desigh team & a few other things

[shawl@torchlake.com (Jonathan Shawl)]

Hi everybody,
WOW another ton of P-sub e-mail filled my box. Pretty soon I will have enough of it
to use it for ballast weight in the next sub I build.
If I tried to answer all the mail I wanted to there would be about 50 more e-mails
in for everybody to deal with.
Any way, I'll try to answer some stuff with just this one e-mail.

 Propane tanks--
Where ever you find them new or used don't say anything about subs unless the guy
is a diver then you might be able to get one for free like I did. I can get them
from a couple of scrap yards any day for about $100.
If they ask what it is for, you could say you are thinking about building a big air
compressor or maybe a snow plow or maybe even a big burn barrel, or maybe a sub. If
you do say sub, say it with a big smile and then chuckle, they might think you are
kidding. :-)
As far as cutting into one with a torch, I was very surprised to see this old guy
at the scrap yard just take out all the valves, let it set a few minutes wave the
torch past the open hole and it would burn off for a while, then he would just
start cutting away on the 100 pound and 500 gallon tanks. He has cut up hundreds of
them this way, I guess he is lucky they only go woof sometimes. Actually I am
surprised he is still alive even though I saw him do it from a distance. NOTE I am
NOT recommending that any of us try this! I just thought it was interesting that he
gets away with doing this and still lives. I think the secret to this is that there
is almost no air in a tank even after having the valve out of the tank for a few
minutes. At such a rich mixture it just don't burn inside the tank all that much.
The little oxygen that is getting into the tank from the cutting torch must not be
enough after cutting through the steel, to cause a explosion. It must just burn off
as a small flame inside the tank. Still, I won't cut into one with out filling it
to the top with water first.

ACAD ---
I have a copy from a friend I can use to for my own personal playing around, but I
don't want to use it for making drawings that will be used on the web publicly, as
I don't own it. I am interested in finding something cheaper too.
I had ACAD light and it would work well for what we are talking about here. Does
anybody know where one could get a cheep legal copy of it?

Design team----
....keep reading....

> Ray Keefer wrote: I certainly can. We should make sure the design is pretty solid
> as someone
> may pull them of the site and go build a sub. So preliminary plans should
> protected somehow or put elsewhere for now.
> Possibly I can put them on the site but not link them to the web page so
> the design team who knows they are there can pull them down but a casual
> outsider who just discovered the site won't see them.

Sounds like a good idea. I can do the same too,

> Considering bandwidth issues perhaps I should give the Team Leader the password
> to the site so he can do the upload to site and keep me out of it. Else it
> might take a week or more before I would get around to doing it.
> If this sounds good I will create a directory for the Design Team.
> Who is the Team Leader? Last I heard there were two candidates.

I'm still on board. I am thinking about that leader position. Share it with Mike if
he still wants to help. I have just been real busy the last week and couldn't
respond to all the mail as it came in. Now I will be gone for a bit more as I will
be trying to take advantage of my vacation time this week and go camping with the
family, so I won't be around much till next week some time.
I plan on calling Ray pretty soon and talk to him some more about some ideas and
see what we can come up with and work out on the web end of things.
Thats all for now.
TTYL
Jon Shawl