Document baGQDwROqRdm37wgpN025NQ76

B Published In March, 1947, By and For the Employees of Bechtel Corporation, Engineers and Constructors tFs it OPERATION WRAPPING sW The utmost in simple handling is shown by the leap frog method of delivering pipe from Consolidated's stock pile to start job 1161's assembly line on its way. After cleaning the 30" diameter pipe is faBhediately-primed-to'providw^a suitable base for the wrapping operation to follow. # Out on Slauson Avenue in Los Angeles a group of Bechtel men are busy doing their part on the "biggest" big inch pipe line that has yet been built. This huge line, 24" to 30" in diameter, will extend from Texas to Los Angeles, an approximate distance of 1200 miles, to supply natural gas to industry and the homes of Southern California. BC's contract is with the Southern Cali fornia Gas Company and Southern Counties Ga* Company, who will operate the line from Los Angeles to Blythe on the Colorado River, a distance of 214 miles. Our work, on which we were low bidder, consists of applying a protective paper wrap coating to each joint of this pipe as it comes fabricated from Consolidated Steel Corporation's plant in Mavwood. The wrapping plant, designed and con* structed by our own forces, is located on a five-acre site just over the fence from Con solidated Steel. As each 60-ft. section of pipe is completed it is delivered to our stock yard where it rests on storage ways, sufficient to hold approximately four miles of bare pipe. Before the pipe is wrapped, it goes through a grit blasting machine to thoroughly clean tire outside surface, after which a coal tar primer is applied. The primed pipe is then stored under a large roofed area on pipe ways between the priming operation and the wrap ping machine. At the wrapping machine hot coal tar enamel is applied to the rotating pipe which is then covered with a spiral wrapping of asbestos paper. After wrapping, each joint is caref'jjly in spected by a Stearns Holiday leak director, an ..electric testing apparatus, and any voids are repaired. The pipe is then loaded on trucks for delivery along the line to H. C. Price Co., contractor on the installation of the pipe. Pilot operations in the plant began last November. Since then steady improvement has been made in the processing of the work, so that on a single shift operation, produc tion is now up to eight miles a week with a maximum rate of nine miles per week con templated from here on in to completion of th: job sometime in May. "Operation Wrapping" better known as Job 1161 is being handled directly by the boys in the Somastic Division under M. D. "Moke" Rogers. General Superintendent: W. E. Trimmell is looking after on-job produc tion as superintendent in charge, with H. B. Barrow running the field office.