From: "kenneth knaell" <knaell@erols.com>
Newsgroups: rec.crafts.metalworking
Subject: Steel in USS Missouri
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1999 22:20:42 -0500

I mumbled something about how long it took the U.S to make the steel
equivalent to that in the U.S. Missouri WWII battleship a couple of weeks
ago.  I got an email from Dan Caster about a week later and he gave me
approval to post it here.  He did not have easy internet access and did not
post it himself.  I am surprised at the answer because someone once insisted
to me that the steel in such a large ship took much longer to produce.

Dans message:



    ........<msg break>.....

I happened to get a third quarter report from Nucor Steel Co. today.
In the first three quarters of this year, they made 7,657,000 tons of
steel.  If they worked a five day week, I figure that is about 40,000 tons
per day.  As I remember the Missouri is about 35,000 tons.  The destroyers
I was on were 2250 ton ships and the big carriers are about 60,000
tonners.
Nucor is not the biggest steel company in the U.S., but they are trying to
become the biggest.  So as big as the Missouri is, it was less than one
days production for one steel company.
They are building a 1,000,000 tons per year mill in North Carolina, and
expanding a mill in South Carolina from 1,500,000 tons per year to
2,300,000 tons per year.
Nucor used to be the Nuclear Corp of America, and only got into steel
production in the early sixties.  So it didn't make any of the steel used
in the USS Missouri.  They started making steel to use in making bar
joists.  But they only made 463,000 tons of bar joists in the first three
quarters of the year and 281,000 tons of steel decking.  So they had a lot
of steel left over to sell.
Cheers,
Dan