oxygen

MIG welders and plasma cutters might carry more cache, but serious metal cred comes from the mastery of a simple flame. The oxy-acetylene torch setup is one of the most affordable versatile tools in any shop. With it, a competent operator can heat, weld, braze, silver-solder, and cut. We've used it for all of the above, but it's most often used to heat steel for bending and to cut. Cutting with the torch is so incredibly simple and cost-effective compared to plasma cutting— especially for thicker materials—that it cannot be ignored. Fortunately, it's also not that hard to learn. Here's a quick primer to the tool every metal shop should have.

Watching trashy TV late at night hardly provokes most people to think about laundry. Billy Mays seems to think that screaming about detergent will change that. But just what is that enthusiastic-to-the-point-of-belligerent pitchman yelling about? That would be OxiClean. On the commercial, Mays shouts that it uses the power of oxygen to miraculously clean. But does it actually work? The answer is sometimes, and knowing how it works explains why