As a firefighting insurance investigator with a PhD in fire and 69 years of experience I can honestly say that Bourbon Moth is a stand up guy with no reason to lie. Honest.
My barber's neighbor's brother whom works with a guy said that he heard a story of a guy who knew a zoo keeper's assistant that once had a rag. He wasn't sure if there was any oil on the rag, though. Right there is all the proof that you need.
I'm a HazMat tech on a fire department. We were called to a corrugated steel building owned by a solar company. Their carbon monoxide detectors were going off. We metered the storage area at over 100ppm. Strange thing was nobody was in the building (it was after hours) and there were no sources of combustion in the building. All heating was electric and it was summer. After some time investigating we found water leaking on top of 55 gallon drums of two part epoxy in storage. It had corroded the bung and was leaking into the drums. Apparently the mixture of water or something it contained and the epoxy had started the reaction and began evolving carbon monoxide. We removed the corroded drums (which were about 50C) and the levels dropped. Nowhere in the literature or MSDS did it mention this.
Carbon monoxide detectors can show cross interference with other gases, e.g. hydrogen. It depends on the sensor type. A typical occurrence are false alarms when charging lead batteries which always emits some hydrogen.
Seems this experiment is a bit biased. I know for a fact (due to personal experience) that if you weld over rags with gasoline on them, they spontaneously get extremely hot.
Bags of dog food also spontaneously combust when you forget what's 6ft from your welding, learned that one last night. Didn't notice until I felt some nice heat behind me.😅
He's gone off on a hot-boxing spirit quest. Word is, a gravely voiced Oilbertan devil whispered into his ear. "You'll grow hair around your pecker if you stuff your ragged dreams in a greasy box." Un-believing, he turned around only to find single footsteps in the bondo dust...
Most things will combust under the right conditions take flour for example under the right mix in the air and given a spark or flame it can go boom and take out a windmill its also why they were built away from town on a hill it was not just for wind.
@@arduinoversusevil2025 ...Perplexed, he wondered aloud, "Why and how only single footsteps in the bondo dust?" Whereupon that devil whispered into his ear, yet again, words borne upon heated, fetid, pungent greasy fumes - "Because I've been holding you in the wheelbarrow position for the past half hour of buggery, dullard, now brace yerself, here comes Señor Sanchez!"
i'm thinking that the most favorable conditions for it to heat up are precisely the ones you get by working the linseed oil in the wood surface and thereby in the fabric: the rag is only put in the trash when completely coated brown in oil, yet the actual amount of oil is low because the majority went on whatever surface you're finishing, so thermal mass is low. (think concrete: in concrete most of the water is only used to make the concrete liquid enough to pour, the actual amount needed to chemically react with the cement is much lower. In our case i imagine the amount of oil needed to react with the cotton is also small, hence the process of rubbing the rags is like vibrating concrete, it helps coat the fibers using as little oil as possible)
I was thinking the same thing. If every fiber is coated in a thin layer of oil then you get the maximum amount of oil surface area exposed to the air. You probably also want as much air trapped in the pile of rags as possible. Plenty of oxygen for the reaction, but low air circulation to retain the heat and insulate the pile. I'd think excess oil would be bad since it wouldn't all be exposed to the air, it would just be more mass to heat up.
I mean, it's also not inconceivable that a woodworker would toss their linseed oil soaked rags in a bucket next to their lathe, which is also getting splashed with saw dust.
Also most wood shops using BL oil based stains would not be rubbing stain with terry cloth rags. Every shop I ever worked in (25 years) used premium cotton white t-shirt rags for stain work. Bought in 50lb bundles. The one "fire" we had didn't burn the shop but happened in a 55 gallon plastic drum that was used a trash can in the finish department. There was a huge black soot mark on the ceiling above (concrete thank bejeesus) and the nastiest melted puddle of ash and plastic polymer on the floor. The entire shop was soot covered. But the rags used were folded a few times into "applicator" sized pads and were thoroughly saturated but were fairly "dry" You leave one of these on the table and it would be 100+ degrees in an hour or so. We used Delta brand "in oil" (ie: Raw/Burnt Umber in oil) pigments to make our own stains, mixing with BLO and mineral spirits. Which is a typical formulation for alot of shops.
@@rich1051414 In my college school wood shop, you could easily get a mix of perfectly seasoned cotton rags, linseed oil, tung oil, walnut oil, turpentine, sawdust, paper, cardboard, hardwood & softwood scraps filling a 55 gallon drum. Several drums near Finals. That's the only place I've actually seen this happen spontaneously, and that was maybe two or three times in four years, with 50 or 60 students using that shop frequently all semester. That may just be an indicator that the shop monitors were doing a good job and preventing these occurrences. I was a machine shop monitor, and we were religious about using the fire cans for anything flammable, so I'm assuming the wood shop and model shop folks were similarly vigilant (after hours shop privileges were worth more than gold, and you wouldn't want to lose your job as a shop tech for a fire on your watch.)
It's not a catalytic process, it's a bunch of cotton wicks in an uncontained oil based candle, just needs a random source of heat to light it, and the cotton threads will all move the oil into the flame.
I spent a couple years restoring 125 year old craftsman homes in California. These places were incredible. All mortice and tenon and tongue and groove. Hardly if any nails used in the entire framework of some of these places. One of the homes we almost set on fire due to a pile of rags that were soaked with BLO. I was in the habit of laying the rags out in the sun in the yard to dry out before disposing of them. So it happened one afternoon when one of my crew decided to take the initiative and clean up the drying rags laid out in the sun to dry. He put them in a wheeled plastic trash can. The kind the city uses. He then placed the trash can in the sun near a big old rhododendron by the side of the house. Luckily for everybody, we were working right there when the trashcan went up in flames and we were able to extinguish the fire with a garden hose and the neighbours garden hose. When we got to the trashcan, it was a big old, ugly melted mess but the only thing in that trashcan were those oily rags. This is not a myth and it does happen. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.
there are plenty of examples, for example in the woodworking subreddit. This guy is so full of himself he thinks he's everything because he hasn't experienced it and has a PhD. As a supposed scientist he should know the argument for authority is a weakness.
You taught everyone (including yourself) a valuable lesson in this video: If bomb A doesn't go off and bomb B does go off, bomb A might still fack off and go boom.
