I Need a Teacher!

At the recent Cabin Fever Expo in Lebanon, I found a bargain - an almost new, portable oxyacetylene welding rig. I paid about a hundred bucks for it:

Of course, by the time I bought safety equipment, a welding table, fresh bottles of acetylene and oxygen, and some welding rods, my $100 rig was more like a $300 rig, and I hadn't even fired it up yet! Everyone I've told about it immediately said, "Why didn't you buy a MIG welder instead?"

Good question. MIG is relatively inexpensive, simple to use, and able to do some real welding. I hope to have a good MIG welder someday, and TIG as well. Oh, and don't forget the plasma cutter. But here are a few reasons I wanted to start with gas:

1. It has uses other than welding. Indeed, watching master BMW tech Jack Miller use oxyacetylene to heat a stuck bolt red hot, and then gently remove it, made a believer out of me. I wanted that ability in the Grant St. Garage.

2. While not pictured above, this rig included a cutting torch head also, so it will cover both welding and cutting functions until my ship comes in.

3. In addition to regular welding, I want to learn brazing and "silver soldering," both of which are used heavily in the model engineering hobby.

4. The great sports cars of the 30's were made by talented guys with gas welders. MIG and TIG hadn't been invented yet! I was also inspired by Randy Schulz's work - he cut a Triumph TR3 apart lengthwise, and widened it to fit a TR6 frame. Really. He did the work with gas welding. Check out this link:

http://www.britishv8.org/articles/triumph-tr3-plus-4.htm

5. As my good buddy Lem pointed out, if  I can lay down a good bead with gas, MIG and TIG will be a walk in the park.

Today, I decided to see if I could make it make a flame, at least. The first hurdle: the acetylene cylinder had a funny square head to turn to allow gas flow:

I measured it at 3/16". I wondered if that was some sort of standard, and a quick check on Amazon told me that yes, a 3/16" acetylene gas wrench is a thing, one that costs less than 10 bucks. Of course, I could use an adjustable wrench, but I have an unreasoning hate for those things. Then I thought, "Wait - I'm a machinist who owns a 3/16" end mill! I'll just make a wrench." It was so easy I won't even detail how - you can look and and tell what I did.

Worked great. It was nice to have that leverage to open the tank, because they had really cinched it down at the gas outlet:

I went far enough to light the torch and get a decent flame out of it:

But that leads me to the real reason for this post: I have no idea what I'm doing! I know I can haunt YouTube and try to figure it out, but I could save a ton of time with a teacher willing to come and give me a lesson or two. So, if you know a welder skilled in gas welding, please send him or her my way - I will gladly pay for lessons. Please forward this post to any prospective candidates!