[edb]

Hi,

New to the forum, learnt to do a little stick welding back in school and now 25 years later have done a couple of TAFE courses on cutting & welding using oxy acetylene and GMAW with the aim to fabricate & fit a few rust repair panels for an old Fiat I have. I only have an oxy acetylene setup at home (Cigweld Comet) and have been doing a lot of practice on scrap and odd jobs around the house including a bit of stainless steel welding for a pizza oven flue - its been a great learning process and a lot of fun but not sure I trust myself not putting too much heat into the panels of the Fiat so may end up looking at a TIG.

A quick question, i've been looking at getting a gas economiser like the Cigweld p/n 308503, however it turns out they don't produce them anymore. There look to be plenty of options out there from the USA (9/16 'B') or UK (3/8 BSP) but of course none have the 5/8 UNF fittings from Australia. Can anyone give advice on whether it would be ok to source one of these and some adaptors to go from these to the standard Australian hoses or was there a reason they stopped being sold in Australia(other than demand)? I'd ask at my local welding supplies shop but the two that were within an hour from me closed down and all that is left is your typical Bunnings hardware.

Thanks for making such a great forum available.

Cheers,
Ed

[Jack Ryan]

Hi,

New to the forum,

Hi Ed, welcome to the forum.

learnt to do a little stick welding back in school and now 25 years later have done a couple of TAFE courses on cutting & welding using oxy acetylene and GMAW with the aim to fabricate & fit a few rust repair panels for an old Fiat I have. I only have an oxy acetylene setup at home (Cigweld Comet) and have been doing a lot of practice on scrap and odd jobs around the house including a bit of stainless steel welding for a pizza oven flue - its been a great learning process and a lot of fun but not sure I trust myself not putting too much heat into the panels of the Fiat so may end up looking at a TIG.

Other than some cutting and bending, I haven't welded with oxy/acetylene in decades so I won't pretend to have retained any expertise in it. There are people who do panel work with O/A though - there is at least one Brit who makes Youtube videos but I can't find it at the moment.

A quick question, i've been looking at getting a gas economiser like the Cigweld p/n 308503, however it turns out they don't produce them anymore. There look to be plenty of options out there from the USA (9/16 'B') or UK (3/8 BSP) but of course none have the 5/8 UNF fittings from Australia. Can anyone give advice on whether it would be ok to source one of these and some adaptors to go from these to the standard Australian hoses or was there a reason they stopped being sold in Australia(other than demand)? I'd ask at my local welding supplies shop but the two that were within an hour from me closed down and all that is left is your typical Bunnings hardware.

As you have found, economisers are still available - I'd stick with BSP as the US threads such as NPT are few and far between in Australia whereas BSP is ubiquitous.

If you have plenty of hose what about cutting the hose and fitting some barbed BSP fittings so the economiser can be fitted inline? I think that's what I'd do. If you are not comfortable crimping fittings to the hose, BOC (and many others) have crimpless connectors.

https://www.boc.com.au/shop/en/au/kit-c ... 5mm-boc112

There are both left and right handed options.

Edit: I can't find one of those with the BSP thread - you might have to crimp or use single or double ear hose clamps.

Don't bother going to Bunnings for the BSP fittings, they only have straight threads and I think tapered are much better for this purpose.

Regards
Jack

[edb]

Hi Jack,

Thanks - really appreciate the advice, I'll check out the BOC connectors and see if I can find something equivalent with BSP as whilst i'm probably capable of crimping the hoses, i'm not sure I would trust myself with acetylene or oxygen as the consequence of getting it wrong are a little worse than a poorly crimped network or TV antenna cable.

Cheers,
Ed

[Jack Ryan]

Hi Jack,
Thanks - really appreciate the advice, I'll check out the BOC connectors and see if I can find something equivalent with BSP as whilst i'm probably capable of crimping the hoses, i'm not sure I would trust myself with acetylene or oxygen

Your welcome Ed and good luck.

as the consequence of getting it wrong are a little worse than a poorly crimped network or TV antenna cable.

I think you seriously underestimate the consequences of a network failure with kids in the house!

Jack