Threaded stud on a feedwater heater ate my whole Tuesday

Ran into a stripped threaded stud on a feedwater heater down at the Plains co-gen plant last week. The nut spun but the stud just kept turning in the shell, no room to get a backup wrench behind it. Tried the two-nut jam trick, a stud extractor, even heat, but the shell was too thick to grab anything. Took me 6 hours just to get that one damn stud out, ended up welding a sacrificial nut onto it and backing it out slow. Whole crew had opinions, but nobody had a better way. Anyone else deal with a stud spun in a blind spot like that? How did you pull it without wrecking the shell?

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