(Courtesy of the Oxweld Acetylene Co.)
Fig. 5.—Fireman Cutting ¹⁄₄-inch Steel Fire Door with Portable Apparatus.
(9) Before and since the time of the “Maine,” the cutting torch has been accomplishing wonderful feats. In every scrap yard, old boilers and the like are being cut into furnace size; speeding up the production in answer to the world’s cry for more metal. The wreckage on railroads and buildings using steel reinforcements is being cleared in hours, with the aid of the cutting torch, where it required days by other methods. Most of the fire departments in the larger cities now carry the cutting torch as part of their equipment, and to it has been credited the saving of many lives, by its timely cutting away of steel doors, bars or barriers which prevented escape. Much of the plate in this country’s shipbuilding yards is being cut to size right on the job, and the function of this torch in cutting off risers measuring from one to thirty-six inches in diameter in the foundry seems only to be of secondary importance in comparison with some of its other uses. In order to transport some of the largest inland lake boats which were much too long to pass through the locks, to the sea, they were cut in parts, transported, and later welded together and placed in service.
(Courtesy of the Acetylene Journal Publishing Co.)
Fig. 6.—Welders of the Signal Corps, U. S. Army, in Action.
(10) It is not only possible to keep a cutting torch burning under water, but it can also be made to cut. Contracting companies are cutting off their piling under water and it has been known that in European ports cutting has been successfully accomplished at a depth of thirty feet. A special torch is employed by submarines to cut nets under water.
(11) In reviewing the oxy-acetylene welding and cutting process, we find that its growth is one of the most remarkable the world has ever witnessed. About 1907 saw its industrial birth and since that time it has advanced by leaps and bounds, rivaling the automobile industry in its progress, despite the opposition and criticism levied at it by workers of other trades and its careless and unskilled manipulation.
(Courtesy of the Acetylene Journal Publishing Co.)