Gas torch bottle trolley

The completed trolley with cylinders and hoses attached. A ratchet strap keeps the cylinder firmly fixed in place.

I have various sizes of blowtorch, from plumbing sized up to a big roofing torch. However none of them really have the oomph to get metal up to bending or forming temperature quickly.

So I thought I would get a bottle of oxygen so I can use it with propane for some more serious heating capability. That all worked nicely, but then there is the problem of how to store, deploy and use the bottles and torch easily.

This is a quick recap of what I found and cobbled together.

Need a trolley

The normal solution is a bottle trolley that can securely hold a pair of cylinders and allow them to be toted about. So being tight, I thought I would see what was laying about that could be re-used rather than buying a proper one, since they seemed to be fairly pricey for what is a fairly simple metal trolley. This also gave some scope for adding some extras like hose management and storage space for the torch and its bits.

I found a convertible garden trolley in the garage that was given to me years ago. In theory it could be used like a sack trolley, or it could be laid flat, and the handle re-attached to a bracket on the side, that also sported a couple of swivel casters, to become a 4 wheeled flat bed truck. Finally it could be deployed as a trolley to hold a sack open for you... where it would promptly fall over when you loaded anything into the sack.

The main problem was that it was not particularly good at any of these tasks, not really strong enough for heavy moving, and the wheels were a bit too small, and since they were made from solid rubber it was a rough and jiggly ride with any real load on. Nett result was it just took up space in the garage and never got used.

Conversion

So I set about it with a spanner and took the casters off. Then got the angle grinder out, and cut off the bracket that held them. I welded that back on at 90 degrees to make a small horizontal platform I could use as a mounting bracket. Next I knocked up a small open top box from spare 1/2" ply (rabet joints cut on the table saw, glued and brad nailed together, and bolted that to the new platform.

The box can now hold the torch and its associated paraphernalia (spanners, ignition striker, spare nozzles etc).

The accessories box holds the striker, hose spanner, and things like different nozzles. I put a couple of deep cutouts in the ends so that the torch could be laid across the box and held in place.

I ditched the quick release spring clips that were supposed to set the height of the handle and bolted it firmly in place - that actually made the trolley feel much stiffer.

The last thing was a bit of hose management, so I found a bit of square hollow section tube that had been hacked from a HiFi unit stand (long since made redundant) and welded that at a slightly jaunty angle near the top of the handle to function as a hose hook.

Hose hook mounted on the top of the handle. Makes it easy to keep the hose under control when stored. The handle can be extended up a bit if it ever needed to take a taller cylinder.

Making pretty

Last job was to tidy up any rust, welds, and dodgy paint with a flap disk in the grinder, spray the bare bits with some metal primer, and give them a paint. (I was going to paint it black to match the rest, but found my aerosol can was blocked, so went with a tin of dark red instead!)