Consumables
Yesterday afternoon, I saw that the p-clamp holding the headlight onto the mlcm had come loose and slipped down the fork blade, so I decided that this morning would be the ideal time to quickly braze up the lamp mount that I’d cut a couple of weeks ago. So, this morning I dragged my torch out to the front porch, clamped the main part of the lamp mount into my work vice (so I could braze a headless m5 bolt onto the end of the holder), fired up and adjusted the flame, then settled down to heat the pieces up to the proper melty temperature.
Just as the flux started to get all nice and melty and I was leaning in to stick the brazing rod into the flame the whole thing flipped from a nice hot blue oxygen flame over to a lazy orangish gas flame. I fiddled a little bit with the oxygen regulator, then a lot with the oxygen regulator, but nothing happened.
Shoot. That meant that the oxygen lasted maybe 20 minutes, and since I’m using an el-cheapo BernzOmatic home torch that means I’ve got to go out and buy another disposable oxygen tank ($15?) for the next 20 minutes of brazing.
Ick. I guess this means I need to warm up my resume; if I got another contract job, that would probably bring in enough money so I could buy a bigger torch that can take standard large refillable gas/oxygen tanks (and then, if I wanted, I could build a replacement xtracycle frame that doesn’t have toe overlap.)