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How To Cut Circles With A Cutting Torch
"Flame-cutting circles in mild steel accurately with my acetylene torch is surprisingly easy with this attachment my grandfather made for it. It lets me cut neat holes up to 12 in. in dia.," says Steven Troyer, Millersburg, Ohio.   
  He uses a Smith acetylene-cutting torch with 3 in-line tubes that lead to the cutting head. The attachment consists of a pair of 4 1/2-in. long, 1-in. wide mild steel plates that go on both sides of the tubes. The plates are held together by 2 brazed-on bolts that straddle the tubes and a pair of wing nuts. A pointed 3/16-in. dia. metal rod is brazed to the edge of one plate and sticks out a bit farther than the cutting head.
   To set the diameter of the circle, Troyer loosens the thumbnuts and slides the attachment anywhere along the torch tubes. When he positions the torch on a center punch mark on a steel plate, the metal rod lifts the cutting head off whatever he's cutting providing room for the flame to operate. Then Troyer æwalks' the torch 360 degrees around that point to cut the circle.
  "The metal rod works like a pencil point and lifts the cutting head off the metal I'm cutting. It also locates the torch. As a result, I can cut a much more accurate hole û within 1/32 in. û than if I tried to follow a line visually," says Troyer.
  Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Steven Troyer, 3024 SR 39, Millersburg, Ohio 44654 (ph 330 893-3184; vbms@earthlink.net).


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2011 - Volume #35, Issue #1