Never seen the socket one, but then again I've always just used pipe. The wrench one i use all the time!
Torching a nut off without damaging the bolt, and other torch tricks:
When you are using a cutting torch, you are simply oxidizing the steel. This requires the steel to be preheated, which will then allow the oxygen (industrial oxygen is almost completely pure, higher than medical grade actually) to perform this oxidation. Once a cut is initiated, you could actually turn off the acetylene and if you stay perfectly in the cut at the right speed it will still cut. What a cutting torch doesn't like to do is cut through multiple layers, because if done fast enough the preheat can't jump the gap between the different layers. We can use this to our advantage to use a cutting torch to "wash" or "scarf" the upper layer of steel from the bottom layer without damaging it.
The best place to learn to do this is cutting apart structures that have overlapping parts, aka lap joints. The method is to adjust your torch to a heavily oxidizing flame, and then hold that against the steel. The oxygen heavy flame will develop a quick preheat, and will actually start to boil away the surface. Sometimes just doing that (and not hitting the oxygen lever) is enough to achieve your goals, and works great for washing a weld from the surface, as in cleaning up a tee joint that you cut off (if you try to cut a tee joint off in one step it will curve into the base metal and gouge it to death). You basically are turning the touch into a grinder, and this will work to save time cleaning up a solid weld surface.
But when the steel is simply touching, as it would be in a nut or lap joint, the trick is to get the cut started as fast as possible to limit the heat input, very gently give it some oxygen, and move the touch several inches away from the surface letting the oxygen do the cut with no preheat. Doing this you can literally wash away the nut or top layer of steel away from the bottom, without harming the bottom. The whole point of this trick is to not let it get hot enough to start cutting. If you are working on a nut and it's taking awhile, it will eventually warm up enough to where there's enough preheat to start cutting the bottom surface, which means you failed. So this is easier the bigger the bolt is. By starting the cut, pulling the heat away, but still letting the oxygen do its job of oxidizing you can learn to wash steel from the lower layer. Practice it and it can save you a bunch of work when cutting stuff apart or getting that nut loose that simply won't go.
Back in the day this fact of a torch not cutting through multiple layers was used when teaching people to weld. By washing the weld away, any trapped slag or lack of fusion would stop the cut, which in the case of trapped slag is almost comical because it will blow crap everywhere since it's not steel. So it was really easy to see if you did good or not.
Another related and super handy trick is using a torch to clean a surface from paint, rust, grease, etc. You do a neutral flame, then press the oxygen lever. Now you can hold down the lever and then hold the torch against the steel, but you cannot start cutting because the preheat hasn't been established and the oxygen blast cools everything preventing it. So you can simply wave this back and forth over the surface and whatever isn't steel will be burnt away and flake off. Surface rust will even flake off, and you can even do this on concrete to get rid of paint that's flaking off.
One other cool trick is to use soot to keep steel splatter from sticking. You simply turn on the acetylene, which gives a very very smoky flame. By using this to paint stuff you don't want spatter to stick to, it forms a layer of soot, so when spatter from welding or cutting hits it, it won't stick. If you want cleaner welds with less spatter, cleaning only the actual weld zone is the trick, because if a surface is clean and hot spatter will stick. This is exactly how antispatter sprays work, by creating a dirty surface but one that burns away without weld contamination.
), Burn the hole slightly smaller. After you chip beat and grind the hole you just made, unless you’re me and just wipe the unnoticeable amount of slag off with your hanky
The drift pin is a cool idea tho, hadn't heard that one either. Keep em coming!!
