Brittle Armor Plate

New York, Dec. 15.- A special to The Herald f rom Newport News, Va., says: Net results of the experiments of the board which is investigating battleehips' steel may be summed briefly as equivalent to the condemnation of nearly the whole amount now stacked up in the Newport News Shipbuilding company's yard. Six out of twelve test pieces which should have been folded back on the vessels without breaking, either broke short off as readily as cast iron or torn apart with less brittleness, but none the less cert.ain evidence of to meet the contract requirements. Svich Wholesale failure has caused the board to go extensively into testing other platos and eighty-four test pieces have been marked out of plates ranging- between those weighing ten pounds and those weighing twenty-flve pounds to the s(iuare foot. All Tuesday was spent in cutting out those test pi and on Wednesday the bend.ng and tests will continuo StartUng Discoveries. So startling have boen the discoveries that tliey go beyond the Kearsarge and Kentucky steel. It is said that although the contract requirements for the Illinois, the battleshiplatest awarded to the Newport News company, were not in some respects quite as rigid as those in the contracts for the Kearsarge and the Kentucky, there Is no certainty that the steel already sent here for the Illinois will come up to the speeifications. The present board, being on the spot, might also be ordered to investígate the Illinois steel also, in which case no further work would be done on that vessel until there was a certainty that she would be constructed of satisfactory material. One of the requirements of the contracts for structural steel for battleships is that the metal shall be submitted to what is known as the quenehing test. Each specimen, after having been heated to a cherry red, is plunged into water having the temperature of 82 Fahrenheit. Then the strip must be capable of bending 180 degrees- that is, doubling back on itself until the spaee between the two parts is no greater than the thickness of the plate. Marked for Identification. Ohief Engineer Smith and a naval constructor conducted the test. Twelve strips of steel werè heated. The plates from which they were taken were chosen in the same way as those that were broken on last Thursday, part being from bottom and part from bracket plates. The strips were numbered from 7 to 18, inclusive, for identification. After they had been plunged inthe water and thoroughly cooled they were taken to a powerful hydraulic bending machine. The bending machine consisted of a heavy steel mass V shaped along its lower edge, suspended over a simílarly shaped trough in the base of the machine. Large hydraulic cylinders, one at each end, having a compressing power of nearly 100 tons each, moved the bending beam up or down as desidered. The twelve strips of metal that had been passed through the quenehing process were laid across the V-shaped trough, and the men at the hydraulic levers received word to brinp the bending beam down. Hardly had the ponderous mass touched the specimen pieces ere the two numbered 15 and 16 snapped with a sharp ringing report without having bent at all. As the beam sank lower two other clear clicks were heard. Barely Hung Together. The beam when lifted showed two strips separated, the fragments havlng sprung up and away from the grove, two pieces numbered 10 and 14 broken through, so that the parts barely hung together, and eight pieces bent at right angles without breaking. The radius of the curve at the bend was about one inch, showing a very easy stress on the metal. Specimens numbered 15 and 16 were sheared from the bracket plates, and number 1 from a bottom píate. The half bent strips were then taken to another machine in which a massive post was moved horizontally upon a solid foundation until it met another similar post. One of the strips was placed between these two resistless squeezers and the hydraulic pressure was put upon the movable post. As lt moved up to its opposite the steel strip was shut up like a closing blade of a knife. A rod just as thick as the strip itself was inserted at the jaw of the bend and another between the two ends as they approached each other. When the two parts touched the rods the pressure was taken off and the test was complete. When all had been tested lt was found that number 9, taken from the same píate as number 10, already broken, was cracked very badly nearly the whole wldth of the bend. Six Pieces Not Fractured. Number 12 was also cracked at the sides of the bend. The remaining six pieces showed no fracture. Out of the dozen specimens tested, therefore, four had shown a brittleness so extraordinary as to raise doubts whether their chemical qualities could be otherwise than dangerously bad. Two other specimens were cracked before the bending was completed, showing brittleness probably from over-carbonization or the presence of phosphorous. In other words, half the specimens failed to come up to the government requirements. The board held a private consultatlon, at the end of which the following conclusión was reached: Specimens are to be taken from upwards of seventy plates on Wednesday next. The 'board will reconvene at the Newport News shipyard to prosecute further tests and on Thursday, and Friday the specimens will be pulled at the Norfolk navy yard. On Saturday the board will meet again at Newport News, and it will then decide what further inquiry and experiment are necsssary.