Blow torch, propane torch

[mm]

No. That's an acetylene torch, a third kind.

Blow torches run on gasoline, iiuc.

[Marc]

"Sleazy politician" is a redundancy, not an oxymoron :-)

[Ralph Mowery]

It has to be a hot water heater... Who wants to heat the cold water, or have cold hot water :-)

[George E. Cawthon]

The antique you showed is a blow torch. More modern ones are a bit different. An acetylene torch is just that, a propane torch is just that, and a flame thrower is just that. However that doesn't keep people from making up names or using slang or the terms incorrectly. The blow refers to requiring a pump to build pressure and blow the flammable material out. Modern gas torches don't have pumps, so they just spew. Should we call them spew torches? A flame thrower could be a blow something, it isn't a torch. Nothing that shoots burning material 10's of feet can possibly be called a torch unless one also thinks a bulb type baster is also a medicine dropper.

[George E. Cawthon]

I surprise myself sometimes. just too tolerant. I can't stand to read or hear a person say "affect" when they mean effect." But I have learned to put up with "bullet" for "cartridge." But I see little difference in function between the two pieces of equipment, but I don't really believe anyone uses a real blow torch. I don't think I understood your last sentence, since both have flames.

[nanook]

my peeve is ATM Machine, or any other acronym where folks feel like they have to say the last word of what they are talking about...why not say, ATM and leave it at that? why do we feel compelled to say "machine"?

an oxymoron is sometimes ironic and always contradicting...like honest politician, deafening silence, military intelligence, calling a tall man shorty, a fat man tiny, or a bald man curly.

sleazy politician is an editorial, an opinion, and unfortunately, a bunch of the time true.

[Mark Lloyd]

I hear "PIN Number" a lot.

[No]

So I guess that the blow torch of yester year has evolved into the blow torn of today aka the propane torch.

How many of us have several 'cressent wrenches"?

[buffalobill]

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Simple definition, but not very detailed. It does not mix just oxygen in true terms as the original blow torches used air. Oxy-Acetylene torches (as well as a few others) use compressed oxygen combining the gasses at the tip. .

Original design was a gasoline powered torch that blew air with the fuel. .

[mm]

I think these last three have another name that is more specific than oxymoron. One that pretty much only applies to examples like yours. but I forget what it is called.

[mm]

I always call it a password and the people at the bank rarely know what I'm talking about.

>

[mm]

Even that wouuldn't be so bad. But they were just called propane torches for decades, and only in the last decade have some started callihg them blow torches. If they got along without calling them blow torches for decades, they could have managed forever.

I do. I have several crescent wrenches. Not all by Crescent.

I have water pump pliers, too.

[Goedjn]

When gasoline torches are the default type of blowtorch, you call a propane torch something different to make the distinction. SInce gasoline torches are now vanishingly rare, it makes perfect sense to apply the generic term "blowtorch" to the most common form in use: The propane torch.

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Makes no sensr to me. If a propane torch becomes a blow torch, then it is no longer a propane torch. Now that MAPP gass is becoming more popular, that makies it even more confusing. George Forman aside, our parents usually give our siblings different names so we know who they and who they aren't.

[mm]

I see your argument but it reminds me of an occasion where the only someone dies and people run in and take his stuff. The propane torch had a name, a specific one**, and afaic the gasoline torch had a name that bleonged to it, and should have been retired or assigned to history,

**I don't see the point of using a generic name, if that is what it is***, when one could have continued to use the specific name, propane torch. ***It seems to me that by the liberal^^ definition of blowtorch, the only torch that isn't a blowtorch is the kind the villagers carried in the first Frankenstein movie. :)

^^And I'm not against liberals or liberalism, except on an occasional case-by-case basis. :)

[Goedjn]

Thats because you decided a-priori that "blowtorch" was a species name, and not a genus name, when in fact "Propane torch", "Gasoline torch", "Mapp Torch", and "Oxy-Acetylene torch" are all species designations within the genus "blowtorch".

>

[Edwin Pawlowski]

I didn't decide anything. The blowtorch was, and still is, a specific type of torch. It existed and co-existed along with many other types of torches. I was not the one that named it, but perhaps the inventor did. Genus name is "torch", but there are specific types, not to be confused with others.

You post from an edu account. Perhaps you have been in the hall of ivy for a long time rather than work in the trades. If you asked someone at a jobsite to bring you a blowtorch, you got a blowtorch, not a propane, MAPP, or other type. Go check with the old timers in the maintenance department.

[Mys Terry]

They are ALL blow torches and work on the exact same principle. Some you pressurize by operating a hand pump, and some used pressurized gas. Lazy speak has made a "propane blow torch" into a "propane 'torch". The pumping you do by hand on an old style blowtorch is for the purpose of pressurizing the fuel. That is not the air used to make the fuel burn hotter. The additional air for combustion is added by use of the venturi effect and non pressurized air. An oxy-acetelye blowtorch substitutes a source of pressurized oxygen for the non-prssurized ambient air to achieve higher temps.

The term "blow torch" describes a device with a flame which is accelerated by pressurized gas and can be directed. This is to distinguish it from a torch which is not pressurized and does not "blow" the flame.

[Don Klipstein]

My mother called a propane torch a blowtorch 30 years ago.

- Don Klipstein ( [e-mail])