Ethylene

Originally Posted by wannabewelder

Thanks for all the helpful replies guys.
I find Wikipedia very useful as a rule and I can't recall any "whoopsies" in the past. It seems sad to me that anyone would want to deliberately corrupt what is an extremely useful tool - it's almost like coming on this forum and knowingly giving someone bad advice!
Thanks in particular to Omniata. I remember my father telling me about old motorbikes having acetylene lamps that required water and "carbide" and I seem to remember reading somewhere that "carbide" could be used for poaching salmon by creating underwater explosions - but perhaps we'd better not pursue that too much further!
Interesting too about the MAPP gas I didn't know of it's limitations - I just assumed that it wasn't a hot enough flame.

Wannabe

Calcium carbide used to be used in crow scarers where by water was dripped onto it , when the acetlene gas was produced at a set pressure it tripped a valve , released some gasand also caused the igniter to spark .... "Kaboom" out in the fields 24/7 in the old days .

Back in the mid 50's my old man came home with a lump about as big as his thumb .. he shoved it in a rat hole undeneath the big shed floor, chucked a can of water in it and then bunged the hole up. half an hour later he cleared the hole and threw some burning paraffin soaked sacking in the direction of the hole .. Big woof bang and bits of rats nest flew out of several holes , the sacking also came back & set fire to a heap of pig straw. Amazing stuff.