Acetylene is great. I love it – especially when combined with Oxygen and set on fire in the correct way you can heat up metal!
In preparation for some camping, I’ve been looking for some bits of kit, a couple of them being a cooking pot, kettle and a tripod to suspend them over a camp fire. Now there are some of these things on that great tat sale eBay, but the tripod I fancied was £40 plus postage, and that’s too rich for my tastes.
Fortunately, I had some spare time between trains at the railway over the weekend, and I looked out a couple of bits of spare steel. I had to make a bending jig up first from some scrap, so out came my friendly little welder. A couple of minutes later a jig had been fabricated from a piece of scrap “I-beam” and a short section of pipe.
A quick chat with Graham and he got me set-up with the Oxy-Acetylene kit, and I was off bending the P shape into the top of a couple of the bars, then the final one, which was slightly more difficult as the first two had to be looped through before finally closing the P. The final one had to be reworked a little, as it was too big the first time, but my new friend Oxy-Acetylene can help persuade metal back to close to its original shape (ish) and then re-bend.
I was enjoying myself so much, I made a couple of “S” hooks from round bar, and with the bit left over I made a lifting handle. When I got home I looked out an old chain that I used to lock my motorbike up with, that is pretty chunky and looks like it’ll work well to hang a pot from.