I've been keeping my eye on surplus oxygen/acetylene gear locally and picking it
up when it's cheap, with an eye on reselling. I now have 3 cutting torch
attachments all of which are high quality and all of which seem to have the same
problem. They pop and go out a lot. I haven't replaced the tips, but I have
cleaned the tips including the seating tapers until they are really as clean as
they'll get, by soaking in vinegar and salt and gently rubbing with 3M pads. I
have also used tip cleaners to try to gently get as much junk out of the preheat
holes as possible. I don't know of a good method to clean the seats themselves,
though. This is the hole in the actual torch head. It would seem to require some
special tool to clean the seating tapers.

I believe the popping is simply from improper seating of the torch tips. Is
there another common cause?

Any of you guys have a good method for doing this job?

By the way, Seattle is blessed with a great torch repair place, Hansen & Miller
in Ballard, but they are expensive and so are new cutting torch tips. That's why
I'm trying to do this by myself.

These are all real nice torches or will be once they are fixed.

Grant Erwin
Kirkland, Washington