Propeller shaft color

All the pictures I have of ships and subs in drydock show the shaft that same color as the hull.

E...

What you describe as the shaft is in fact the shaft housing and stern tube, which is welded to the hull and is fixed. It gets the same treatment as the rest of the hull.

That actually depends on the ship.  The prop shaft is made from stainless steel.  The stern tube and strut  are welded to the hull and painted the same color as the surrounding area.    The stern tube usually ends close to the hull; so the prop shaft would be exposed between the end of the stern tube and the strut.

I must rethink my definition of "getting shafted," then.

Bending the thread a little bit, so many instructions call for painting the propeller itself brass or gold.  Props on large ships were either steel or bronze, not brass.  Bronze is not gold or brass color. I make bronze by mixing brown and copper 2:1.

Don

I believe the material of choice for propellers would be bronze. Don't know about steel due to corrosion problems but maybe some propellers were made out of steel due to WWII wartime expediency and maybe there are some new steel alloys in use today that solve the corrosion problem.

As for the original question, many ships have no exposed propeller shafts with the propeller mounted as close to the hull as possible. The Iowa class battleships had the inboard propellers mounted close to the hull. The outboard propellers had a length of shafting  from the end of the stern tube at the hull to the strut. The propeller was mounted close to the strut. From the picture of one of the ships in dry dock it would appear that the section of shafting was painted.

As far as the shafting being made out of stainless, that may have been the case on some ships but certainly not the one I was on. The propeller was mounted next to the stern tube with no exposed shafting. The shafting in the shaft alley was all painted so I would assume was plain steel.

Ted

Hi, TED; In my experience ,both in the U.S.NAVY and the MERCHANT SERVICE(foriegn and domestic) the shafts varied in appearance.On the SHELL/BP ships I mastered ,the internal shaft was usually natural steel color or painted.In the AMERICAN ships both civilian and NAVAL they were always painted.The tincan I was on did indeed have a section between the screw and shaft cover that was steel. This area was only about at most a foot of shaft.After yarding it was painted. I hope this helps on shaft colors.   tankerbuilder

Yeah Tankerbuilder, your recollection of the colors of propeller shafts at least as used by the Navy agrees with mine.

Ted

amphib

Don

I believe the material of choice for propellers would be bronze. Don't know about steel due to corrosion problems but maybe some propellers were made out of steel due to WWII wartime expediency and maybe there are some new steel alloys in use today that solve the corrosion problem.

Ted

Yes, I had heard that they did use/try steel on some WW2 ships just because of cost or delivery issues when they were trying to shove them out as fast as possible, but the book did not mention any specific ships, or whether it was successful. Indeed most were bronze.

US Navy propellor shafts are painted with the same anti-fouling paint as the hull. I have spent years in Navy drydocks and this has been the case as long as I can remember, since 1972. Bronze is expensive, steel is what is used even on submarines.

So my question is: when there's one of these arrangements like on a Fletcher, with an exposed shaft going back to a strut, then a screw: is that a shaft i.e. it turns, or is it a housing (fixed) with a shaft inside of it?

shaft from the hull thru the strut to the prop.

 What about WWII Japanese Navy practice? G.