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October, 1926 Ford tugs. She encountered heavy weather on the way and arrived safely at the Fordson plant, Fordson, Mich., Dec. 17, after making stops at Portland, -Me., Quebec, Montreal, Og- densburg,..N. Y., Port Dalhousie at the entrance and Port Colborne at the terminus of the Welland canal. The total time enroute from New York was 82 days, 10 hours and 50 minutes. Delays due to weather, traffic, etc., accounted for 11 days 18 hours and 47 minutes of the total elapsed time. Accompanying — illus- trations show the LAKE FONDULAC towed by the tug BALLCAMP in the Detroit river and at the ore dock at the Fordson plant. No time was lost in beginning the experiment of scrapping. With his well known reluctance to accept cus- tomary methods as_ necessarily the best Ford tried out some of his own. He wanted to reduce torch cutting to a minimum. Pressure exerted un- der decks by a powerful hydraulic ram in conjunction with hooking the crane falls to a scorner of the deck plate and so ripping it off the beams, was tried. Special knives attached to the crane falls were used for slit- MARINE REVIEW ting the hull side plates vertically. The accompanying illustrations show some of these operations and the re- sults. The vertical cutter worked well but it depends upon a clear un- obstructed wall structure. The rip- ping off of plates produced annoying distortions which rendered difficult the further reduction in size of the scrap. In the meantime plans were being carried out for a_ substantial dock along the entire length of the side of the slip directly across from the ore dock. Three séts of railroad tracks and a set of widely spaced rails including a third rail for gantry cranes were laid down. Feeder tracks joining with those on the dock were built giving connection with the large new open-hearth furnaces and to near and distant storage sectors. Through- out the winter and spring while study- ing and ble experimenting in every conceiva- way with the LAKE FONDULAC, the question of equipment to carry out operations on a large scale was earefully considered. It is now necessary to consider briefly what was going on during the scrapping problem in detail. 15 this time at the three Atlantic coast shipyards given contracts to carry out certain scrapping operations. According to the plan each of these yards were to scrap only the “Sub- marine” type of boats into sizes suitable for loading in “Lakers” the latter wHen loaded to be towed to Detroit by Ford tugs. The Fed- eral Shipbuilding & Drydock Co., Kearny, N. J., began scrapping oper- ations on the “Submarine” type boat OPEQUAN Nov. 18, 1925, and on the LAKE CANDELARIA (an experiment on this type and the only “Laker” scrapped by a coast yard) Nov. 24, 1925. Scrapping of “Submarine” type boats by the Sun Shipbuilding & Dry- dock Co., Chester, Pa., and by the Southern Shipyard Co., Newport News, Va., also commenced during the winter and is now under way. There is nothing unusual about ~ the methods employed. All the de- tachable parts are removed and then acetylene burners are used to cut up the steel structure which is loaded into waiting “Lakers.” The machin- ery of all kinds is salvaged intact. When the hull has been cut down to near the double bottom, this part is TRYING OUT NOVEL METHODS OF SCRAPPING FORCE APPLIED—LOWER LEFT— JAN. 20, 1926—SLITTING TOP SIDES OF HULL WITH HOOK ON THE FIRSTVESSEL OF THE FLEET, THE LAKE FONDULAC, BROUGHT TO THE FORDSON PLANT, DETROIT—UPPER LEFT—PHOTO TAKEN JAN. 7, 1926, RIPPING DECK PLATES OFF WITH CRANE FALLS AIDED BY HYDRAULIC JACK UNDER PLATES—UPPER RIGHT—JAN. 16, 1926—TWISTED AND TORN DECK PLATES SHOW GREAT KNIFE ON CRANE FALLS— LOWER RIGHT—SLITTING HULL SIDES AT SIX FEET SPACING BY SPECIAL ROLLER CUTTER IN A HEAVY FRAME ATTACHED TO CRANE FALLS. AT LAPS AND THROUGH RIVET HEADS A THICKNESS OF TWO INCHES WAS SHEARED IN THIS MANNER