Non OxyAcetelyne Heat Sources for Brazing

[William McCormick]

How do you pre-heat ? My anvil won't fit in my Barbecue grill, and the ladies in the house wouldn't appreciate seeing it in the oven (it won't fit anyway).


"Rosebud"..... Attachment 1723116


No not that one. The OxyAcetylene one

Attachment 1723117

I've often wondered about induction heating though .

Get a couple of electric strip heaters and lay the anvil on them, cover the anvil with an asbestos blanket and wait a couple of hours. It will go faster than you think.


Sincerely,

William McCormick

[Willie B]

As propane rapidly evaporates, it has a chilling effect. Sometimes it cools below the frost temperature. It builds up a layer of frost, insulating the tank. Unable to receive heat from ambient air, evaporation of liquid propane slows to very little gas being produced.

A similar thing happened at a ski lodge. Gas company set 4 100 gallon tanks under the eaves of a poorly insulated standing seam roof. In the heavy snow belt, the tanks were soon buried in snow. Evaporation was so slow, pilot lights on the antique restaurant range went out as the generator tried to run for its weekly exercise.

A couple people got pretty dramatic about "We could have been killed, or even worse!" Reality is propane from a pilot light mixed with tens of thousands of cubic feet of air in the huge building isn't very explosive, and sure won't asphyxiate anyone.

[William McCormick]

As propane rapidly evaporates, it has a chilling effect. Sometimes it cools below the frost temperature. It builds up a layer of frost, insulating the tank. Unable to receive heat from ambient air, evaporation of liquid propane slows to very little gas being produced.

A similar thing happened at a ski lodge. Gas company set 4 100 gallon tanks under the eaves of a poorly insulated standing seam roof. In the heavy snow belt, the tanks were soon buried in snow. Evaporation was so slow, pilot lights on the antique restaurant range went out as the generator tried to run for its weekly exercise.

A couple people got pretty dramatic about "We could have been killed, or even worse!" Reality is propane from a pilot light mixed with tens of thousands of cubic feet of air in the huge building isn't very explosive, and sure won't asphyxiate anyone.

For sure when you smell what your mind has been programmed to believe is propane you are actually smelling methyl mercaptan, an additive to odorless propane. So you can smell the tank, piping or appliance is leaking, very much like perfume or lead acetate. But even those substances in the right volume and fuel-air mix can become rather impressive explosives as well. It is all electricity, we are standing on pure electricity in strange shapes and structures, push come to shove.

You could probably remove the methyl mercaptan by running it through an organic vapor cartridge rather easily.



Sincerely,

William McCormick

[Kelvin]

If your acetylene tank drains into the room and ignites it will probably cause a rich pop taking out the windows. Then heat the room as it continues to burn for some time covering everything in lampblack, upon running out of oxygen it will break any unbroken windows as air is drawn into the room and then detonate like the best bomb you could imagine on earth.

Well, yeah.

But I'm pretty sure it's "not recommended" that you open the valve and drain the acetylene bottle into your house until it reaches a perfect stoichiometric ratio with the air and then light a Zippo.

Just as I suspect it's "not recommended" that you take that 5-gallon can of lawnmower gasoline and dump it all over all the furniture, curtains, bedding and walls of your house and then leave for vacation and "just hope" that the gasoline vapor never reaches the pilot lights in your stove or hot water heater.

On the other hand, if one follows the manufacturer's recommendations, I suspect acetylene is as safe as lawnmower gas.

Good God. You'd think we were talking about plutonium pits or live ebola.

[William McCormick]

Well, yeah.

But I'm pretty sure it's "not recommended" that you open the valve and drain the acetylene bottle into your house until it reaches a perfect stoichiometric ratio with the air and then light a Zippo.

Just as I suspect it's "not recommended" that you take that 5-gallon can of lawnmower gasoline and dump it all over all the furniture, curtains, bedding and walls of your house and then leave for vacation and "just hope" that the gasoline vapor never reaches the pilot lights in your stove or hot water heater.

On the other hand, if one follows the manufacturer's recommendations, I suspect acetylene is as safe as lawnmower gas.

