Barry

Meet Barry, the discarded mystery tank with flammable gas inside that we found on the side of the road.  Our first job once this tank was back in the area behind our shop was to get rid of that flammable mystery gas that was inside.  Because seriously, who needs flammable mystery gas floating around and leaking out of a rusty old tank in their life?  Not me.

Interesting fact of the day: tanks with flammable gas always have the threads on their openings, and therefore also all the fittings that go into them, machined backward.  So if you walk up to a tank with flammable gas in it unknowingly and decide you want to open a valve by remembering the normal “righty tighty, lefty loosy,” you’ll actually be doing the opposite – you’ll be tightening it.  Flammable gas is “righty loosy, lefty tighty.”  Pretty smart, right?

Anyway, to get rid of the gas, we got the hose out and filled Barry all the way up with water.  If Barry is completely full of water, it is impossible for him to have any gas left in him.  This way, we can cut into him with sparks flying and know for sure that we aren’t in any danger.  Soon, Barry is going to be cut roughly in half and one half will become a furnace that will reach near 3,000 degrees hopefully (hot enough to melt wrought iron if we’re lucky), and the other half will be a forge, which we can use to harden metal (like for making knives or swords), forge-weld metal (like to make mokume gane), etc.