Nortel Manufacturing Torches

A persistent piece of forum lore calls Nortel's bench burners premix. They are not: the Minor , Mega Minor , Mid Range , Mid Range Plus , Major , Red Max , and Rocket are all surface-mix mounted torches, which means fuel and oxygen stay separate inside the torch and meet at the face. That is a large part of why the entry models are such forgiving torches to learn on. Premix appears in the Nortel line only in selected hand torches, the Unitorch family and the Twin Fuel Handtorch , and in optional top-burner configurations where Nortel lists them.

Nortel's line runs from a light hand torch to a two-stage production burner, and the names do not tell you where a model sits. Here is the whole current lineup, hand torches first, with what each one is for.

Among the hand torches, the Twin Fuel Handtorch is the outlier: a light premix torch with an injector-type mixer and one fingertip control, taking National-style tips, aimed at quartz and high-temperature work and at boosting a lathe. The Ranger puts the features of the Minor bench burner into a hand torch, with precision needle valves and valve bodies that rotate to suit the operator. The Multimix Junior is a stainless surface-mix hand torch with the flame character of the Mid Range burner: a tight pattern, fine control valves, light in the hand. The Red Max Handtorch carries the same 45-port flame pattern as the Red Max bench head, with a flame up to 1.25in and a wooden grip, and it is the one to reach for on borosilicate. The Unitorch is the scientific premix hand torch, six stainless tips, listed by Nortel for lathe work, dewars, fritted discs, round bottoms, ring seals, graded seals, glass-to-metal seals, and flame cutting on 40 mm quartz or 75 mm borosilicate standard-wall tubing; the Unitorch-9 is the same idea with nine tips and roughly 20 inches of length, so the operator can stand back from the fire, and the Unitorch-12 carries twelve tips on a stainless manifold at about 2 lb. The two large Multimix hand torches are pattern torches: the Multimix 8x8 is 64 orifices on the same head as the Major, and the Multimix 11x11 is the bigger 121-orifice sibling.

On the bench, the Minor is the starting point and the model the rest of the line is described against: a single-stage, 7-port surface-mix burner with a flame from 1/8in to 3/4in, built for beads, small sculpture, and marbles up to about 3in. The Mega Minor is its hotter twin, the same 7-port face with slightly larger ports, a flame up to 7/8in, and enough reach to work borosilicate while still behaving on soft glass. The Mid Range is a single burner with a flame up to an inch across for larger soft glass and sculpture, and Nortel says three concentrators are required for optimum performance. Fit a Minor or Mega Minor on top of it and it becomes the Mid Range Plus, a two-burner setup Nortel says can run both burners at once. The Major steps up to a 64-port bottom head with a bushy flame up to 1.5in and a Minor top fire on independent valves, which is where the line starts to suit serious borosilicate work. The Red Max pairs a lower head Nortel labels 45-port with a Minor, Mega Minor, or premix top, and is a favorite for large soft glass and inside-out work. At the top of the mounted range, the Rocket adds a separately controlled center-fire jet, a flame from small to roughly 2in wide, and geared tilt control, with an optional premix accessory burner and a foot pedal; it is an advanced torch for large boro and production.

Fuel first. Every current Nortel model in our catalog lists both propane and natural gas, and the Twin Fuel Handtorch is the only one whose record adds hydrogen, through twin fuel valves that Nortel says allow varied combinations with oxygen. Do not assume the rest of the line takes hydrogen because one page implies it does.

Oxygen is a sizing estimate here, not a spec. Our catalog carries a figure for only two models, the Minor and the Mega Minor at about 9 LPM each, and that figure is our own placement at the largest usable flame rather than a Nortel number. Nortel does not publish an LPM figure for the rest of the line, so those rows read Not published rather than a guess. The one supply statement Nortel makes on a current product page in our records is on the Mid Range, where the company says three concentrators are required for optimum performance.

Pressures are published per model, and Nortel's numbers are low. Its Major page suggests propane at 2 to 6 psi, natural gas at 1/4 to 2 psi, and oxygen at 5 to 8 psi; the Rocket page suggests fuel at 2 to 6 psi and oxygen at 7 to 15 psi; the hand torches are listed at roughly .25 to 5 psi gas and 5 to 15 psi oxygen. Treat the manual that came with your torch as the authority over any figure repeated on the internet, this page included.

Premix appears only where Nortel puts it. The Red Max page lists a premix top as one of its three top-burner options, the Rocket page lists an optional premix accessory burner with a quiet multi-orifice tip that takes National-style tips, and the Mid Range Plus page lists only Minor and Mega Minor tops. Everything else on the bench is surface mix.

For safety, fit the flashback protection your torch and your gas supply call for, following Nortel's instructions for your model rather than a rule of thumb, and pair it with a regulator suited to your gas. Specs and options change, so confirm the current numbers with Nortel before you buy.

Nortel calls the Red Max lower head a 45-port burner, but the same page describes rings of 16 and 27 ports, which total 43. We list Nortel's stated headline figure and note the discrepancy. The Red Max page also carries a blanket line about Nortel torches running hydrogen that individual product pages contradict, so we record hydrogen only for the Twin Fuel Handtorch. And Nortel publishes no jet count for the Mid Range on its current product page, so we carry none rather than repeat an older figure.