Good God. You'd think we were talking about plutonium pits or live ebola.

The number one cause is the torch left on and resting on the work as you go to lunch, or home, and a hose that ruptures or is cut while you are patting yourself on the back for such a nice cut or weld, that you leave, and do not bother to shut off the tanks.

Acetylene is a strange gas, it will if you create a rich mix, burn like a candle out windows until it can not get enough air, and it pulls air in from all openings often causing firemen to think it went out when it is actually just reaching the most perfect fuel-air mixture to detonate like high explosives. In the case of the pipe filled with acetylene, it pulled oxygen from the bottom and created a fuel-air mix it ejected out the top, which was by no means a very perfect detonation of oxygen and acetylene. Oxygen and acetylene used to be used to blow safes open it is an odd substance with strange and wonderful capabilities. If you watched that movie you can see that it is rather benign until enough oxygen mixes in the tube and creates a rather nice flash of light. Imagine a closed-in structure detonating that same quantity but with nowhere for it to go. That is the problem. But sure common sense, safety practice makes it less dangerous by statistic than crossing the street.

As far as gasoline it is no longer labeled flammable explosive at the gas station, so maybe you can, haha. They used to teach you in shop class what can happen with a small amount of oxygen and acetylene, by making a bag of it in class and detonating it. There have been people that cut a slot in their draw for the torch so no one stole the torch while they were at lunch, and when they came back they sat in front of the draw and banged it, and the shrapnel from the draw damaged them badly so yea you should treat it as a violent explosive. If you let gasoline create a large volume of fuel and air it will knock the ground down with less than fifty-five gallons of gas evaporated as well as shatter windows in nearby buildings if the wind is right the temperature is right or it is contained in a large structure.

Sincerely,

William McCormick

[William McCormick]

Well, yeah.

But I'm pretty sure it's "not recommended" that you open the valve and drain the acetylene bottle into your house until it reaches a perfect stoichiometric ratio with the air and then light a Zippo.

Just as I suspect it's "not recommended" that you take that 5-gallon can of lawnmower gasoline and dump it all over all the furniture, curtains, bedding and walls of your house and then leave for vacation and "just hope" that the gasoline vapor never reaches the pilot lights in your stove or hot water heater.

On the other hand, if one follows the manufacturer's recommendations, I suspect acetylene is as safe as lawnmower gas.

Good God. You'd think we were talking about plutonium pits or live ebola.

That is a tiny office waste paper pail plastic bag of oxygen and acetylene mixed very well. A second before the blast, you are actually pushed to the bag by rays from behind you as the area around the bag raises very high in voltage. But they stopped teaching this in colleges after World War Two. And made it against the law to teach in public schools or any school receiving tax breaks like private schools after 1972.



Sincerely,

William McCormick

[Kelvin]

That is a tiny office waste paper pail plastic bag of oxygen and acetylene mixed very well. A second before the blast, you are actually pushed to the bag by rays from behind you as the area around the bag raises very high in voltage. But they stopped teaching this in colleges after World War Two. And made it against the law to teach in public schools or any school receiving tax breaks like private schools after 1972.

Yes, I've done the same thing. Acetylene is very powerful in the proper ratio with oxygen. Anybody who's ever fired a Bangsite cannon knows that.

The point is, ANY FUEL -- whether it's acetylene, propane, MAPP gas, gasoline, acetone, methanol, ethanol, natural gas, hair spray, flour dust, you name it -- is, in the proper ratio with oxygen, going to be explosive and is going to level a house. There is no qualitative difference among them, which is what you seem to be arguing.

We live on the coast here, and several years back we had a pretty loud explosion that felt like it came close to taking the windows out. I remember looking at the clock when I heard it, and thinking "Remember what time it was when that overpressure wave shook the house, because you're going to read about whatever caused it tomorrow."

Sure enough, I read about it on the front page the next day. A ship that was carrying ethanol (grain alcohol used in gasohol) exploded. But the time of the explosion didn't match: The time when I heard the explosion was something like 6 minutes after it actually happened. Turns out the ship was something like 50 miles offshore, and it took 6 minutes for the sound of the explosion to reach the house here, and yet it STILL felt like it came close to pushing the windows in. And that was "just" grain alcohol.