I used to paint wooden boats for a living once, and we used a lot of linseed products. I commonly added BLO for extra glide to some paints (a bright orange one if you’re familiar with it) but that extended the drying time, so to compensate we usually added extra lead siccative to make it kick faster, preferably the same week. However, I noticed how finicky that siccative was, we are talking a small splash into maybe 10 liters of paint, and sometimes it took a couple days to cure, sometimes a couple hours. I also had the pleasure of using real, unadulterated BLO, and what amazed me was how long it takes for it to cure, it will stay tacky for the better part of a week even when applied sparingly. So my personal theory with these BLO incidents is that different manufacturers use different siccatives, and probably aren’t too careful with how much they add, as long as it doesn’t harden in the can. Combine it with a cotton rag for increased surface area, and there you go, spontaneous combustion, sometimes.
I'd venture that you're onto something. On Bourbon Moth's video, he also used Rubio. A much more controlled finish. As well as others. Rubio, was more consistent in heating. Im also wondering if cotton shop towels, polyester shop towels and microfiber cloth may play a role
@@ZackTheKack Rubio? That is VERY interesting... this is the product my woodworker friend recommended to me, but also warned that it could set rags on fire if I wasn't careful with the disposal. A small fire like that had happened at his school a decade or so before. And I can guarantee that this friend hasn't spend a minute on english TH-cam in his life. (this being said, he was right about the product being amazing as a finish on oak)
Definitely something to do with cotton being a catalyst. I knew you could get pretty badly burned if you dripped cyanoacrylate (superglue) onto cotton by accident, possibly even catch the cotton on fire and that has to do with the cotton catalysing the liquid glue into it's solid polymer form. It's almost certainly doing something similar with linsneed oil.
My mom almost burned down the barn after staining shakes. She left the rags in a plastic garbage can inside the barn. Woke up in the middle of the night and remembered she left her wedding ring out there and got it, and then brought the garbage can down to the cement apron on the way back to the house since it stank. All that was left of the garbage can in the morning was a puddle of melted plastic.
My neighbours shed set on fire a few years ago and he had been woodworking over the weekend, the shed set on fire about 24-36 hours after he had finished. He told the fire brigade, when they investigated the cause of the fire, that he had been using linseed oil (plus other stains) and had chucked the rags into an old tin bucket when he had finished with them, the bucket also contained shavings and some other rubbish from where he had swept up. The fire brigade concluded that the fire had started in the bucket, that was in the corner of the shed near the door, and was accidental so the insurance paid out several thousand pounds for 30 year old crap machinery, most of which didn't work anyway..... Mmmmmmm, sounds awfully suspicious in hindsight!!!!!!!
All fellas get to that stage eventually, after years of working your wood by hand or with shitty old tools they just snap and "rrrrrrrbrbrbrbrbbrbrbr daddy needs a new motorboat"
Man on missing out. I need new tools. Anyone need a nice bed side table, coffee table, or book shelf? Just know it will be one of those recycled wood projects as I'm not about to buy wood at inflation prices. I've got some nice logs of oak from a tree in the neighbors yard that took out my fence. I need a new fence too.
"...your mucus membranes cannot handle it.." I grew up in an Italian household in the 80s. Thanksgiving time with all the smokers, it looked like the dining room table was on fire.
Knew a tech that got called by insurance to inspect a tractor fire a farmer had. He reported it as a friction fire. Farmer got paid. The story to me was friction between farmer and banker. Left out that last part to the insurance company.
I was doing custom shelving for a liquor store. I always separated and laid the oil stain rags flat on the concrete floor. One morning there was a few rags that were left bundled together and they were smoldering. I immediately separate them and they were warm. Oil stain user be ware.
@@MattyEngland And extremely discouraged! Not remembering and going forward like a lamb to slaughter is surely the best (government encouraged!) way to live!
I've been watching Bourbon Moth's videos for a while now. As someone who enjoys his content it's disappointing that it seems there were some shenanigans at play. Every video I see where this is actually done seems to show heavy smoking for a significant period of time before combustion. He did not show or mention smoking like that in his video which I think is your whole point. Had he done this with all those barrels he would have been smoked out of the shop, not sitting there watching Seinfeld or whatever.
the fumes would have been a complaint well before the smoke no mention of any out gassing in the moth's video. As well if you are going to do 'science' you have to accept the peer review process. it's nasty and you need a thick skin for it.
My dad almost burnt his woodshop down after staining some woodwork with Superdeck. The only thing I told him was to NOT leave his used rags piled up. He left a couple on his bench and went to have lunch in the house. When he got back out to the shop, there was about 4' of smoke hanging from the ceiling.
@@Bbonno What is troubling is I think he oversaturated the rags and didn't add any thinner. And is still reacted enough to start a fire, that should be a good enough warning.
Clear as day to me now.. I understood what you meant first video but seeing it sitting there smoking like with no visible flame and he had massive flame with zero smoke, great experiment.
20 years ago I was working in a customer flat and we had finished installing their central heating system. The customer decided to seal the wooden floor boards with linseed they put all the used rags in a black plastic bag and stay at a friend's house over night because of the wet floors. During the night the bag caught fire and burned the apartment to the ground. I saw it the next day with firemen who where putting the last embers out. They said it was quiet common . This happened in Scotland so it not that hot here.
I had an auto-ignition happen with BLO and it scared the crap out of me b/c it was in the dirt next to a dry building and blackened the DRY wood wall with soot. Could have burned down my workshop or atarted a brush b/c of oily rags. Mine was an old t shirt and a pile of paper towels. I get the impression this is like lightning....its like saying "dont stand under a tree in the a storm or you will get struck with lightning" . its not like standing there under the tree wil make you get struck but its still a no good idea.
-What's BLO?- -... Asking for a friend. lol- *EDIT:* 🤦♂️ Boiled Linseed Oil.... Nevermind! _(since it doesn't sound like you're talking about cocaine haha)_
I caddied for years, standing under a tree quite a bit safer than in the open with a metal umbrella, suspecially with steel spiked shoes, as we did in the "oldendays"!
Hard to debunk when i have seen it firsthand. Had a pile start smoking after about 7 hours, which was sitting in the sun. pulled the pile apart to dissapate the heat. The center was black and smoking, while the rest was still white and stained with Linseed Oil. It was from applying the oil with rags on the porch.
I have had a oil soaked rag (lightly soaked) catch fire once. I have always been careful and always put them in a steel bucket outdoors on a non-flammable surface with some large stones to ensure the rags stayed in the bucket, so when it caught fire it was no big deal, but I was still surprised.
