The Bizarre Market for Old Battleship Steel

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[murdelabop]

In the 1970s my girlfriend's family was stationed in Taiwan. While there, her mother got a chopping knife which was made from salvaged battleship steel. A few years ago she gave it to me. I cherish it. Not only does it have an interesting story, it's also one of the best knives I've ever had.

[shananagans]

Speaking of radioactive steel, back in the early 80s, my friend and I were learning to weld. My friend's father worked at Sandia Labs. One day he brought home some scrap steel and told us we were free to use it. The next day we promptly cut some of it up and started practicing our welds.
We did this for a few days. On the 3rd or 4th day my friend's father came home from work and started loading the scrap steel into his truck. We walked out there and he immediately said "I am sorry, I gotta take this back to work, we made a mistake, it's radioactive." He then said "don't worry, it's safe to handle, it won't hurt you unless you cut it or weld on it, any smoke coming off it would be deadly"
My friend and I were standing there about to pee our pants. Every horror story I had ever heard about people getting radiated flashed through my head. Then my friend's father burst out laughing. He was pranking us. The steel was perfectly safe. We had been joking with him and telling him nuclear scientists had no sense of humor and no personality. He got us good but I still say nuclear scientists have no personality. Well, they may have a personality but if you try to find it, it changes. :)

[theonlybuzz]

A really good friend of mine parents who used to own a scrap metal/recycling business in the uk. He would put in bids to demolish old cotton mills and send the steel to different sectors, for example the thick sheet boilerplate covering the boilers a thick water tanks, these would be cut up carefully and then sold onto shipyards to replace worn out ship plating.
The big bobbins that hold the several tons of cotton that have magnesium ends were sent away to be smelted down into high grade materials.
The most interesting thing I learned was all of the shuttlecocks that used to zing across the looms may have been mainly wood for that wasn’t the prize was the very high grade of stainless steel, these were broken down and the stainless steel = was shipped out to Switzerland 🇨🇭 to be made into high grade surgical instruments. It goes to show that items that we think are worthless are sometimes the complete opposite!

Love the channel Simon, great video thank you. Phil. 🇬🇧

[wfjhDUI]

What surprises me most about this is that apparently it was once more economical to seek out exotic pre-1945 steel than to just not use atmospheric air in steelmaking. Similarly, how was rare low-background lead taken from archeological sites only 12 times more expensive than the normal lead being mined at a rate of thousands of tons every single day???

[lairdcummings]

Mushroom clouds do not have silver linings. They have strontium and cesium linings.

[darwinwins]

fun fact: aside from wine, the first nuclear tests also made art forgery near impossible for the same reasons.

[TheKulu]

Sometimes the steel made decades ago is better than what's usually available now. Some senior citizens almost got into fights over old tools we took from my grandmother's basement and sold at a yard sale after she passed away. They explained how the steel of "antique" tools is often better than the stuff used to make tools sold at big box stores today. Sometimes all you have to do is replace a handle and you've got a new tool.

[uzziel]

My grandad was on the Exeter, he was a Japanese POW for a while. He died when I was too young to understand what any of that really meant

[Shaibuli]

Radiation spikes from nuclear tests are also commonly used to date sediment- and ice cores! If you have a foot of gray mush drilled from a lake bottom, it's kind of hard to tell how long it has been gathering there. By analysing rare isotopes present in the cores we can observe how long it has taken since the tests for the sediment to deposit there. Isotopes from the Chernobyl incident are actually the best and produce a very strong signal in Northern-Hemisphere!

[raydunakin]

Some people are like Slinkies...basically useless, but it's fun to watch them tumble down the stairs.

[Volunteer-per-order_OSullivan]

Of all the ends a warship can have; the use of it's steel for scientific goals is one of the most dignified, especially for use on those satellites.

[radamus]

Wow, as a fan for a long time I'm surprised I'd never seen this old episode.
You threw the kitchen sink at it! Science, history, metallurgy, chemistry (and everything you never knew about the Slinky in 47 seconds!) LOL! ! Which was a thing as a kid in the late 60's ~ everyone had one at some point. Great piece I had no idea about - that's wild about the difference in chemistry of metals made before the nuclear age .... I'd imagine that the change in our atmosphere affected more than just this. Excellent piece! Just imagine the amount of copper on the sea floor. Not sure at what point when ships started adding coils of copper wrapped around the hull for degaussing. At some point it goes above the zero net gain and becomes a "thing" harvesting the sea for scrap.

[johnjacob]

Reminds me of an old saying: "Every cloud has a silver lining, except the mushroom kind. They're lined with iridium and strontium 90."

[Marklek]

"Corporations are bombarding you with ads. Nobody wants any of that stuff" -- read unironically from a 75 second mid-roll ad script.

[pirobotbeta]

I knew this one!
I worked in Hospital ages ago, and there was a whole suite of radiological areas with gray steel walls.
Some clever wag had written the names of the ships (how did he know?) on different panels.
Faraday cage, check. Greatly diminished background count? Check.
Even the Geiger counters were pre-war.

[sandrastreifel]

“Every mushroom cloud has a silver lining” oh, Simon! Even if you can’t say “radionuclides” correctly, you’re terrific!

[DrumRug]

I'm a simple man, I would think it would be cool to have a gun or knife made of battleship steel.

[johndoyle]

thanks, very interesting.
I was part of a team who bought an old WW2 refinery and had to strip out all the old tanks etc, even the rebar from the air raid shelters, all sold for a premium.

[kendavis]

Sometime during the 1990's, I got a knockoff slinky as a handout. I still have it. It's a smaller one than the one's I had as a child (nothing ruins your day like a bent slinky when your pre-teen!) but it's housed in a tubular wooden container, and it only gets opened every once in a while. No kinks in this slinky!

[STNG-]

Simon: "People were scrapping old steel."
Also Simon: "Slinky!"