Well couldn't get a hold of him, but got a hold of one of his pipeline welding buddy's, last Bill heard he was "chasing girls at the senior citizen center".
Bill said Milt would "weld in **** fire" if it needed to be done, "back in the day" So I stand corrected and have gained knowledge. He did say precautions had to be taken as allot of you have said, dry gloves, dry rods, don't wrap weld leads around any part of your body and weld on DC. He also said it could kill you if you didn't know what you where doing, but mostly uncomfortable. He thinks technology has probably gotten better since their "heyday" (In their 70's).
Interesting, he said all the divers he knew of, were multi-man teams, with a crew up top monitoring the welders and the divers, and that "explosion" was the biggest fear when "dry box welding" I asked this time, he said the build a box under water and pump the water out then weld. Decompression was a PITA too.
Soooo I learned allot