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>i'm just getting into using argon and was curious about the possibility of
>getting the tank filled directly from a gas supplier rather than renting a
>tanks and transfilling myself. how hard is it to find a supplier who will
>fill a scuba bottle, and do you have to supply the fill whip, or do they
>have compatable ones? obviously, i realize every supplier is different, so
>i guess i'm just asking for your experience here.
There's actually a couple ways to go, depending primarily on your bank
account.
The cost of the whip (I got the connectors from a dive store) can be a
lot less than what I paid, but I didn't know any better at the time.
An old yoke off an old regulator, with a $10 keeper, will work fine. The
keeper is available from a good dive store. Then a manifold with a relief
valve at each end, a $15 dollar guage that goes up to about 4000 lbs.,
and you go to a hose place that will press the fittings onto a hose for
you to fit the manifold.
All told, probably around $50-60 for the whip.
I use an old 72, because we had it.
The other option is to buy/lease (the term changes with the shop) a tank
from a welding supply shop, this can run to $100 for a bigger tank. The
advantage is, of course, more argon, and fewer trips to the shop. The
disadvantage is that now you can't use a Blazer to drive to Canada.
You have to buy the fitting to replace one of the manifolds to fill a 72,
at the welding shop, it ran $17.
The 72 has filled 9 dives over a four day weekend for me, and I brought
some home.
It should be noted that these aren't full fills, by the end of the
weekend, I was just getting 8 or 900 lbs. into the dive bottle, but
that's enough in a 9 or 10 foot bottle. It's also enough for a pretty
deep dive.
Make sure you get a low pressure bottle for the dive bottle, the old B
size O2 bottle, if you can find one, is perfect. If I were to change
anything about that, I'd go for an even smaller bolttle, at an even lower
pressure, but I haven't been able to find one. The place to start the
hunt for the bottle is the welding shop, and your dive store should be
able to come up with valve for it. The best source for bottles is the
place that all the welding shops, medical shops, and dive stores send
their tanks to for hydros. Here in Seattle, that place is called Fire
King, down on 1st Ave. South.
They will have all manner of bottles lying around, on top of which, they
will hydro your tanks for you in 15 minutes, for less than the dive
stores.
---------
"Huh?"
--Jammer, 1992
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