Glass size limit

[HGuidry]

I am thinking about getting a national 8m with a sm7 tip as my first torch. I know it's not the greatest torch but after looking into it I think it would be a good start for me. My question is what would my size limits be as far a clear rods and tubes?

[shawnette]

What's your oxygen source?

[HGuidry]

I am going to be using tanked oxygen

[Aaron Ellis]

chillums and small spoons. You can go larger but you have to learn the torch your working on to make it worthy.

[shawnette]

MrSmeeth uses an 8m. He could tell you. The great thing about that torch is when you want to go bigger, you just have to buy a new tip and not a complete torch. Very economical.

[Greymatter Glass]

Grab some glass, fire up the torch, and find out. You'll learn more in 30 minutes on the torch pushing you limits than you will here asking about it...

Eventually you'll understand why this isn't a question with an answer... well there IS an answer and it involves calculus.

Suffice to say, very rarely is the torch the limiting factor, most often it's the operator that determines the limits.


I just thought up a good analogy..... go to a hardware store and ask someone who works there "how large of a nail can I hit with this hammer?"

[Icarus]

MrSmeeth uses an 8m. He could tell you. The great thing about that torch is when you want to go bigger, you just have to buy a new tip and not a complete torch. Very economical.

It depends on how you look at it. Sure,you can just buy a new tip, and a pre-mix adapter, and a rider to go on top... and oh, you've now spent well over what it would run you to get a Lynx or Redmax. Plus, changing tips while working.... suuuuuhuuuuuuuuhuuuuuuhuuuuuucks!

[shawnette]

It depends on how you look at it. Sure,you can just buy a new tip, and a pre-mix adapter, and a rider to go on top... and oh, you've now spent well over what it would run you to get a Lynx or Redmax. Plus, changing tips while working.... suuuuuhuuuuuuuuhuuuuuuhuuuuuucks!

Why do you need to get a premix adapter?

[Icarus]

Depends, do you want to run pre-mix tips? Most of the other Natty's (the 3, the 6, etc...) plus the minor rider / Milon torch by Nortel all use the same female threaded tips. You can switch tips between them as they all have the same threads.

The stock Natty 8 does not come with a pre-mix adapter, it's a surface mix torch, and has those four ungodly expensive "SM" tips that have to be purchased seperately.

I hate to link to Sundance, as I hate Sundance, but let's look at the prices for a Natty 8 from there.

http://www.sundanceglass.com/national8mtr.html

Torch itself (body only, no tips, no adpaters, it cannot be run like this): $158
SM tips: Lowest price is $82, highest price is $109. Let's say you buy the biggest (SM-21) and the second smallest (SM-7). There is $191 right there.

So far we have $349 dropped, and we still only have a huge flame and a tiny flame.

Let's say you instead decide, hey I want to use pre-mix tips so I can later use them with a different model of torch, or I'm looking for the characteristics of a pre-mix.

Okay. You're going to need the adapter, that's $47. Now you need some tips. Let's get you three hush tips , small medium and large, plus an OX-2 for fine detail work.

OX-2 (single hole) $14
HTC-1 (12 hole) $44
HTC-2 (19 hole) $49
HTC-3 (31 hole) $55

Okay, there's $209 in tips and adapter. Along with the torch body, we're now talking about $377.

Now, let's say you've bought in this far. You now have between $350 and $400 stuck in this torch, and you decide that "man, I'd love to have a big flame and a detail flame, like a red Max or Major or something". So you then go buy a rider for the torch, which is $99 for the rider, and $49 for the manifold setup. Now you've got between $500 to $525 invested, but remember, that price is only for one type of tips. Now to fully utilize the rider, you'll need to buy another set of the other type of tips (as at first you just chose whether you wanted to run it as a surface mix or pre-mix and bought tips for that).

So let's look at where we're at now,


Torch body: $158
Pre-mix adapter: $47
Rider torch: $99
Rider manifold: $49
OX-2 (single hole pre-mix) $14
HTC-1 (12 hole pre-mix) $44
HTC-2 (19 hole pre-mix) $49
HTC-3 (31 hole pre-mix) $55
SM-21 (21 hole surface mix): $109
SM-7 (7 hole surface mix): $82

I added this up in my head, but it's looking like $696.

You should probably get a little tip wrench as well and maybe some kevlar gloves, as not only do the tips gets ridiculously hot and are a pain to change, the body of the torch, including the knobs also gets ridiculously hot and you start to not want to touch it after working for a while.

In the end, we have the equivalent of a Nortel Mid-range, and it only cost $300 or so more and we got to assemble it ourselves.

With the same money, we could have gotten a Red Max with a few tips, a Lynx or a Cheetah along with a hand torch and a few tips, possibly even a used CC if we were lucky.

So yeah, I just think in the long run that they're money pits.