oxy propane is not the great and easy way to silver solder ! If you have no experience in silver soldering then Oxy P will lead you into trouble ! You will nead lots of general heating via air propane rather than the high spot heat that Oxy P will give you, the risk of overheating or burning the work is high. Then there is the costs to consider, the small sets will soon empty the small bottles, and larger bottles cost lots to rent or buy. where are you in the UK ? Good luck Noel.

So does Nigel at Pendle Steam Boilers….but he wouldnt recomend them to the inexperienced either. The hobby bottles are useless for a 5" boiler. Even with full size bottles a very large nozzle is needed plus a big propane torch (this is why I dont often do big boilers these days) and a lot of either experience or luck.

I can't comment on whether it's the right tool for a boiler, but for my own local heating I use oxy-propane, but with the oxy derived from a medical oxygen concentrator.
Second hand off ebay/Gumtree/Preloved etc, you might get one for the deposit price of an oxygen cylinder.
Much loved by glass bead makers, there's info on sites such as Tuffnell Glass.
https://tuffnellglass.com/contents/en-uk/d103.html

I think I paid less than £100 for mine, and already had some cheap second hand valves, flashbacks, torches etc.
N.B. this is for heating only, not big enough supply for a cutting torch.

Bill

put very simply YES ! Noel.

And price. Acetylene is much more expensive that propane. I uses the 20kg swap and go BBQ gas bottle and bought a D size Oxy bottle and only pay for the oxygen (cheaper than renting the oxy bottle)

I recently tried to silver solder 2 steel parts together with a Benzomatic MAPP gas torch and could'nt get it hot enough after 5 minutes and switched to oxy-propane witth my smallest nozzle and small flame and it took less than a a minute.

Edited By Paul Lousick on 19/10/2021 05:42:47

BOC will not rent cylinders to private individuals.

I believe I saw Helen from Western Steam demo'ing soldering a boiler with a BOC Porta Pac at the Meriden show a good 5 years ago or longer. She made it look very easy.

I have rented oxy acetylene bottles, Co2 and Argon from BOC as a private individual for the last 50 odd years.

Colin

BOC and Air liquide will no longer allow you to load acetylene into a car – has to be a commercial vehicle with an all steel cab partition.

I was refused co2 at the Coventry depot about 5 years ago

My reason for not using acetylene anymore was the ramifications of having a workshop fire – a large human exclusion zone is put into place lasting i think two days. Lots of businesses would not be able to trade and lots of familied forced out their home – not something I could live with were it ever to happen.

My Dad used to make his own Acetylene in the early 50's and when he cleaned out the dregs it all went down the manhole in our drive. It never occurred to anybody that it would be a problem. I can't imagine how one would dispose of it nowadays.

Probably not used quite as much these days, but farmers spread lime on soils as a pH regulator. I used to (almost daily) have a chat with the lime kin operator, when collecting the daily sample for testing (around 1970). He had a very ruddy complexion which, at the time, I thought was likely due to his working environmrnt.

Production, back then, was by calcining high grade chalk with coal in a vertical gravity kiln/furnace and hydrating the resultant calcium oxide as it slowly traversed a (largish) screw with water sprayed on. I expect it is produced in gas-fired horizontal tube kilns with cyclone preheaters, these days. Powders, not lumps of chalk, in a ‘relatively’ dust-free environment these days compared to the method back in the middle of the last century.

Edited By not done it yet on 20/10/2021 06:58:54