The point is, ANY FUEL GAS is going to be explosive in the right concentration with oxygen. Aside from its ability to "decompose" if you pressurize it over 15 psi, acetylene is nothing special in this regard, and is no more dangerous or less dangerous than propane or MAPP gas or whatever. It's just ... one fuel out of many.

[Willie B]

For sure when you smell what your mind has been programmed to believe is propane you are actually smelling methyl mercaptan, an additive to odorless propane. So you can smell the tank, piping or appliance is leaking, very much like perfume or lead acetate. But even those substances in the right volume and fuel-air mix can become rather impressive explosives as well. It is all electricity, we are standing on pure electricity in strange shapes and structures, push come to shove.

You could probably remove the methyl mercaptan by running it through an organic vapor cartridge rather easily.



Sincerely,

William McCormick

I don't know how to measure the volume of propane metered through a pilot valve in an antique stove. I'd compare it to a small candle flame, mix that with the air in a 10,000 square foot building, especially a drafty rustic old ski lodge, it ain't gonna be explosive.

[Kelvin]

I don't know how to measure the volume of propane metered through a pilot valve in an antique stove. I'd compare it to a small candle flame, mix that with the air in a 10,000 square foot building, especially a drafty rustic old ski lodge, it ain't gonna be explosive.

When I was a kid, there was a house about a mile away where excavators apparently hit a NG line going into the house and natural gas leaked into the house for most of the day, before the daughter came home from school and hit the light switch.

It must have been a pretty stout mix, because it leveled the house. I felt that kBOOM, too, though it was nowhere near as thumped as that alcohol boat 50 miles out.

It's a long time ago now, and I forget, but I think the daughter somehow survived!

[Oldendum]

Harris still has tips and mixers for alternate fuel brazing.

[Kelvin]

The point is, ANY FUEL GAS is going to be explosive in the right concentration with oxygen.

Hmmm...well, maybe acetylene is more dangerous than other fuels because of its wider "flammability range" which is apparently from 2.5% to 100%! (Carbon monoxide isn't far behind, with flammability range of 12-75%.) I didn't realize that different fuels had such widely differing "flammability ranges." Doh!

More:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flammability_limit

[Willie B]

When I was a kid, there was a house about a mile away where excavators apparently hit a NG line going into the house and natural gas leaked into the house for most of the day, before the daughter came home from school and hit the light switch.

It must have been a pretty stout mix, because it leveled the house. I felt that kBOOM, too, though it was nowhere near as thumped as that alcohol boat 50 miles out.

It's a long time ago now, and I forget, but I think the daughter somehow survived!

When I was a kid a house on Polack Peak was rented. Tennant got home from work in the Quarry, water heater was out. He went down cellar to light it, cigarette in his mouth. It BLEW! A lady I knew said a black man tried to flag her down in front of the house. He was burned black.

His recovery was LONG! He spent months in the hospital with numerous surgeries.

Years later he hooked up a gas stove for a friend. Job done, they started to barbecue. There was an explosion, lifted the house enough it didn't come down quite right on the foundation. Took out windows, maybe some ear drums, everybody survived, even an infant.


Several years ago A lady 20 miles from here complained of gas smell. Her propane supplier sent a "service man", He found no leak. A week later the house exploded. It was scattered over a few acres. Lady & a teenage son were killed.

[William McCormick]

Yes, I've done the same thing. Acetylene is very powerful in the proper ratio with oxygen. Anybody who's ever fired a Bangsite cannon knows that.

The point is, ANY FUEL -- whether it's acetylene, propane, MAPP gas, gasoline, acetone, methanol, ethanol, natural gas, hair spray, flour dust, you name it -- is, in the proper ratio with oxygen, going to be explosive and is going to level a house. There is no qualitative difference among them, which is what you seem to be arguing.

