Warning Storing Acetylene Bottles in car!

My Dad taught me to shut off the tanks, drain the lines and back off the regulators - I think the regulator back off was more to do with making them last longer - he had the same set for decades so I guess it works. He also taught me to take the wrench off the valve of the acetylene when not using it - so if the bottle fell over it couldn't accidentally open.

Dad also used backflash valves - one of the guys he worked with was injured when he had a backflash burn back in the line.

He was a welder for over 40 years and I took his word on these things!

 

Wow! I have filled a coffee cup with acetylene and blown it up, but fricking baloons!?

Jesus H!

 

regardless of what happened.........get a load of the size of the shop 2 doors over where the parts landed ! WOW ! dream garage !

our welding instructors had lots of war stories about tanks and safety around any compressed gas(ses).

The day foreman at my previous gig said he had tooled around with his tanks in his trunk to get from a to b.......i knew he was dumb, but that sounded more like stupid to me.

Another welding foreman said he used to take tanks, probably oxy, lay them on a makeshift 2x6 wooden rack and knock the valve off and shoot them over the lake next to his old job on bets from new guys that they couldn`t get them to land on the other side....he said there was probably 100 + tanks on the other side of the water.....i say ********, either way stupid and if the bosses there knew why they were throwing money out on tanks, i dunno...

 

My brother told me stories about working night shifts at Stelco here in Hamilton and firing oxygen tanks across the Bay like Torpedos. I wonder how many are on the bottom of the bay . . .

 

glad he's not my neighbor.
that sux tho.

 

I don't think you mean acetic acid which is a carboxylic acid and is one of the primary ingredients in vinegar. Acetone is a ketone (ketones are distinct from many other functional groups, such as carboxylic acids, aldehydes, esters, amides, and other oxygen-containing compounds). Acetone is usually the primary ingredient in Super Glue remover.

 

I recall once being advised to never place an acetylene tank sideways because that could create a dangerous situation with the carbide inside the tank. Yet I seldom hear this mentioned any more. Was this information not true, or nowadays are things different, or ??????

 

If you lay it on it's side you will lose some of the acetone. That reduces the capacity of the tank, because the acetylene "attaches" to the liquid molocules. Since the acetone is captured in the plaster it won't 'run' out, but can vaporize and be lost. No danger that I know of, but there might be..........?

Also, there is no carbide in the tank. The acetylene was manufactured from carbide in a modern carbide generator, then 'pumped' into the acetone/plaster filling in the tank. It takes several hours to 'fill' the tank because it takes time for the aceton/plaster to absorb the acetylene gas.

 

Just to add another safety warning, my dad was a welder and he said you arent' supposed to transport oxy-acetylene tanks unless they have the caps screwed on (which means taking the regulators off). He said lots of people carry them around on trucks without putting the caps on, but if a tank was to fall off or the vehicle was to rollover and snap the neck off the bottle, there goes one unguided missile. One college instructor told me he had seen one fall off a loading dock once without the cap on, the neck snapped off and the bottle took off hitting a concrete wall. He thought that was close enough to a near-death experience to count. He figured any time you were moving bottles any distance, even on a cart, the caps should be on.
Chris

 

I remember a few years back a PT Cruiser blew up 1 block away from my grandfather's home in Santa Monica, CA. Some old man had a propane bottle in his car with the valve cracked. He opened the door when he got home and they say the courtesy light lit it up.

It shook the hell outta my grandpa's house and when they ran outside they saw bits and pieces floating out of the sky including the roof panel. An old Lincoln limo parked next to it had everything on the drivers side pushed 2 feet into the car. Unfortunately the old man and his dog were found ... all over the place ...

****s.

-Chris

 

dang

 

My friend, who is an automotive tech instructor at the local vo-tech, demonstrates the dangers of the flammability of oxygen and acetylene both, using small balloons. He'll fill a small balloon with 100% oxygen, tie it off and set it on a cleared metal bench. The balloon, when hit with the welding torch, makes a nice little flash and bang. Pretty impressive. Now, comes the same thing with a smaller balloon with acetylene, this time, on the concrete floor. He ignites it with the torch, and a MUCH LOUDER BANG ensues, scaring the **** out of, and immediately impressing the dangers to, the students.

He does not have problems with his kids misusing or abusing the oxy-acetylene bottles and torches. They get it the first time!

 

Aha. So refilling an acetylene tank means adding acetylene gas, plus topping off the acetone? How do they determine how much acetone to add?

 

Holy **** !

 

Good question, I'd like to know that too just for ****s and grins. I'm ***uming they would pour the tank full, let it set, for a time period than drain the excess liquid off, the plaster would absorb......... just guessing, I might just give somebody that does it a call. If I get that information, I'll bring it back. The more we know..................

 

BLEW THE **** OUTA THAT VAN.. Sorry plumber joke.

 

me and my brother used to do balloons every 4th but after oklahoma city it didn't seem the same. There's still a big innertube up the the garage we were figguring how to charge it and set it off remotely without being near it. we were going to fill a bucket with fertilizer and wet it with diesel and set it in the innertube and see what it would do.
back in chemistry cl*** there was some black crusty stuff that would release oxygen when heated and reabsorb it when it crystallized. we thought it would be neat to mix it with the sulfur and magnesium and see what it would do...it burned through the petrie dish and into the counter top. it wasn't appreciated.
I used to have a home cooked recipe for amyl nitrate and could make black powder.
I forget how now.
If you mix iron and aluminum powder and can get it to burn you can't put it out.
If you wrap an explosive device with copper wire like an ignition coil it produces a small emp.
Mountain dew and pepsi 16 ouncers have a perfect spiral on the bottle to stabilize it's flight from a pvc 'Tater cannon. a shotgun shell WITH THE PROJECTILES REMOVED!!!! placed in the bottle neck primer out and a slipper cap with a striker makes a nice redneck bazooka for those really stupid holidays.
The neighbor down the street had a cannon replica he made from nesting 3 layers of steam pipe. he would fire it off with acetylene on the fourth, it was like ordinance.
He was shooting his wife's croquet balls with it. they'd fly a hundred feet. my brother grabbed a rag and said lets use some wadding and see what it does. Larry's place was on a hill. the wooden ball cleared the tops of the trees on the other hill 2 blocks away by 50 feet. that was the end of that. It had to have gone a half mile before it it the ground.
We used to play army with pellet guns and wrist rockets loaded with m-80's down at the creek
One of the kids in the neighborhood built a machine gun bb gun that was too much.
it ran off a co2 bottle and it just poured out bb's. they didn't go in but damn they stung.
I remember my mom making me take off a bandaid and almost fainting when she saw I had dug a bb out of my hand with a knife.
Kids these days... whatta they know
at least eddie has 3 fingers left...
we'd still be in gitmo if we tried what we did for ****s and giggles back then today

 

Here are a couple more pictures of the original explosion.