New Lesson

Airgas has let me down.

I went out to the garage, figuring I’d finish my saw-blade hangers. I fabricated the parts, and I was going to weld them up. I tried to do this a few days ago, but it turned out I had no gas. I had left the valve open.

I hate exchanging pretty new Ebay tanks for old rusty bottles, but I decided I had to get used to it, so I let the Airgas guy give me an exchange. Today when I tried to connect it, my regulator wouldn’t screw into it far enough to seat. I took out the regulator doodad, and I looked at the valve. The threads had shavings hanging off of them. I have no idea how Airgas did it, but they mangled the threads on their tank. It scraped my threads up a little when I tried to attach the tank, but thank God, I had better sense than to force it with a wrench.

And of course, I found this out fifteen minutes before Airgas closes for the weekend.

I wonder if I could just use CO2. I have it lying around in little beer tanks.

I also wonder if Airgas has a whole bunch of ruined valves. I assume they use the same fitting to put gas in that customers use to let it out. Or maybe they don’t. The valve has another side to it, and it has something on it that sort of looks like a quick-release. I suppose that would be faster for their purposes.

Anyway, no welding until Monday. Unless I resign myself to CO2.