I'm an operator, which I thought was a man job. For the most part, it's cush compared to the guys I work with. Tree climbers and divers don't get enough credit, thats real man shit that most people couldn't do for a day.
 
bgaidan said:
It's a diamond segmented chain. Kind of like they use for cutting through concrete structures.....but a lot bigger and longer.

I thought this was an R until I saw the date. I watched this little documentary of them doing the same thing on another car freighter like 10 years ago.

Click to expand...


I've read of it done, it's not rare. I've seen a couple of shots in documentaries, but never this detailed, thanks for the video.

They used to do this with steam cylinders, just rock the chain back and forth as a reciprocating saw.
 
YotaAtieToo said:
I'd imagine the pressure of being 100's of feet underwater makes things happen.

Btw, that quote from a few stories of guys having diarrhea in their suits :laughing: one dude said it wasn't him, but his partner, who was super Harry and he had the pleasure of hosing them off. Apparently it made all the way up to his neck :barf::lmao:

They talked a lot about dams being super dangerous, a small leak a few hundred feet down can rip you hand off.

Another crazy thing was underwater gas lines. Once they get so far under, the pressure of the water becomes greater than the gas pressure. So a leak is actually a vacuum. They showed me a video of a robotic saw cutting into the pipe, a huge king crab gets too close and gets sucked in like it's a cotton ball, through a ~1/8" gap :eek:

I'll see if I can find the video.......

Edit: found it. Not sure why in the fuck he had to loop it for a hour, but whatever. His response to the first person who asked why it was an hour "because a 10 hour video would have taken too long to up load" :laughing:


​​​​​https://youtu.be/eECq1qg30h4
Click to expand...


Fuck diving on dams. I've heard way too many stories about guys getting sucked into shit.

I have a buddy who's on a job right now in Detroit doing repairs on a big outfall pipe in the lake. He said they're going to be penetrating 2000' up inside the pipe. To me that's sketchy.
 
gt1guy said:
Fuck diving on dams. I've heard way too many stories about guys getting sucked into shit.

I have a buddy who's on a job right now in Detroit doing repairs on a big outfall pipe in the lake. He said they're going to be penetrating 2000' up inside the pipe. To me that's sketchy.
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These guys said dams are probably the most dangerous they do and they had basically been all over the world doing anything.

Speaking of tubes. I worked for a company who did a lot of work on hydro plants. One of the labor foreman was telling me about a job where they sleeved some old riveted iron pipe with hdpe and then grouted the gap. They did 2 identical dams, and one took was less grout, for whatever reason they had to get it fixed right away. These were near the Rubicon in the Sierra, so ~5' of snow at the time.

They flew in a helicopter and had to jump out and shovel the pad just for him to land. The pipes had pigs in the top since the lake was full, so they had to climb in from the bottom. The plan was to drill holes every so often and then pump grout into whatever void they could find.

They finish up, and start shimmying out, when dude on the bottom says he's stuck? Wtf, do you mean you're stuck, just get out we gotta go. Uh, no I'm stuck, I think the pipe is collapsing :eek: first dude was able to wiggle out, but is much slimmer than 2nd dude. So he's thinking the top is 5' of snow and ice, and there 8s no way he's fitting through the small gap. Luckily they had the safety line and 3 guys had to yank him out.

About this time, the pilot is telling them they need to leave now, the storm was lowing the ceiling that the helo can fly at. They start trying to clean up and he says, no I mean now, I'm leaving with or without you guys. So they end up leaving with generators running, grout in the pumps, ect.

They take off over the lake and end up almost end up in the trees. Guy banks left and they end up literally having to take the road down, and the hwy 50 down, because they couldn't pull over the tree line.

All this was the bigger guys first week :laughing:


Ive never thought I was claustrophobic, but that story pretty much made me feel like I am.
 
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