Question Concerning Oxygen/Acetelene Torch

[Bird]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( when I was younger all the old welding shops had acetylene generators )</font>

Yep, when my Dad was driving the truck with welding supplies, he always had several cans of carbide on the truck. And I once acquired a considerable quantity when one of the cans got spilled on the ground and I gathered it up. You could fill a coffee can about half full of water, then dump in a tablespoonful of carbide and watch the water "boil". And you could ignite that boiling water with a match; fascinating phenomenon for a 6-8 year old boy. The problem was that the duration of the boiling water was very short and if you wanted to ignite it, you had to do it quickly. Now Dad told me to never use more than one tablespoonful of carbide, but one day when no one was around, I decided to make the boiling water and fire last a little longer, by very quickly dumping in 3 or 4 tablespoonsful. When I lit the match, there was a quick WHOOMP! and my whole hand felt like it was on fire. Terribly painful, and I couldn't tell anyone and had to keep that hand hidden from everyone's sight for a day or two because I figured it Dad found out what I'd done, he set my other end on fire.

 

[Taylortractornut]

I Bird Im a fire bug lol I got a hold for a 1 pound box of the carbide and used it in a Cannon we made in college machine shop. I put in a generous amount in the cannon and pcked carrot in the end fter I dropped the watter done the barrel. We lit it and forgot about the metal announcements board with a glass case. When it hi the floor we scattered. We ended up using all of it over the next few days throwing it in storm drains and all. Its a wonder i graduated lol.

 

[higgy]

The old Big Bang cannons. They are so cool. You can still get them but the are very expensive.

My story that the family still refers to as the beating.

Me and my cousin were about 6-7. I had obtained one of the the smaller cannons that Big Bang made. We were going around the property shooting it off, bang, bang, bored....

Let's put a rock in the barrel and shoot it, bang rock goes about a foot...

hmm.. lets wrap the rock in tinfoil to seal the rock and barrel, bang rock flies a long way..... cool!

Bang shoot bang shoot for quite a while.

Then we see our grandpa in the garden... hmm..

bang shot him directly in the rear end, a bout a split second latter smack!!!

Never in our wildest dreams would we have thought that old fart could move that fast. Man did we take a licken and keep on ticken.

That was over 30 years ago, and as I said at the first it is still referred to as "The Beating".

Lol I sure wish he was still around, great guy.

Oh, yea, the cousin now claimes that he was just standing there not doing anything! no one belives him.

 

[slowrev]

Re: Question Concerning Oxygen/Acetylene Torch

Yep, rode an old indian motorcycle once that had a gas headlight with a small tank for gas.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

Evening Bird,

I'm repairing the entry gates at Robson Ranch over off of thirty five. I snapped this picture of how I carry my oxy-acetylene rig in Lucy.

The two oxygens, (you usually use two oxygens for every acetylene when cutting) are on roller bearing carriages from a telco truck body. It makes it handy for an old man when handling those heavy puppies.

The Trailblazer welder is sitting right above them as you can see.

That's the little Hilti hammer drill. The big one is out being used when this picture was taken. There are few things finer'n a Hilti, very few.

 

[Bird]

Pretty nice looking arrangement, Harv. And I've never owned or used a hammer drill. I can see how they'd be great for a lot of jobs, but guess I just never needed one enough to justify buying one.