Unemployment

I’m just in the process of reading “Utopia for realists” by Rutger Bregman, and on the topic of unemployment, the author has this to say (p.147):

By the same token, forced leisure - getting fired - is a catastrophe. Psychologists have demonstrated that protracted unemployment has a greater impact on well-being than divorce or the loss of a loved one. Time heals all wounds, except unemployment. Because the longer you're sidelined, the deeper you slide.

That reminds me of the occasion mentioned in my blog “False Starts“, when I saw an interviewer, on realising that I had been out of work for close to half a year, change his attitude and think almost out loud “What’s wrong with you?”

Makes me realise how lucky I was to be picked by professor Dilewijns’ lab, if only for 11 months, which gave me the luxury to do my job hunting while still in a job. Also, how lucky I was that, on having been made redundant at Allied Steel & Wire, I managed to make a seamless transition to British Steel.

In fact, I realised that when writing my CV, I could even make the unemployment gap between my military service and my second stint as a researcher disappear by summarising each employment slot to the nearest year:

1973-1979 : Rijksuniversiteit Gent (student)
1979-1981 : Rijksuniversiteit Gent (researcher)
1981-1982 : national army service
1983 : Rijksuniversiteit Gent (researcher)
1984-1989 : Iscor
1989-1995 : Allied Steel & Wire
1996-2016 : British Steel/Corus/Tata Steel

Not that I needed it in the end, but a CV without gaps is always useful to keep awkward questions about unemployment at bay.

Multiple Theses

The year before I graduated, the final year metallurgical students were Willy Vandenbrande and Geert Roelens, and looking at their thesis topics Willy took a thesis subject with professor Van Peteghem, whereas Geert Roelens took one with professor Dilewijns. As mentioned in an earlier blog, Willy also worked on cyanide-free bright galvanising, but in his case using an alkaline bath composition. He also gave his thesis a more descriptive title rather than my “Cyanide-free galvanising”, but more to the point, left me a useful stack of ilterature that he had gathered but were not useful for his alkaline bath composition.

When I joined professor Dilewijns’ laboratory, both were present as researchers on a longer term cntract than mine. Willy took up one of my literature surveys on dual phase steels with the aim of expanding it into a doctoral thesis, but from what I gather he dropped this endeavour when he was offered a position at Sidmar.

Permalink: https://lib.ugent.be/catalog/rug01:000287636
Titel: Eigenschappen van een industrieel cyanidevrij glansverzinkingsbad.
Auteur (persoon): Vandenbrande, Willy
Auteur (organisatie): RUG.
Uitgever: 1978.
Beschrijving: 136 p.: ill.
Thesis: Diss. burgerlijk metaalkundig ingenieur

Apart from the fact that he shared the metallurgical student year with Willy Vandenbrande, and that he also found a place as a researcher with professor Dilewijns, I don’t know too much about Geert Roelens. From the surname I could guess that the student who took up the internal oxidation of the Cu-1% Al alloy thesis was his younger brother.

Permalink: https://lib.ugent.be/catalog/rug01:000287657
Titel: Systematische studie van breukoppervlakken / Geert Roelens.
Auteur (persoon): Roelens, Geert
Auteur (organisatie): RUG.
Uitgever: 1978.
Beschrijving: 2 v.: ill.
Thesis: Diss. burgerlijk metallurgisch ingenieur

The next year, the final year metallurgical students were Charles Geenen and myself. In a similar pattern to the previous year, my thesis was with professor Van Peteghem, and Charles Geenen with professor Dilewijns. As described in a different blog on electro-slag refining, Charles’ thesis was mostly filled with his study of the literature, as precious little practical work was achieved during his thesis year.

Permalink: https://lib.ugent.be/catalog/rug01:000286913
Titel: Metallurgische aspekten van het electroslag-refining proces.
Auteur (persoon): Geenen, Charles
Auteur (organisatie): RUG.
Uitgever: 1979.
Beschrijving: 2 vol.: ill.
Thesis: Diss. burgerlijk metallurgisch ingenieur

My thesis has been described in full in an earlier blog, and the reason why the choice might not have been totally optimal in a different blog. Both Charles Geenen and myself ended up in the laboratory of professor Dilewijns, even though Charles dropped out soon after when offered a job at Union Minières.

