Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!cbnews!military
From: nak@cbsck.att.com (Neil A Kirby)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Burning steel
Message-ID: <1990Jul6.032737.27677@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 6 Jul 90 03:27:37 GMT
Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 18
Approved: military@att.att.com



From: nak@cbsck.att.com (Neil A Kirby)
	Steel does burn if you give it enough oxygen.  An article in the
    Smithsonian on, of all things, safecracking (and vault breaking)
    included the latest in that technology: the burning bar.  The user
    wears heat resistant garb (welder's gear) and holds a hollow pipe.  In
    the pipe are rods of metal and a feed from an oxygen tank.  
	Once the metal rods are lit, it's only a matter of time, oxygen
    supply, and metal rods until the vault is history.  The burning bar
    produces too much heat in too confined an area for the metal vault to
    survive.  The vault metal itself may also be burned in the deal.
	The picture showed an actelyne (sp?) rig.  The torch is used to
    light off the bar, and then the acetylene is disconnected since it
    doesn't generate sufficient heat to do in a modern vault.

    Neil Kirby
    ...att!archie!nak