I have worked with oil rags and got ignition once but the bag was in the sun that time.. i always filled the bag with water before throwing it away as a safeguard. Cant catch fire if wet with water.
I don't know what started it but I found a neighbor's garbage can on fire one day as I was passing on my bike. I helped her put it out with the garden hose. She said all she'd done was dumped some trash and old chemicals, etc. from cleaning out her garage. She said she hadn't put some smoldering coals or a live battery in the can, so I can only guess it auto ignited from whatever cocktail she'd mixed up.
That's why we have a special hazmat disposal site in the main dump where I live. All chemicals need to stay in their original containers (and it's free to drop off) or if you've mixed something, they'll either take it for a large fee (presumably to test and treat it immediately) or they won't take it at all.
Nearly burned my house down painting a chassis in the garage. Borrowed some air handlers from work, put cheap filters on them, and made a makeshift and super dangerous air filtration system. Worked fine until I turned them off and went to throw away the filters. Tossed the first one in, closed the trash can, grabbed the second and re-enacted Backdraft when I opened the trash can. No seals were injured during that experiment
Also most wood shops using BL oil based stains would not be rubbing stain with terry cloth rags. Every shop I ever worked in (25 years) used premium cotton white t-shirt rags for stain work. Bought in 50lb bundles. The one "fire" we had didn't burn the shop but happened in a 55 gallon plastic drum that was used a trash can in the finish department. There was a huge black soot mark on the ceiling above (concrete thank bejeesus) and the nastiest melted puddle of ash and plastic polymer on the floor. The entire shop was soot covered. But the rags used were folded a few times into "applicator" sized pads and were thoroughly saturated but were fairly "dry" You leave one of these on the table and it would be 100+ degrees in an hour or so. We used Delta brand "in oil" (ie: Raw/Burnt Umber in oil) pigments to make our own stains, mixing with BLO and mineral spirits. Which is a typical formulation for alot of shops.
We had 2 bin fires at a large commercial woodshop I worked at years ago. The cause both times was rags used to do spray gun and work area cleanup after applying clear poly finish. The rags were tossed in the bins with shop sawdust, wood cut-offs, etc. After the second fire, management had several water-filled 50 gal. drums placed around the shop for the express purpose of disposing of any and all used rags. We never had another fire after that.
One of my take-aways from this is that 24 hours is a long time to run an experiment, but when it comes to leaving oily rags around, 24 hours is just tomorrow. Which brings me back to a memory of a rag bin at my father-in-law's shop that was fairly heavy duty and self-closing - likely self-sealing, too. Just cause it doesn't burst into flames immediately doesn't mean it's fully safe either, and an ounce of prevention is worth saving yourself the headache of the fumes, not to mention the entirely possible fire tomorrow (or the day after). I also put linseed oil + cotton rags on my personal watch list.
One of the variables is ambient temperature. When you turned on the thermometers it was around 15C - a bit chilly. The rate of chemical reactions roughly double for every 10 degress C. If your shop was a balmy 30C what would happen?
"If your shop was a balmy 30C what would happen?" - DD's Speed Shop left his diesel shop heater on until it reached 140'F (60'c) to test this. It only took a few hours to light up the linseed rags, not 24h.
@@MattsAwesomeStuff Yeah, it could also easily reach that temp outdoors in a plastic garbage can/bin in the sunlight on a hot day. I saw a study that showed temps in a car in Arizona summers could reach 160F in just 1 hour.
If you speed up the epoxy curing process using external heat you will generate more Carbon Monoxide. My CO meter goes mad whenever I use a heat gun to kick off the epoxy quicker.
My cheap solution has been to soak rags in water. I wonder if you need a lot of sawdust or if just the residual off a workpiece that was sanded is enough?
Agreed. Unless the rag is soaked with linseed oil it's not gonna spontaneously combust. I soak dirty rags in hydraulic or motor oil then when I weld and have some sparks fall on them nothing happens. The only way I could get one to catch fire was by putting it in the spark shoot of an angle grinder outside since I was curious. Had to bathe it in sparks to get it to light up. But it burned slowly and with a lot of smoke so it wouldn't be undetected in my shop.
My favorite memory from metal shop class - one of the guys was welding, and as I walked by I noticed the leg of his jeans just caught fire from the welding sparks. Me being an asshole, I just kept walking, waiting to hear something. I walked back and it was half way up to his ass and I tapped him on the shoulder. (and everybody hit him with welding blankets) He was still welding. The ragged edge of his jeans on the floor lit pretty easily.
every situation Ive seen with oil rag fires also involved wood floor refinishing and lots of wood dust from prior sanding. not sure if that makes a difference or not
It's got a lot to do with the stains and catalyzed finishes. I worked in the industry for a few years and saw at least 3 incidents of spontaneous combustion.
23:15 i was so close to burn, was a cm spot catching an ember at the lower Left'ish in the big black spot. Think for optimal performance you have to use/saturate the cloth and then ringe it almost dry before "tossing" it as that is how most people will throw the rag
Absolutely love the lengths taken to prove a point. Never get in a argument with a enginerd, after a couple of hours you're going to realize the bugger likes it.
Foam sponges made by Dural get mighty hot when left after applying BLO, to the point they go black and smell awful. No cotton used. Try using nothing but ordinary foam sponge and you will very likely get same results. I have experienced this dozens of times over the years. They tend to get this reaction more reliably after they have been used for a hour or so whilst applying BLO on terracotta tiles. Not sure if the terracotta adds something, or maybe just the working action triggers something.
two thoughts: 1) could the phenol smell be the epoxy, not the BLO? 2) what about thinning the BLO before adding it to the rags? like you say below, it needs time to dry out; a more moderate amount of thinner oil might give you that more quickly.
When my kitchen caught fire from BLO soaked paper towels, they were in a black plastic garbage bag laying on the linoleum floor of the kitchen. It was an 80+ degree day, and the garbage bag was lying in the fairly intense afternoon setting-sunshine. The smoke must have been pretty intense because there was an oily soot baked onto every other surface in the house. I had to gut all the inside of the house and repaint every surface of every piece of wood framing in the entire house to seal off the smoke smell. IIRC, it took like 50 gallons of BINS sealer/shellac.
I almost burned my house down from one balled up rag that was saturated in linseed oil that was on top of a plastic ice chest in summer sun. The rag got hot melted the plastic lid and started burning. It was put out before it caught the storage tent it was next to thankfully.
