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![oxyfuel.jpg](\"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/oxyfuel.jpg\")
<\/p>\nis an oxyfuel welding\/cutting setup.
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The green (Oxygen) tank is an S, and weighs about 75 lbs empty, the black and yellow (Acetylene) tank is a WC and weighs about 90 lbs (Empty or full, the acetylene is dissolved in acetone so it doesn’t explode, and the acetone is most of the weight of the cylinder)<\/p>\n
These tanks are ubiquitous at the steel mills, and as often as not they would have to be lugged to location. At the ripe old age of 18, as a millwrights apprentice, this task often fell to me. <\/p>\n
There were carts, for sure, but most guys would just sling the cylinder up over their shoulder and start walking- most of the time, the roads were so bad, or the terrain so horrible, that a cart was worthless. And there were often stairs. <\/p>\n
I was a big kid, and while I was chunky there was a lot of meat there too, so, damned if I was gonna let anyone show me up, I carried. <\/p>\n
For the better part of four years, it seems, I ended up lugging an oxygen and an acetylene cylinder to some remote damned location to heat or burn or braze something, and I did so just throwing it over my shoulder. I can still do it with a pretty substantial weight. What Professor Hale alludes to in comments in the post previous to this one is very true; while we did have women on the job- many of them- they fell into two categories- women physically capable of doing the work but without the aptitude, and women with the aptitude that were just too small. When I was an oiler, I worked with one black woman, Kathleen, who was a great oiler- was great at topping off fluids and making sure stuff stayed greased, and that was great, she did her job proudly and well. I had to carry the grease gun and etc because she simply lacked the physical strength. And we had another girl, who had gotten her journeyman’s card by virtue of being able to break the neck of anyone she wanted, but who could not understand why some screwdrivers were “Plus shaped” and others “minus shaped” Now, there are and were men who fit these categories as well, but if you wanted someone to could carry the 160 lbs of gas bottles up 100 feet of rusty stair and once there change a 300 lb roller and tune and train a 1500 foot long conveyor belt, you got a guy. Everyone knew that and never questioned it. I don’t know if that has changed. I don’t really care. I know the women there were paid the same as the men despite flat out not being able to do the job, and that was thirty years ago. Everyone got paid the same. <\/p>\n
Aside: the smallest acetylene cylinder is an MC. Know what the MC stands for? Motorcycle. Motorcycle headlights used to burn acetylene, and the small tanks were made for motorcycles. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
is an oxyfuel welding\/cutting setup. The green (Oxygen) tank is an S, and weighs about 75 lbs empty, the black and yellow (Acetylene) tank is a WC and weighs about 90 lbs (Empty or full, the acetylene is dissolved in acetone so it doesn’t explode, and the acetone is most of the weight of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6392"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6392\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}