We live on the coast here, and several years back we had a pretty loud explosion that felt like it came close to taking the windows out. I remember looking at the clock when I heard it, and thinking "Remember what time it was when that overpressure wave shook the house, because you're going to read about whatever caused it tomorrow."

Sure enough, I read about it on the front page the next day. A ship that was carrying ethanol (grain alcohol used in gasohol) exploded. But the time of the explosion didn't match: The time when I heard the explosion was something like 6 minutes after it actually happened. Turns out the ship was something like 50 miles offshore, and it took 6 minutes for the sound of the explosion to reach the house here, and yet it STILL felt like it came close to pushing the windows in. And that was "just" grain alcohol.

The point is, ANY FUEL GAS is going to be explosive in the right concentration with oxygen. Aside from its ability to "decompose" if you pressurize it over 15 psi, acetylene is nothing special in this regard, and is no more dangerous or less dangerous than propane or MAPP gas or whatever. It's just ... one fuel out of many.

Ethanol is actually extremely easy to shock, gasoline is not easily shocked, the reason is that gasoline contains radioactive materials that ionize the fuel and even the vapor. If you ever go into a pharmaceutical manufacturing company look at the drums of ethanol they have ground clamps on them because ethanol is easily shockable which means it detonates as a liquid without external oxygen which puts it in a category near ammonium nitrates stability. I believe there is a chemical you can add to water and make it shockable. As I said we live on a sphere of pure electricity making up all matter and radiations. They just would not teach this in most colleges after World War Two, and after 1972 you could no longer teach it at any public school or any school receiving tax breaks or assistance by law. Acetylene as I mentioned by itself will create rather violent explosions if allowed to burn off rather harmlessly while partially contained in a structure, with no pure oxygen mixed with it, that is not the case with propane, or methane in similar quantities. Mapp is another story.


Sincerely,

William McCormick

[whtbaron]

The OP wants to braze something.... 3 pages of horror stories later, you guys aren't helping.

[William McCormick]

Originally this story was reported as 85 firemen were spraying water on calcium carbide at a warehouse fire, creating acetylene vapor that then detonated. As many were talking about it and how three bags full of calcium carbide can level a city if that is the intent of the individual using it, they changed the story to it was an ammonium nitrate explosion. There were other videos of the explosions and they were definitely that purple hue of acetylene detonating.

Students were injured in an advanced university class when a small amount of calcium carbide reacted and detonated in the lab.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-33945116

It derailed trains two kilometers away.

Sincerely,

William McCormick

[William McCormick]

The OP wants to braze something.... 3 pages of horror stories later, you guys aren't helping.

Horror stories? This is basic seventh-grade shop class safety training. Did you vote for Biden?

Sincerely,

William McCormick

[OPUS FERRO]

whtbaron

The OP wants to braze something.... 3 pages of
horror stories later, you guys aren't helping.

I - 'Second the Motion' . . .

hth


Opus



.

[William McCormick]

I have Plasma etc for cutting however I want to add the ability to Braze to my shop.

I would prefer NOT to have Oxy Acetelyne in my shop for safety. Maybe I am overestimating its danger but I don't want the risk only to add the ability to Braze.

I know that some people Braze using Map/Pro and Oxygen Benzomatic cylinders but it looks uber expensive to buy all those tiny oxy cylinders plus I heard there can be issues with getting enough BTU's into the part to Braze.

I know some people Braze with their TIG but my understanding is that it doesn't do nearly as good of a job as using a flame. Correct me if I am wrong.

So, is there a way to Braze without getting Oxy Acetelyne?

TIG brazing is amazing as someone else mentioned. Do not listen to the people who say "use AC TIG," only use DC TIG and you can braze things together very well. I used to use Everdure on bronze rails it is mad strong. Someone saw us wrestling with a rail that was just a little off, the angle had changed from the welding process. He said that braizing cannot be strong enough to change the angle. Then he saw what it took to bend the bronze rail and he had to sit down, to fathom what he saw. it took hydraulics and extreme pressure at that. It is the DC that makes it so strong and penetrating.




Sincerely,

William McCormick

[William McCormick]

It works for cutting for sure.