All I know is Ive seen oily rags ignite "spontaneously"...however direct sunlight was involved and it was used/old oil...not fresh oil unused oil...I'm guessing it was cotton rags I don't know, whatever the uniform companies use for "shop rags"...it was a pile of dirty shop rags in direct sunlight on a fairly warm day and they did ignite
I tell you one thing that's even more dangerous that oily rags and that's steel wool, I was grinding one day and some sparks hit some steel wool and set it alight, luckily I caught it, before it caught too much else alight.
I really appreciate that you put the results in the video description so that watching the content is purely for entertainment rather than information transfer. So refreshing compared to the usual formula of "Find the two very important sentences in 20 minutes of rambling" that most TH-cam videos follow.
I never knew the oil rag danger. But my grandfather warned me about cut grass and leaves on the compost pile reaching run off temperature. He toght me how to monitor, first it's steam you can still stop it by moving and cooling the pile. When there is already the slightest bit of smoke, if you try to fix it and disturb it, then oxygen rich air makes it burn with a load of smoke. If you put water on it it will start smoking again, maybe days later. better spread the stuff around in smaller portions.
I once nearly caught my shop on fire with linseed oil on paper towels. I spilled a bunch and soaked it up thinking I could just pour water in the trashcan with the rags and that would prevent a fire. I'll never forget that smoldering linseed oil rag smell. Very distinct and alarming.
"The angle of the dangle is proportion to the lust of the thrust provided the urge stays constant" atleast that's how I got taught it not factoring in the giant north American Rosie's
I'd recommend you test your CO2 meter against a known good meter. If I recognize that model properly it is known to simply make up a CO2 number based on other temp/humidity/random data.
Tear gas (CS gas) is some kind of non-flamable solid that turns to a cloud of irritating fumes when heated. It's the "heater" portion of gas grenades that tends to catch trapped peoples' surroundings on fire. In the USArmy basic training NBC course, the enclosed room where they expose new soldiers to the gas contains an electric hotplate, an old skillet, and then they throw a puck into the pan, which makes the smoke... Or, occasionally, on the hot manifold of the chow truck that delivers hot food to soldiers doing a field training exercise, but without fail, every horizontal surface will be occupied by a soldier, eating their meal... Until their eyelids start getting crispy.
@@jeremyboecker9236 Well, the initial moments of being gassed are absolutely wonderful. For me, it either simulates or causes a massive adrenaline rush, so I can imagine many a DI looking forward to those opportunities. CS could literally be used as a performance enhancing drug (for some people). That's probably why they use pepper spray (AKA OC gas) for messing with crowds of law-abiding folks (for pain), and CS (Mace-on-HardMode) to Judge Dread trapped folks that may have fresh air access, and HC to de-life those that may have gas masks, but can be isolated from high-exchange fresh air.
In the hardwood flooring industry we always had to be very careful with the rags we used to dry off the stain and the dust from buffing between top coats especially with catalyzed top coatings. If you put the rags or sanding dust in a black trash bag and compressed them it would combust pretty reliably. I believe if you ran your tests again and just placed a weight on top of the rags you would have different results.
The point wasn't to prove you wouldn't get flame - the point was to show you get a shitload of smoke. There's another youtuber who basically faked one of these videos and used some kind of accelerant that didn't produce smoke. Possibly because they fucked up the experiment and didn't get visually interesting results.
I'm gonna guess that cotton fabric rags allow air to flow through them way better than paper shop towels do. If you force our self-heating fuel of oxygen to depend on oygen drawn over its surface by convection instead of flowing through the weave, it's gonna take longer for actual combustion to get going if it ever does. I think you inflicted the same handicap on the activated carbon and charcoal. Also, there are shop rags that have dull red dye in them, some with dull blue dye, others with no dye at all like you used (looked more like liberated motel towels to me but not judging). Does the presence or absence of dyes make a difference?
For this scenario, a plastic bucket (particularly with some thickness, and even better with a bin liner to get a small air gap) may be better at retaining heat. And to have it cook off quickly, increase the air-exposed surface area to mass ratio - a rag floating in oil isn't going to do anything, a rag saturated with oil won't do much, but if you take a bunch of saturated rags and wring them out (e.g. by rubbing them on something... ... that will soak most of it back up, like timber) you might get more of an effect. A stack of such rags seems the more likely danger.
The demos that show linseed oil soaked rags catching on fire usually have said rags stuffed in an open can or box where it traps in heat but where there's still oxygen reaching the rags. And it's more likely to happen when the they're somewhat crumpled up rather than laid out flat. But yeah - this happened with a neighbor of mine and fortunately the fire spread really slowly..
I can attest to this , I was finishing an oak hanging pot rack and shelving for a kitchen... I just dropped the rags into the open top metal bin as I was going along... forgot to lay them out that evening... It gets warm here in NC, When I went out to the shop at around 1 pm the next afternoon, I smelled an acrid wet hardwood smoke smell, smoke in the air, immediate tears and snot... It was a warm can, but just not enough to get her choochin... scared the bejezzus out of me though... you have so much knowledge in your nugget... I thank you Uncle Bumblefuck. BTW, I love the milled stainless pencil top mini swing press/thumb locater you have... drives small roll pins quite efficiently.
My father used boiled linseed oil to finish some furniture. He threw the used rags in a metal garbage can with a cover. After dinner, he took out the garbage and when he pulled the cover off the pail, the rags were hot and smouldering. When he pulled the rags out they burst into open flame. Spontaneous combustion does happen. It takes several hours and exposure to oxygen as it is the oxidation of the organic oil that generates the heat.
I had a accetone soaked bin of rags ignite in a strip mall that I provide sprinkler maintence for. Owner swears that all the curling irons were off(sure thing miss), but regardless the sprinkler head put the fire out.
25:50 The same blue flames as in the other video but these ones happen to be completely yellow blue flames. It's almost like burning material that contains lotsa carbon like oil or rags produce yellow flames , not blue ones
Im not sure with linseed oil but i have had filters and rags spontaneously combust. An old job i worked at we did a lot of painting of metal fences. Using oil based paints and paint thinner. In the summer time when it would get real hot 100F+ the rags and filters would smoke, char and eventually catch fire. If densly packed in a trash can or left in a dumpster or something mind you. The filters were the worst. They would roll them up and leave them on the concrete for weeks. If we didnt drench them in water every few hours they would also eventually light off as well.
