Alternative or shop names for Oxy-Acetylene torches summarised (so far):

Smoke Wrench - John amdinc&intergrafix.net
Blue tip Chisel - clare, at, snyder.on.ca
Blue tip Drill and Tap (used to burn broken studs out of cast
manifolds, leaving intact.)
- clare, at, snyder.on.ca
Gas Wrench - Eric R Snow etpm&whidbey.com
Gas Axe - R. Zimmerman m-zimmerman&shaw.ca
Blue Flame Spanner - Bill Lee

[insert wavy lines, wavy lines in flashback]
When I worked for Elcom (1984/85) as a summer job whilst at University,
we repaired underground miners and mine equipment. These mining machines
worked underground for months in a coal mine and in contact with
corrosive acid water. Periodically they were partially disassembled and
hauled out of the mine for major repairs and overhauls. Then the real
fun began.

Quarter-inch high-tensile steel plate used as covers had to be bent back
to shape: they were set up in a press and everyone cleared the shop
while the press was controlled remotely since there was a huge amount of
energy stored in those plates and you didn't want to be nearby if the
plate slipped while it was been bent back to shape.

One day one of the boilermakers was trying to extract a bolt (about 1"
diameter) that had previously been replaced at some time in the past. He
was lying on top of the miner, head and shoulders down at in a tight
squeeze at the front of the miner, trying to undo this bolt (which would
have allowed the mining heads to come off, which then would have given
free access to the front). Eventually, frustrated at the lack of space,
he called for the "Blue Flame Spanner" to cut the head off the bolt.
After ten or fifteen minutes, lots of cursing and disparaging comments
were being made from the boilermaker. I asked him what the problem was,
and he said, "Some F**king C**t made the bolt out of stainless steel",
and he was unable to cut it off. It appeared that someone in the past
had replaced the old bolt by one fabricated from stainless steel,
obviously to avoid it being corroded to uselessness while underground.
The only problem is that they didn't consider what they would do if they
had to remove it and the problem was damage to the threads instead of
being corroded in place.

Bill Lee

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