It never took much to get me Grandpa Joe's dander up. Still, some things, believe it or not, got his dander up to stratospheric levels remarkably fast even by comparison to his normal, uh, standard.
Joe rented welding equipment, as I think I've well established in these pages. And while you likely couldn't do it now even if you wanted, as most water lines are nonmetallic, at one time you could de-ice frozen pipes with a welding generator.
What makes a welder weld is that you complete a circuit when you 'strike arc', that is, apply the welding electrode to the items you wish to fuse together. Don't fret this too much if you can't picture it. Suffice it to say that when you weld, you're completing an electric circuit. When you do that, you create heat. Heating a metal pipe will then melt the ice which has formed within it.
You also effectively create a short circuit when using a welder to de-ice pipes, causing it to overheat. This will eventually, very eventually in Joe's book, destroy his welder.
Grandpa would fly off the handle even faster than usual when he'd hear of some numbskull using one of his machines to thaw pipe. If you believe he had a quick temper anyway, use his equipment wrongly. You'll find out that nothing really is impossible, even shortening Joe's profusely short fuse.
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