Cutting a Circle for a Metal Sculpture With Oxygen Acetylene
The Voice: Hey, Kevin. What are you doing?
Kevin Caron: I'm cutting a circle out of metal. I'm making a base for a contemporary art sculpture I've been working on here in the studio.
The Voice: What are you using to cut it?
Kevin Caron: This is the oxygen-acetylene torch. Because it's a piece of one-inch plate, my plasma cutter won't reach all the way through it. I had to get ?old-school here?; cut it apart with a flaming scissors.
This is the circle cutter off of my plasma cutter. Because the metal is too thick for the plasma cutter, I adapted it to fit my oxygen-acetylene rig, using just a battery clamp. It's almost the right size to fit on the cutting tip.
Then I got some of this - I believe it's called flame blocker - you get it at Ace Hardware. It's for when you're soldering on copper pipe in a wall.
It just looks like a black cloth, but it blocks a lot of the heat transfer. You can put this up against a wall when you're using your torch in the house, so you don't set the wall on fire.
I cut a little chunk of it off and used that for a little bushing. You can see right there in between the clamp and the torch. Check it out. I just cut a little piece and put it in there, then closed the clamp up on it. And that helps keep the heat from the torch from melting the lead clamp.
So now I've got a circle cutter rig for my oxygen-acetylene. Now I can go ahead and finish cutting this circular base, and I won't have quite as big a mess to clean up as if I'd tried to do it freehand.
Let me finish what I'm doing here. I'll see you next time.
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