Very nice experiment! I read some comment or perhaps you said it in the previous video that it had to do with the drying of the oil, so perhaps soaked rags takes longer than if they had been wringed hard so they had the oil more spread out within the fibers but not soaked to transport heat away and also preventing the drying process. Just a thought. Keep up the good content!
Well established fact that it is drying process that cuases cook off. The drying pricess is exothermic. So set it up to dry in a way that traps heat, common in sawdust filled trask cans and you get a cook off
Frottage lightweight, understandable though, given the practice restraints of the past few years. Try Lox and nitrogen tetroxide for the spontaneous combustion win, (safety squints and 1km distance advised)
You described a contractors bag. Sealed at the top. Leakin from the holes in the bottom. Rags, sawdust, sweepings, and random trash all mixed together inside.
I'm pretty sure something here acts as some sort of catalyst for the oil. Now, i'm no chemist, but if an otherwise stable substance starts being a mighty bit exothermic out of nowhere, there's a good chance it's up to some catalytic fuckery. Could be either the cloth itself, the thingemeshmoo it's treated with during production, some sort of dye that's acting as a catalyst, or all of the above to varying escalating degrees. (literally) The fact that it manages to consistently stay below the actual flash-point could indicate that a breakdown of the oil's structure causes whatever reaction is taking place to fail, effectively self-regulating its own temperature to keep it below _just_ flash point. Granted i have nothing to back this up except my own back end, but in my mind, any reaction outside of a low intensity catalyst would take place much sooner, and catch on fire more easily. Either that, or God just particularly hates woodworkers. _The miracles of nature never cease._
I'm old and have had a lot of first aid type and safety training and I never knew carbon monoxide was flammable. I just knew to avoid it the whole breathing thing
A highly entertaining demo - enjoyed it! I had a wad of oily rags in my garage get hot and start to smoke, scaring the britches off me many years ago. I keep one of the little red steel flip-top rag cans in my shop now, just because. I was thinking that a loop of nichrome wire and some DC current might have more closely duplicated the speed and fairness of the moth's experiment...
In 2016, I was oiling my IPE wood deck with a commercial deck oil product (containing linseed oil). I did half of the deck and had to quit for the evening so I piled all my teak furniture and other deck stuff over on the freshly oiled side with the idea I would restart it the next day and finish. The cotton rags I was using were left on the deck and next to some of the teak furniture. They were not in ANY container, just a small pile. At 4:30AM, I was awoken by the sound of shattering glass and noticed that our bedroom window (which overlooks the deck from above) was glowing orange under the opaque shade. Since the window faces due east, I initially thought it was sunrise, but the clock says 4:30AM and its not supposed to rise until 6AM. Running downstairs and out the back door, I saw a horrifying scene where 1/2 of my deck and back of house were on fire! The flames had already consumed all of the teak furniture, railings (in that area) and a hole was burned through the IPE decking right near where I left the rags hours before. I was able to put out most of the flames with my garden hose. Long story short, $230K in damage and confirmation from the FD investigator that it was a classic spontaneous combustion incident caused by leaving those oily rags outside on the deck. It was explained that a certain scenario had to take place (ambient temps, humidity, concentration of oil residue on rags, rag material, and other combustionable materials in proximity). My situation met all of those parameters. It takes those rags at least 5-8 hours of sitting in the environment to start the exothermic reaction. Once ignition temperature is achieved, things really get intense and can ignite a lot of other stuff located in proximity. This is 100% real, and as an engineer, I would have never believed it...until it happened to me.
Arduino, this is a hefty request: Can you explain/ demonstrate the thing known as "the coil" that arsonists use to start their fires while being VERY far away? I think you have touched on the subject here. Im tired of my state being on fire. I think you can unravell the coil. I need to know. Please.
I heard it suggested fabric softener could interfere. I've seen an rag used to wipe down stain a painter sat on the floor and walked away from burst into flames in a few minutes in a room where I and several guys were working. One of them kicked it out the door. I do not recall any weird smell and never saw smoke
Good Shit! We use a lot of inorganic materials in our stain hole, i.e, foam scraps. Could you add some nasty foam to the mix? We had an unexpected smoke out, but no flame in an all metal proper receptacle. Thanks!
I always worry about the horse manure in the wheelbarrow after i muck the stalls. Sometimes when I leave it out a night or two and empty it the metal is hot to the point where it is uncomfortable to keep a hand on. If it is cooler outside it will smoke and the straw is am ash gray. Never had a combustion but I have seen mulch piles catch.
Like your horse manure, it is not uncommon for hay that was stored too wet to spontaneously combust as the bacteria breaking down the glucose in the plant matter raise the temperature of the pile. It has burned down many a barn.
Really great video, I have had rags start smouldering that have been used with boiled linseed oil so interesting to see this breakdown of what happens to cause it.
I wonder if less is more here? Would a rag with a small amount of linseed oil have a higher surface area because its not saturating the fibres? If it's soaked with oil it would it create a flat-ish film and decrease surface area, reducing the amount of oxygen that reacts? Would a small amount of oil soaked into the fibres and have a larger surface area because the air gaps between fibres still exist?
idk about oily rags..but i DO know about rags with paint, they burned down part of our shop.... we have a paint booth n somebody left a pile of paint soaked rags out, which r all supposed to go into a special metal bucket with metal lid thats designed n made specifically for this exact thing.. anyway that pile caught n burned out part of the shop like i said
Spontaneous combustion is definitely a thing. Back in the 1970's I attended a Vo-tech school and had machine shop as my major. We had a towel service that supplied those pink *cotton* rags for the various shops, and also provided air-tight containers for storage of dirty and oily rags. Our shop teacher, in his infinite wisdom, decided it was a good idea to have a 5 gallon (open top) metal can, for us to go around and collect the rags at the end of the day, to eventually be put into the air-tight container. His job was also to make sure us numb-nuts also got said rags INTO the air-tight container before school let out for the day. One warm Friday afternoon, we all got turned loose for the day, and the rag 'collection' can got left near the back wall of the shop, pretty much obscured by a large milling machine. Monday morning, the school was closed and a team of fire safety investigators were crawling all over the place, because the can in question caught fire sometime Sunday. Being as the shop was mostly all concrete block with high open ceilings, the damage was minimal, but we spent the rest of the week cleaning walls and machine tools of the black residue from the fire. Shop teacher was 'retired', and the new guy was definitely more on top of the game.😳
Meanwhile my workshop has never been on fire in the last 20 years. All oily pink paper rags go in the same trash bin as always, never been any issues at all.
