Boon
I am not knowledgeable in Stainless, not enough room in my brain I guess.
But once a long time ago, I was asked to repair the inner stack liner of the forward Smoke Stack on the destroyer I was on. We had been to the Yards while R&R'ing in Hawaii just a couple of weeks before and they had done a quick repair on it and buttoned it up and we headed back to the gun line.
Seems the heat they applied while welding the patches on caused the original Stainless to start cracking out from their welds. And the stresses from a combination of things like the constant winding up and down of the fans for the force draft boilers and the continuous firing of the 5" guns fore and aft were not helping. Seems the Officers quarters were in close proximity and the vibrations were disturbing their sleep.
We secured numbers 1 & 2 Boilers and I crawled in.
The only way I could stop these cracks in their trek across the plate was to drill holes at the end of the crack and then weld them up.
It worked.
I was just a 19 year old kid, @ 6 months out of boot camp, the only weldor on-board and knew even less about stainless then than now.\
But felt reminiscent of that place and time ever since I first read your post.
Good Luck
Marshall