Permalink: https://lib.ugent.be/catalog/rug01:000286903
Titel: Cyanidevrij verzinken.
Auteur (persoon): Roels, Marnix
Auteur (organisatie): RUG.
Uitgever: 1979.
Beschrijving: 146 p.: ill.
Thesis: Diss. burgerlijk metaalkundig ingenieur

That left me to deal with the fall-out of handling the practical work of the electro-slag refining pilot plant in Zwijnaarde, as described in an earlier blog. As described there, this left Dirk Smet with the unenviable task of producing a thesis that was thin on the ground both in the literature section (where Charles Geenen had covered most of the relevant aspects) and the practical section (where only a few successful test results were available) – still, he could at least have tried to give the thesis a different title.

Permalink: https://lib.ugent.be/catalog/rug01:000284157
Titel: Metallurgische aspekten van het electroslag-refining proces.
Auteur (persoon): Smet, Dirk
Auteur (organisatie): RUG.
Uitgever: 1980.
Beschrijving: X, 144 p.: ill.
Thesis: Diss. burgerlijk metallurgisch ingenieur

Which brings me to the last thesis where I had an input, which is the one where I had done all the relevant pre-study, but was unable to guide the student in his thesis year because at the time I was fulfilling my military service, and was not picked at the laboratory until the subsequent year. Still, as I already decribed in a different blog, I was disappointed by the fact that the thesis did not cover any new ground that I had already not done in the pre-study.

Permalink: https://lib.ugent.be/catalog/rug01:000282104
Titel: Oppervlakteversteviging van Cu-Al legeringen door inwendige oxidatie.
Auteur (persoon): Roelens, Dirk
Auteur (organisatie): RUG.
Uitgever: 1982.
Beschrijving: XII, 183 p.: ill.
Thesis: Diss. burgerlijk metallurgisch ingenieur
E-Locatie: Full text https://lib.ugent.be/fulltxt/RUG01/000/282/104/RUG01-000282104_2018_0001_AC.pdf BIB.GTH.004714 [UGent only]

John Lennon

Can you remember where you were when you heard about John Lennon’s death? Just like 9/11, but unlike JFK’s killing, I can on this occasion.

But before I elaborate, let’s first digress with this confession: despite being the right age to know about the Beatles, I somehow managed not to follow them during the time before they split. Oh, I know, “She loves you” was such a monster hit that even someone in their first year of primary school sang along with my classmates in a non-English version of “Abdoo yeah yeah yeah”, but after that? Nothing that I can remember.

I only started to follow the hit parade in the early 70s, first becoming aware of McCartney’s “Another day”, Harrison’s “What is life” and Lennon’s “Woman is the nigger of the world”. Shortly followed by the weekly late night Beatles hour on Radio Caroline (from our bathroom, the only place in the house where I got a reasonable reception).

Anyhow, back to the day John Lennon was shot. I descended the stairs in Dilewijns’ laboratory to the room where the technicians had their coffee prior to starting the working day. As I entered the room, Victor greeted me with words “Did you hear the news? Jack Lemon has died!”, to which my initial reaction was “why should I even care?”

All this changed to the feeling of a punch in the stomach when Gaby butted in “It’s not Jack Lemon, you idiot, it’s John Lennon!” Strange how people only twenty years older than me were totally unaffected by the news, whereas to my generation, it felt that for a moment the earth had stopped turning.

Obviously life continued and the earth resumed its rotation, but for a while it left a hole. It made me think “what if you had lived anywhere but in the USA, guns wouldn’t have been so readily available, and you might still have been around to enlighten and/or exasperate us”. After all, George Harrison survived a knife attack, but that was England. If he had lived in the US, like John Lennon did, it would have been a gun rather than a knife attack, and he would have missed out on dying from lung cancer two years later.

Professional Bodies

To be honest, and in order to get this off my chest from the start, I’ve never seen the point of professional bodies. I know that on three occasions I actually joined a professional body, but this was more in the hope of protecting my job prospects should redundancy come knocking. And in hindsight, I needn’t have bothered.

