Originally Posted by
gugie
I know a guy (Jim G., the guy that made the trail calculator shown above) that has an oxy-propane set up using a refurbished medical oxygenator he got for about $300. Now his oxygen is essentially free, propane is cheap and easy to get. The flame's not as hot as OA, but "hot enough" for brass even by conventional standards.
That's also what Alex Wetmore uses. I thought about it, but went for a tank only because I wanted to be able to use my torch to cut, because I work on cars and motorcycles and sometimes tractors as well. That and I figured I could do silver with mapp and small tubing with tig, so I'm not using as much oxygen. Can that oxygen concentrator blow hard enough to run a rosebud tip?
For bike frames, I find that a smaller tip is desired for doing just about any add-on bit, a larger one is for fork crowns, lugs, and bottom brackets. Keep that collection of tips! For racks with .028/.035 thinwall tubing I'm using tiny flames.
Yeah, it's true. Don't worry, my tiny tip collection is not going anywhere!