Well, T.J.N, I think we senior citizens "feel your pain". As my esteemed colleague, the Rev. Dr. Luf, says "we been there". There were FAR FEWER published works to learn from "in the day" (on the other hand these few works were much less expensive - my first copy of the Tube Turns book cost me $10 new). I began working with pipe stress analysis software in 1963 (punched cards and NO INTERACTIVE GRAPHICS, no user's manual) and I wanted to learn it all just by "taking a pill". By my estimate, it took me 15 years to "achieve competence" in pipe stress analysis". We didn't have many compeers to ask and there were no discussion forums. And, that is why I like to do seminars now - to pass it along to the people who want to learn (hey, give me a soap box and five people to talk to and I'll bring my "slides".....). By the way, when John Luf was 20 years old, carrying two books was tough because they were chiseled onto stone tablets and were too heavy.

I think there have been some very useful books published long after "Kellogg" but some did not stay in print very long. That is the nature of the publishing bid-ness. Ours is such a narrow field of interest that publishers have a hard time recovering the cost of publishing new books. ASME and CASTI have published excellent books on pipe stress analysis (and they have been kept up-to-date). Sam Kannapan wrote 2 or 3 excellent piping design and analysis books in the last 20 years but they are now out of print (and I never hear of anybody asking about them in the forums). There isn't really THAT much that is new (I still use 30 year old material in seminars but now it is in Power Point format). So, nobody wants to publish another rehash of the same olde stuff. Best we can do is tell your where we learned it and let you go search for it (by the way, ASME published thick blue books that gathered together all the papers of our stress analysis "founding fathers" (including the A.R.C. Markl papers) and I heard that they have recently reprinted these so go look there).

I will have to take exception to your position that the age and structure of the piping codes makes them difficult to understand (now, the ASME B&PV Code, THAT is tough!). Originally we were told "do not write a textbook, the Codes are to be regulatory not educational". Lately though we have included appendices in our Codes that ARE eductional to those who are willing to read them (I think we are gonna run out of alphabet for naming our appendices).

Be alert to some other learning opportunitiies. Our friend Dr. Chuck Becht sometimes writes very informative articles for his web site:

http://www.bechtengineering.com/processPower/articles/ASME-B31.3TechnicalChanges2004.htm

If you have any opportunity to attend a seminar by Glynn Woods or Chuck Becht or Ron Haupt go do it no matter what the cost 'cause it will pay you back many time over.

OK, enough already

Regards, John