welding oxygen

[giles45shop]

Years ago, I took a torch, got the mix just right, extinguished the torch and filled balloons with the mix. Tie a kerosene soaked sting to it as a fuse and stand WAY WAY back. It would easily lauch a galvanized 40 gallon garbage can way into the air if it was placed upside down on the balloon. If you though a beer can full was loud, the balloon is like a stick of dynamite. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!!

John

[DA Aquamaster]

Years ago, I took a torch, got the mix just right, extinguished the torch and filled balloons with the mix. Tie a kerosene soaked sting to it as a fuse and stand WAY WAY back. It would easily lauch a galvanized 40 gallon garbage can way into the air if it was placed upside down on the balloon. If you though a beer can full was loud, the balloon is like a stick of dynamite. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!!

John

Hmmm...this could be a great way to wake the neighbors if you air launch the Oxy/acetylene filled balloon and fuse under a few helium filled balloons...

[MORGAN]

Once we inflated a 40 gallon trash bag with acetylene and closed it with a rubber band. We tied a long string to it, and set it out in the field behind the shop. Then we lit a candle and set it on the ground, stood way back, and pulled the string to bring the trash bag into contact with the candle. The resulting thunderclap made us abandon our next plan of adding oxygen to the mix.

Bored guys and inflammable gases - good times!

Mike

[Sludge]

Bored guys and inflammable gases - good times!

All we needed was a little dry ice and some empty 2-liter Coke bottles.

[Greenwood_60]

Is there another kind?

A non-diving ex-wife?

^ story of my life!

[aainslie]

Believe it or not, we get a couple of acetylene contaminated cylinders in the hydro station a month. Oh, BTW, they can go whoosh like a jet engine if you try to clean them incorrectly.

They will not auto-ignite, but put a small spark and it can be interesting. We charge the customer $50.00 each to decontaminate them. It's kind of an incentive for him to find out which of his clients are doing it.

Dale

Wow. I had no idea. I stand corrected - sorry Forrest!!

[Kelly Jessop]

Once we inflated a 40 gallon trash bag with acetylene and closed it with a rubber band. We tied a long string to it, and set it out in the field behind the shop. Then we lit a candle and set it on the ground, stood way back, and pulled the string to bring the trash bag into contact with the candle. The resulting thunderclap made us abandon our next plan of adding oxygen to the mix.

Bored guys and inflammable gases - good times!

Mike

Pretty cool,we did the same thing with hydrogen once.

[FW]

Wow. I had no idea. I stand corrected - sorry Forrest!!

I had no idea either, until a year or so ago.

[Squirrel Girl]

Forrest, pleast tell me you don't really believe this? Perhaps Raphael will chime in to tell us what happens if you try mixing acetylene and oxygen in a tank like that...

I had no idea either, until a year or so ago.

I wonder how often explosions occurred? You'd need a spark, but it still seems mighty dangerous! I don't recall hearing about such explosions in the news, but then i don't really hear about things like dive shop bank explosions anywhere but tech diving fora (like here).

[FW]

I wonder how often explosions occurred? You'd need a spark, but it still seems mighty dangerous! I don't recall hearing about such explosions in the news, but then i don't really hear about things like dive shop bank explosions anywhere but tech diving fora (like here).

You would need the mix in the tank to be right for an explosion. The ratio won't always support combustion. With the check valves, the occurances have been greatly reduced in modern times. There were some accidents before the law was passed, though.