[TheForge] Acetylene cannon

[Cindy]

Acetylene tricks.  One of my first welding teachers (he was employed by 
a state university in Texas) traveled around putting on short courses in 
oxy-acetylene welding, primarily aimed at farmers and ranchers.  I was 
doing my student teaching at Breckenridge, Tx high school and was a 
senior at Texas A&M college.  Since I was in Ag Education, attending 
this "class" was a welcome respite from the rigors of dealing with 
knot-head kids.  The class was 95% hands on and looking back, was pretty 
good.  He was big on safety, to a point. He lectured heavily on the 
premise that compressed oxygen and oil don't mix and told horror stories 
plus showed parts of exploded regulators, etc. as proof.  He was pretty 
good too, and we welded cast iron, steel and aluminum irrigation pipe 
with a torch plus brazing, etc.

On acetylene however, he got really into a demonstration.  He had built 
a small cannon out of some sort of tubing, the bore was just big enough 
to hold a soda or beer can with some paper towels or rags wrapped around 
for a seal.  The bottom of the cannon had a port into which he would 
introduce a "measured" amount of acetylene from a torch and he would 
then light the torch and put a prodigious amount of cotton in his ears 
as a warning of how loud this thing was going to be, and touch the flame 
to the hole.  The whole idea was to show that just a small amount of 
acetylene was very explosive.

Some of you are old enough to remember "real" soda and beer cans... they 
were made of steel and used a church key to open.  The sound of the 
explosion would rattle windows and the can would fly high into the air, 
coming down as a "compressed" can.  It was very impressive, to me 
anyway.  I've never tried this and don't recommend anyone doing it 
although we've all probably done things that are much more dangerous.  
Probably would be a good demo at an anvil shoot though.

To this day, I still soap all acetylene cyl's when I get them from the 
supplier, and I've found a number with leaking lead plugs, valves, etc.  
Just this week found a 300 cu ft cyl leaking through the handle, I'd 
never seen one leak there.

James
Bois d' Arc Forge
Paris, TX