First, let me apologize for hustling off the phone yesterday. A neighbor dropped by to visit and since he's a retired cop, I didn't want him to leave so he could man the fire extinguisher while I calibrated the torch according to your instructions. My tanks are chained to the wall of my garage, so I had to do it inside. I didn't feel comfortable running the torch that hot indoors without a second pair of eyes and hands around.

Second, I calibrated the torch to a Q-tip and afterwards the settings read 6.5 pounds acetylene and 6.0 pounds oxygen with tank valves open and torch valves closed.

(Does that sound okay? Running the 1.5 tip with a JOF flame, the regulators read about 5.5 acetylene and 5.25 oxygen. Up to now, I've run them both at 4 pounds for welding, regardless of the tip.)

Third, I still couldn't weld worth a damn afterwards. When one of my filler rod ends balled up strangely on me this morning, I called my supplier to ask if I had the right rod. Turns out they accidentally gave me a bunch of TIG rod a month or so ago. It was mixed in with my oxy-acetylene filler and by sheer luck I kept pulling out the right ones...until yesterday.

I just got home with the correct rod and think I'd better grind the weld area down a bit before I have at it again. I have bad welds in 4 different places along the seam.

I'm not a very happy camper, but I learned something.

I will let you know how things go. I should be confident, but I've had so many setbacks the last couple days, I'm not going to make any assumptions.

In the meantime, here are my other, comparatively successful projects, in the order I did them. Most are under 10" in length, but the tree and the last three are bigger.

Thank you again for your time and thoughtful support.

Best,

--Kira

for more see: www.kiraod.com