We had an outfit come demo a giant metal dust collector hopper left here from a picture framing company.

They cut that thing up with the regular BBQ size tanks.

The cutting of steel is carried out by the heat of burning the steel, so it is the oxygen that cuts the steel actually not the acetylene or propane. The proof is trying to cut stainless steel or aluminum, nothing happens, because neither generates heat when subjected to oxygen even at elevated temperatures.


Sincerely,

William McCormick

[William McCormick]

When I was a kid, there was a house about a mile away where excavators apparently hit a NG line going into the house and natural gas leaked into the house for most of the day, before the daughter came home from school and hit the light switch.

It must have been a pretty stout mix, because it leveled the house. I felt that kBOOM, too, though it was nowhere near as thumped as that alcohol boat 50 miles out.

It's a long time ago now, and I forget, but I think the daughter somehow survived!

If the fuel-air mix is right it can create a rather powerful explosion or medium velocity shock wave.


Sincerely,

William McCormick

[William McCormick]

I have Plasma etc for cutting however I want to add the ability to Braze to my shop.

I would prefer NOT to have Oxy Acetelyne in my shop for safety. Maybe I am overestimating its danger but I don't want the risk only to add the ability to Braze.

I know that some people Braze using Map/Pro and Oxygen Benzomatic cylinders but it looks uber expensive to buy all those tiny oxy cylinders plus I heard there can be issues with getting enough BTU's into the part to Braze.

I know some people Braze with their TIG but my understanding is that it doesn't do nearly as good of a job as using a flame. Correct me if I am wrong.

So, is there a way to Braze without getting Oxy Acetelyne?

It is kind of funny, but if you are afraid that you cannot handle acetylene you really shouldn't be using propane, or Mapp either. You just need to shut off those tanks every time you put the torch down. Check the tanks every time before you go home or go in the house just to be sure. I used to be known for always reminding people to shut off the tanks. But I ran out once to the welding supply before they closed, and left the tanks on. The odds of something happening that one time are astronomical but I gave myself a stiff reprimand anyway, with subsequent public humiliation, haha. But the point is you shouldn't be handling any gases unless you are focused. The danger by dealing with acetylene by actual experience for more than fifty years is that it is the safest.

To give you an example the small tanks of Mapp, have igniters built into the large turbo torches for them. One day I was coming back from a job with another guy, we had to finish a job in the city and the guy was rushing us to get back in his office. Well anyway, we grabbed everything threw it in the van, and started home. We both were saying boy there must be some house fire around here. At one point I looked back and saw the fire in the van. I changed lanes and put the van up on the shoulder in heavy city traffic in three seconds. I went to the back of the truck and ripped everything out of the truck, I had melted plastic on my hands. I grabbed the pressurized water bottle that I used for the Core Drill and sprayed everything on fire down. With that, a fireman who was behind me and watched what happened, got out ran over, and said "Do you need any help?" I said no I think we are ok. He said "wow you were really moving, good job", haha. So it is often the dangers that are played down that cause more accidents than the more dangerous, but more useable and in the long run safer methods.

Sincerely,

William McCormick

[N2 Welding]

The OP wants to braze something.... 3 pages of horror stories later, you guys aren't helping.

I got a good laugh out this. Thanks I needed that.

[Willie B]

I don't worry much about gas. The containers are pretty secure. The knucklehead running gas piping might be another matter. Good quality torch equipment, kept in good condition will improve your odds.

Welding, cutting grinding around combustibles are quite another matter. I worry about sparks getting something burning. I never leave a building immediately after doing anything making sparks. The grease pit is worst! always some oily residue on the floor. I've put neglected fire extinguishers to the test a few times. They did fail.

[Louie1961]

The OP wants to braze something.... 3 pages of horror stories later, you guys aren't helping.

I think I gave him all the help he needs, IMHO. Choose an industrial oxy fuel torch or learn how to TIG braze. Problem solved.

[Kelvin]

I think I gave him all the help he needs, IMHO. Choose an industrial oxy fuel torch or learn how to TIG braze. Problem solved.

That's just crazy talk!