A point about filing copper to try and make an oxidation catalyst-- there is a huge difference between an elemental solid, and an ion. Consider solid sodium versus the sodium +1 ion in table salt. The additives used as oxidation catalysts are ionic metals. The empty valence allows them to chelate the double bonds and help activate them for oxidation. Sadly elemental metal, like copper fillings, will not work.
I've seen it first hand...kinda. I had to go pull footage at a place we installed the cameras. Employees left around 3pm. They had thrown some staining rags into a little trash trailer parked in their big warehouse. Around 5:30pm a little plume of smoke started coming up out of the trailer. Then it best into flames and burned the contents of the trailer. No other damage from the fire...HOWEVER, once the restoration company was called they demanded that the building be brought back down to steel and concrete, because of the smoke. Seemed like complete bullshit to me but that's what they did. Close to half a million dollars for some soot.
I dunno about your CO meter but I've noticed with mine I'll get a lot of false positives. For example, brake cleaner and refrigerant being sprayed nearby can cause a false spike up to 30+ ppm on the reader.
Never heard of thermal grease causing spontaneous combustion events, but maybe I'm doing something right using a piece of toilet paper to clean up thermal grease and then disposing of it in the toilet afterwards.
I have actually seen this happen where oily rags get hot. I'm a painter and we were using Tung oil to finish wood and Those things will just catch fire if you don't soak them in water. We used to just spray them with a hose outside on the gravel. Trust me they do catch fire. I picked one of the rags up once just to try to throw it in a bucket of water. It was smoking and when I picked it up it was already on fire and sort of disintegrated when I dropped it. It's real dude. Trust me. Thing is I do most of my work in California where it gets to be 110F and the ground on gravel there probably is much hotter.
@@bobert4522 Yes it was. And the fact is when that happened I was a bit taken back by it. I dropped that thing like a hot potato. Then the hose comes in play. That wasn't the first time it happened. It also happened when we were using outdoor stain. You can just hose the rags down and they wont react to the temperature.
The issue is entirely regarding boiled linseed oil, not just any oily rags. Yes, as a matter of fact boiled linseed oil soaked towels will in fact get hot enough to smolder and possibly ignite, if the towel is smooshed in a container (trash can) with some air exposure and some insulation so it can warm up. It takes a while, let’s off tons of acrid fumes, and will smolder, smoke, and char the towel. I have watched this happen.
Find a little iron sulphide and throw in there. Years ago, while working in a sour gas field in northern BC, one of the jobs was ‘pigging’ the lines to remove the water. We had several pig senders downstream of line heaters. This caused the iron sulphide inside the senders to be warm and relatively dry. I had many experiences where the sulphide would catch fire when we opened the sender to insert the pig. I just rammed in the pig, closed up the sender cutting off the oxygen, and carried on! Big fun in the patch!
Insert anecdotal story about that one time my so and so lit their moms hacienda on fire with an oily rag.
As a firefighting insurance investigator with a PhD in fire and 69 years of experience I can honestly say that Bourbon Moth is a stand up guy with no reason to lie. Honest.
@@arduinoversusevil2025 none, zero, zip.
I mean, his palms aren't even greased.
I don't smell brake clean? Do you smell brake clean?
I thought that smelt of ro ro hip something.
My barber's neighbor's brother whom works with a guy said that he heard a story of a guy who knew a zoo keeper's assistant that once had a rag. He wasn't sure if there was any oil on the rag, though. Right there is all the proof that you need.
What were you building with the kerdi board?
I find it suspicious that every time nothing happened, you just happened to be mic'd up
😂
He’s just trying to get views! He’s a liar! 😂
Wait look at the clock it doesn’t match up
Waaaaaahahahahaha
@@OShackHennessy right? How did he test for 16 hours when the video is only 26mins long. WHAT IS HE HIDING???
I'm a HazMat tech on a fire department. We were called to a corrugated steel building owned by a solar company. Their carbon monoxide detectors were going off. We metered the storage area at over 100ppm. Strange thing was nobody was in the building (it was after hours) and there were no sources of combustion in the building. All heating was electric and it was summer. After some time investigating we found water leaking on top of 55 gallon drums of two part epoxy in storage. It had corroded the bung and was leaking into the drums. Apparently the mixture of water or something it contained and the epoxy had started the reaction and began evolving carbon monoxide. We removed the corroded drums (which were about 50C) and the levels dropped. Nowhere in the literature or MSDS did it mention this.
Carbon monoxide detectors can show cross interference with other gases, e.g. hydrogen. It depends on the sensor type. A typical occurrence are false alarms when charging lead batteries which always emits some hydrogen.
Seems this experiment is a bit biased. I know for a fact (due to personal experience) that if you weld over rags with gasoline on them, they spontaneously get extremely hot.
Emphasis on spontaneously
Pretty sure I seen a video of a cop that pepper sprayed a person and tasered them and got the same result.
Bags of dog food also spontaneously combust when you forget what's 6ft from your welding, learned that one last night. Didn't notice until I felt some nice heat behind me.😅
@@Ajicles I think you mean the guy that poured gasoline over himself? Or the one that poured sanitizer over himself?
@@Ajicles I think that vid you're talking about is a guy pumping gas got tackled by cops then tazed. Lit everyone up
Is that dd speed shop?
He's gone off on a hot-boxing spirit quest. Word is, a gravely voiced Oilbertan devil whispered into his ear. "You'll grow hair around your pecker if you stuff your ragged dreams in a greasy box." Un-believing, he turned around only to find single footsteps in the bondo dust...
Most things will combust under the right conditions take flour for example under the right mix in the air and given a spark or flame it can go boom and take out a windmill its also why they were built away from town on a hill it was not just for wind.
@@arduinoversusevil2025 ...Perplexed, he wondered aloud, "Why and how only single footsteps in the bondo dust?"
Whereupon that devil whispered into his ear, yet again, words borne upon heated, fetid, pungent greasy fumes - "Because I've been holding you in the wheelbarrow position for the past half hour of buggery, dullard, now brace yerself, here comes Señor Sanchez!"
What kinda idiot would stay in an enclosed area with those toxic gases?
