Phil Cooper

I came here looking for a solution to my own torch blow-out problem, and some of the comments got me thinking ... I have a couple of genuine 25-year-old BernzOmatic torches, the kind with bent brass blowpipes, thumbwheel valve, that screw directly onto a disposable or refillable propane cylinder. The smaller torch tends to stay lit a bit better than the large one, but neither one is satisfactory. In fact, whenever I solder copper water pipes, I use the flame spreaders, as that's the only way I've been able to keep the torches lit fairly consistently. One thing I noticed while experimenting with them is that they tend to stay lit better after a period of preheating, when the tip of the torch gets so hot that you can't touch it without burning your fingers. How to keep them lit long enough to accomplish this is the problem. If I use a piezo spark lighter or "gas match", it seems the flame blows away from the torch tip and then goes out, no matter what the gas flow is. However, if I use a flint spark lighter, the kind with a cup over the flint and steel, and put it up close to the torch tip, it's a different matter altogether. By placing the cup over the tip, it traps gas and creates a local enriching effect, and it also forces the flame into the torch tip. Once the flame is in the tip, it burns quieter and begins heating up the surrounding brass. It is also helpful at times to occlude one or more of the air holes in the torch with my fingers, to reduce air entrainment and cause the mixture to be richer during ignition. As some have commented previously, the best solution for all-position heating and soldering is a torch with a hose, but if you can adequately preheat the tip, get the flame to "seat" in the tip and trim the gas flow to an optimum setting, the standard BernzOmatic propane torch can be used in a fairly wide range of orientations.