The first time was when I just had graduated, and I joined the K.VIV. I can’t really remember whether it really was a requirement in order to be recognised as a professional engineer who could add the title ‘ir.’ in front their name, or whether it just seemed the prudent thing to do. Anyhow, it didn’t help me in my job search after I left the army, and after one renewal of my membership while I was already working in South Africa, I decided that there was not really any benefit to an engineer working abroad, and let my membership lapse, never to rejoin.

As far as I’m aware there were no professional bodies representing civil engineers in South Africa, and at no time did I ever feel the need for such a thing. Likewise when I started in Allied Steel &Wire, although in hindsight maybe I would have benefited from a membership of the Institute of Materials. Ultimately I initiated my application to become a member several months after I had been given notice of my redundancy, an application which was only completed after I had already joined Tinplate R&D. At the end of the interview, which turned out to be a mere formality, I was told that people at my stage of their career usually started to apply to become a Fellow of the Institute rather than an Ordinary Member.

Still, as before with the K.VIV, I was not an active member, and membership did not help me during my tribulations with my boss at Tinplate R&D, nor did it help when Ebbw Vale closed, and I was left to my own devices during my job search which ultimately brought me to Llanwern and then Port Talbot. Granted that in Ebbw Vale there were regular lectures, and these were well attended, but to be honest, I could have attended these without being a member of IoM3.

In the end, after I had moved to Port Talbot and had joined the Operational Research department, I started debating why I paid close to £200 a year when all I got out of it was a monthly magazine that went in the bin unread. Still, when I mentioned this to my boss, I was told that Tata Steel took membership of the IoM3 very seriously, and was willing to pay my professional fees, provided I made myself available as part of the interview team for graduates. A small price to pay, so I remained as a member, even though membership amounted to little more than attending a few lectures and taking part in 4 or 5 sets of interviews.

Still, when the decision was taken that I would take early retirement in March 2016, I also decided to relinquish my membership, with the reason that in retirement I saw little point in pursuing any further metallurgical interests. More or less around that time, I also stopped my membership of the British Computing Society which I had joined in 2010 when it was suggested to me by Paul Bulmer of Process Control. Again this was done more as a sort of insurance in case Port Talbot folded and I had to find a job in IT. Apart from one lecture on Single Source (Data You Can Trust) that I presented in Welsh Labs to a very small audience of mostly Process Control people, I was no more active in this membership than I was in other professional bodies.

Which makes me wonder : are these bodies useless per se, or was it just me who didn’t know how to make the most out of my membership. Admittedly when it comes to networking, this is the type of networking that doesn’t come naturally to me (but see here for a different type of networking). Whatever the case, below is a summary of my membership of professional bodies :

• 1979-1984 – K.VIV
• 1996-2015 – Institute of Materials
• 2010-2015 – British Computing Society

Whizzkid

During my time at Iscor’s steelmaking technology I built myself a bit of a reputation of being a whizzkid. With reason, or because one-eye finds it easy to be king in the land of the blind ?

It certainly was easy to become the expert in hydrogen, DWI and continuous casting when there was so little competition at my level (and I was clearly placed back in my proper place once I started work in the UK). Think for instance how just completing a literature survey on hydrogen embrittlement in steel made me the local expert.

But one instance must have confirmed my position as a rising star : while I was on holiday in Europe in 1987, a new type of welding quality steel was being tried out, but hot shortness was encountered in the cast slabs. People were waiting with baited breath for my return, because “Marnix surely will know what to do”.

The steel in question was a boron-treated steel which outcompetes aluminium since it forms nitrides at a higher temperature than does aluminium, and depending on the nitrogen and the boron content you can encounter hot shortness by the formation of boron nitrides in the austenite grain boundaries. You don’t have the problem when the nitrogen content lies below 25 ppm, but since at the time Iscor’s steelmaking facilities normally cast steel with nitrogen contents in the range of 60 to 80 ppm, and their boron additions were too low to avoid hot shortness, that’s what they got.

The answer was captured in an article in the Transactions of ISIJ that I had included in my literature survey for prof. Dilewijns on interstitial-free and allied ultra-low steel types. All that was needed was to increase the boron content to above 25 ppm, and Robert’s your father’s brother. Pure luck that I had made that literature survey, and that I remembered this one article that just happened to be of relevance, but on little things stands or falls the concept of perceived genius.

Just like the epithet of expert I totally disavow the accusation of being a whizzkid, but even so, it’s a nice massage for the ego.