[TheForge] Ice rink

[Peter Fels & Phoebe Palmer]

They fill them...that's the scary part and their problem basically. I generally check for hydrostat dates when i pick them up.
Matheson ( Dutch multinational?) just bought them and the competition out last year and seem to be a bit more professional.
 The prior  outfits were really pretty shaky sometimes..No real choice..they used to have drop off points that were much closer.
I dislike driving , much less driving over the Santa Lucia Mountain grades with a truck full of HP bottles. So i do it as seldom as possible.
3 hours driving, another hour or more shuffling bottles and doing the transaction, etc, lunch,  gasoline, unloading and storing the tanks....
And, Poof! a day is gone and my back is complaining. I've accumulated a fair collection of 2nd hand bottles over the years.
So, i make them work if i can. I can be leery all i want, they have a virtual monopoly.
 If i can't, they are probably going to have to repaint the bottle when they replace the valve. I label the bad ones very clearly.
I do use soap  to spot leaks on compressed gasses other than oxy, and use some special purpose commercial crap from the welding shop for oxy.
 
On Nov 17, 2012, at 10:03 PM, Bruce . wrote:

This is your gas supplier you're talking about?  Losing track of
cylinders is not a good thing, but  pales before failure to keep
cylinder inspections up to date.  I am very leery of management
changes.  Who knows what know-nothing might have got put in charge and
decided to save money by skipping the hydraulic tests!

ASAP, take a look at your current gas cylinders and see if you can
find the inspection info.  See if it looks like the ones you've got
have been tested recently enough to be okay.

Next -- if a leak is at the bottle valve and is NOT due to a problem
with the fitting on your regulator, the gas supplier CANNOT charge you
for that cylinder.  Inform them the minute you discover the problem
and get them to replace it.  If you have to fetch the cylinders
yourself, take a good CGA fitting, dead-headed it with a cap, and use
it to test the cylinder before you leave their premises.  A few drops
of detergent in water is generally safe for such testing, though you
should rinse it off with water afterwards.

On Sun, Nov 18, 2012 at 12:49 AM, Peter Fels & Phoebe Palmer
<artgawk at thegrid.net> wrote:
> Point taken ! Thanks!
> That's why i asked, rather than tried it.
> I have dressed the poll/nipple before successfully when i'd run out of replacements.
> The problem is that the bottle's valve's seats are sometimes sorrowful abuse victims..
> It's a swap full-for-empties bottle system and after 9 (?) successive buy-outs and mergers since i've been a customer,
> They have no idea how many bottles they have out and what the serial #s are.
> Using teflon tape on threaded oxy fittings seems to be a common practice.
> I'll check Western, thank you.
-- 
Bruce
NJ
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