[modeleng] Re: Rivet forensics Titanic

Not only were the rivets below standard, but the steel used in the hull was 
not strong enough for that large a ship.  When the first pieces of broken 
hull steel were brought up and analyzed, it was noted that the steel was 
brittle.  At first it was thought that the immersion in sea water had 
weakened the steel, but a bloke in Canada has a rivet hole punching from the 
hull.  It was kept as a paperweight by his grandfather who worked on the 
Titanic as it was being built and had been handed down to the Canuk. 
Spectrographic analysis showed that the hole punching and the fragment of 
the hull were the identical alloy.

From this it was determined that the ship builder engineers had built faster 
than the current metallurgy capability.  There was a fragment of the hull 
about the size of a dinner plate brought up and it was ragged along its 
edges.  To me it appeared to have been so hard that it shattered instead of 
bending as one would expect.

Jesse, the crazed machinist in Troy, TN 

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