Holy shit it’s peg
i'm thinking that the most favorable conditions for it to heat up are precisely the ones you get by working the linseed oil in the wood surface and thereby in the fabric: the rag is only put in the trash when completely coated brown in oil, yet the actual amount of oil is low because the majority went on whatever surface you're finishing, so thermal mass is low. (think concrete: in concrete most of the water is only used to make the concrete liquid enough to pour, the actual amount needed to chemically react with the cement is much lower. In our case i imagine the amount of oil needed to react with the cotton is also small, hence the process of rubbing the rags is like vibrating concrete, it helps coat the fibers using as little oil as possible)
I was thinking the same thing. If every fiber is coated in a thin layer of oil then you get the maximum amount of oil surface area exposed to the air. You probably also want as much air trapped in the pile of rags as possible. Plenty of oxygen for the reaction, but low air circulation to retain the heat and insulate the pile.
I'd think excess oil would be bad since it wouldn't all be exposed to the air, it would just be more mass to heat up.
I mean, it's also not inconceivable that a woodworker would toss their linseed oil soaked rags in a bucket next to their lathe, which is also getting splashed with saw dust.
Also most wood shops using BL oil based stains would not be rubbing stain with terry cloth rags. Every shop I ever worked in (25 years) used premium cotton white t-shirt rags for stain work. Bought in 50lb bundles. The one "fire" we had didn't burn the shop but happened in a 55 gallon plastic drum that was used a trash can in the finish department. There was a huge black soot mark on the ceiling above (concrete thank bejeesus) and the nastiest melted puddle of ash and plastic polymer on the floor. The entire shop was soot covered. But the rags used were folded a few times into "applicator" sized pads and were thoroughly saturated but were fairly "dry" You leave one of these on the table and it would be 100+ degrees in an hour or so. We used Delta brand "in oil" (ie: Raw/Burnt Umber in oil) pigments to make our own stains, mixing with BLO and mineral spirits. Which is a typical formulation for alot of shops.
@@rich1051414 In my college school wood shop, you could easily get a mix of perfectly seasoned cotton rags, linseed oil, tung oil, walnut oil, turpentine, sawdust, paper, cardboard, hardwood & softwood scraps filling a 55 gallon drum. Several drums near Finals. That's the only place I've actually seen this happen spontaneously, and that was maybe two or three times in four years, with 50 or 60 students using that shop frequently all semester. That may just be an indicator that the shop monitors were doing a good job and preventing these occurrences. I was a machine shop monitor, and we were religious about using the fire cans for anything flammable, so I'm assuming the wood shop and model shop folks were similarly vigilant (after hours shop privileges were worth more than gold, and you wouldn't want to lose your job as a shop tech for a fire on your watch.)
It's not a catalytic process, it's a bunch of cotton wicks in an uncontained oil based candle, just needs a random source of heat to light it, and the cotton threads will all move the oil into the flame.
I spent a couple years restoring 125 year old craftsman homes in California. These places were incredible. All mortice and tenon and tongue and groove. Hardly if any nails used in the entire framework of some of these places.
One of the homes we almost set on fire due to a pile of rags that were soaked with BLO. I was in the habit of laying the rags out in the sun in the yard to dry out before disposing of them. So it happened one afternoon when one of my crew decided to take the initiative and clean up the drying rags laid out in the sun to dry. He put them in a wheeled plastic trash can. The kind the city uses. He then placed the trash can in the sun near a big old rhododendron by the side of the house. Luckily for everybody, we were working right there when the trashcan went up in flames and we were able to extinguish the fire with a garden hose and the neighbours garden hose. When we got to the trashcan, it was a big old, ugly melted mess but the only thing in that trashcan were those oily rags. This is not a myth and it does happen. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.
I have seen it as well. It has and does happen. It obviously doesn't happen every time. Something has to be just right.
You know what the ignition system was? Hint: it provides us all life on earth. That wasn't spontaneous combustion, that was the suns rays
But there, obviously, are idiots it didn't happen to, so they promote that it's a myth, and they'll push that, endangering others.
there are plenty of examples, for example in the woodworking subreddit. This guy is so full of himself he thinks he's everything because he hasn't experienced it and has a PhD. As a supposed scientist he should know the argument for authority is a weakness.
Yep. No myth.
You taught everyone (including yourself) a valuable lesson in this video: If bomb A doesn't go off and bomb B does go off, bomb A might still fack off and go boom.
I used to paint wooden boats for a living once, and we used a lot of linseed products. I commonly added BLO for extra glide to some paints (a bright orange one if you’re familiar with it) but that extended the drying time, so to compensate we usually added extra lead siccative to make it kick faster, preferably the same week. However, I noticed how finicky that siccative was, we are talking a small splash into maybe 10 liters of paint, and sometimes it took a couple days to cure, sometimes a couple hours. I also had the pleasure of using real, unadulterated BLO, and what amazed me was how long it takes for it to cure, it will stay tacky for the better part of a week even when applied sparingly. So my personal theory with these BLO incidents is that different manufacturers use different siccatives, and probably aren’t too careful with how much they add, as long as it doesn’t harden in the can. Combine it with a cotton rag for increased surface area, and there you go, spontaneous combustion, sometimes.
How long did it take to paint that one boat???
@@--_DJ_-- depends on how long the paint dries
I'd venture that you're onto something. On Bourbon Moth's video, he also used Rubio. A much more controlled finish. As well as others. Rubio, was more consistent in heating. Im also wondering if cotton shop towels, polyester shop towels and microfiber cloth may play a role
@@ZackTheKack Rubio? That is VERY interesting... this is the product my woodworker friend recommended to me, but also warned that it could set rags on fire if I wasn't careful with the disposal. A small fire like that had happened at his school a decade or so before.
And I can guarantee that this friend hasn't spend a minute on english TH-cam in his life.
(this being said, he was right about the product being amazing as a finish on oak)
@@GigAnonymous yeah. Rubio's amazing. Spendy, but amazing.
Definitely something to do with cotton being a catalyst. I knew you could get pretty badly burned if you dripped cyanoacrylate (superglue) onto cotton by accident, possibly even catch the cotton on fire and that has to do with the cotton catalysing the liquid glue into it's solid polymer form.
It's almost certainly doing something similar with linsneed oil.
I use CA glue all the time and I never knew that about it reacting with cotton! I'm curious to experiment with that myself.
Alot of finishing rags are cotten so that makes alot of sense
Funny I've noticed CA glue get belting hot when wiping excess with a rag I've even seen smoke but not fire, never put the two together
i put superglue on a q-tip for something once and the fumes burned the snot out my nose. never did that again
That explains the time I got some on the carpet and it started smoking!
My mom almost burned down the barn after staining shakes. She left the rags in a plastic garbage can inside the barn. Woke up in the middle of the night and remembered she left her wedding ring out there and got it, and then brought the garbage can down to the cement apron on the way back to the house since it stank. All that was left of the garbage can in the morning was a puddle of melted plastic.
Did he just develop a time delayed start to his shop stove, allowing him to start this the night before and come out to a warm shop in the morning? 🤔
this is genius
I was thinking the same. Shame it would be 24hr delay. 12 hr might be better
Arsonists speak:
My neighbours shed set on fire a few years ago and he had been woodworking over the weekend, the shed set on fire about 24-36 hours after he had finished. He told the fire brigade, when they investigated the cause of the fire, that he had been using linseed oil (plus other stains) and had chucked the rags into an old tin bucket when he had finished with them, the bucket also contained shavings and some other rubbish from where he had swept up. The fire brigade concluded that the fire had started in the bucket, that was in the corner of the shed near the door, and was accidental so the insurance paid out several thousand pounds for 30 year old crap machinery, most of which didn't work anyway.....
Mmmmmmm, sounds awfully suspicious in hindsight!!!!!!!
Investigator sermons over here
All fellas get to that stage eventually, after years of working your wood by hand or with shitty old tools they just snap and "rrrrrrrbrbrbrbrbbrbrbr daddy needs a new motorboat"
@@krissteel4074 hands down funniest thing I’ll fuckin read this year.
The old linseed oil chestnut.. Happened to me with automotive fish oil on rags. Lucky they were on the path on the driveway.
Man on missing out. I need new tools. Anyone need a nice bed side table, coffee table, or book shelf? Just know it will be one of those recycled wood projects as I'm not about to buy wood at inflation prices. I've got some nice logs of oak from a tree in the neighbors yard that took out my fence. I need a new fence too.
"...your mucus membranes cannot handle it.." I grew up in an Italian household in the 80s. Thanksgiving time with all the smokers, it looked like the dining room table was on fire.
Knew a tech that got called by insurance to inspect a tractor fire a farmer had. He reported it as a friction fire. Farmer got paid. The story to me was friction between farmer and banker. Left out that last part to the insurance company.
DD speed shop just did a great idiot infused scientific test thanks to a recommendation from Peg. Lots of smoke. Legends
Was it mint?
@@walkingcontradiction223 is Willard stunned?
Willard was born in a microwave 😂
@@BigBeavrSlayer Willard stays stunned, got a cat that acts like a Willard, eats snow too. Lunch is over, back to work.
DD Speed Shop, DD Speed Shop, DD Dpeed Shop!
I was doing custom shelving for a liquor store. I always separated and laid the oil stain rags flat on the concrete floor. One morning there was a few rags that were left bundled together and they were smoldering. I immediately separate them and they were warm. Oil stain user be ware.
I treat all of them the same, oils, stains, any kind of clear coating product even water based stains and products.
Tear gas causes fires in enclosed spaces? Reminds me of a certain event that happened in texas some 30 years ago.
Oy vey Sir! Remembering things is extremely anti-semitic.
@@MattyEngland And extremely discouraged! Not remembering and going forward like a lamb to slaughter is surely the best (government encouraged!) way to live!
Especially when it's CS...
I was under the impression that the very hot source emitting the gas would start the fire. Ditto smoke grenades.
@@TJ-bg4fw indeed! Never trust your instincts, only your local government run media outlet. They know what is best!
I've been watching Bourbon Moth's videos for a while now. As someone who enjoys his content it's disappointing that it seems there were some shenanigans at play. Every video I see where this is actually done seems to show heavy smoking for a significant period of time before combustion. He did not show or mention smoking like that in his video which I think is your whole point. Had he done this with all those barrels he would have been smoked out of the shop, not sitting there watching Seinfeld or whatever.
the fumes would have been a complaint well before the smoke no mention of any out gassing in the moth's video. As well if you are going to do 'science' you have to accept the peer review process. it's nasty and you need a thick skin for it.
My dad almost burnt his woodshop down after staining some woodwork with Superdeck. The only thing I told him was to NOT leave his used rags piled up. He left a couple on his bench and went to have lunch in the house. When he got back out to the shop, there was about 4' of smoke hanging from the ceiling.
Your dad takes 20 hour lunches? lol I’m just kidding
That sounds like some 'fast drying' linseed oil product. Apparently that's the stuff that's having the most potential in this field...
I've heard that decomposing hay can also do that.
@@Bbonno What is troubling is I think he oversaturated the rags and didn't add any thinner. And is still reacted enough to start a fire, that should be a good enough warning.
@@jameslynch8738 something something Salem witches or something
I have been personally testing oily discharge for years. Not a single fire yet.
see a doctor
@@randyrice806 Hell yeah, I wonder if it was from his nob.
Hopefully it doesn't take 24hrs at a time
I find great comfort in knowing I'm not the only one with an excess of paddle switches, outlets, and facias.
I do to but am not organized I have a 5 gallon bucket of "keepers for household electrical"
Didn't look that excessive to me... oh....
Clear as day to me now.. I understood what you meant first video but seeing it sitting there smoking like with no visible flame and he had massive flame with zero smoke, great experiment.
What if AVE is actually Bourbon Moth disguised as some arms?
Is bourbon moth the video that he's "disproving"? Hah, he's got a real boner for them, whoever it is! There's a lot of stuff on utube to disprove 😂
20 years ago I was working in a customer flat and we had finished installing their central heating system. The customer decided to seal the wooden floor boards with linseed they put all the used rags in a black plastic bag and stay at a friend's house over night because of the wet floors.
During the night the bag caught fire and burned the apartment to the ground.
I saw it the next day with firemen who where putting the last embers out. They said it was quiet common .
This happened in Scotland so it not that hot here.
I had an auto-ignition happen with BLO and it scared the crap out of me b/c it was in the dirt next to a dry building and blackened the DRY wood wall with soot. Could have burned down my workshop or atarted a brush b/c of oily rags. Mine was an old t shirt and a pile of paper towels. I get the impression this is like lightning....its like saying "dont stand under a tree in the a storm or you will get struck with lightning" . its not like standing there under the tree wil make you get struck but its still a no good idea.
-What's BLO?-
-... Asking for a friend. lol-
*EDIT:* 🤦♂️ Boiled Linseed Oil.... Nevermind!
_(since it doesn't sound like you're talking about cocaine haha)_
I caddied for years, standing under a tree quite a bit safer than in the open with a metal umbrella, suspecially with steel spiked shoes, as we did in the "oldendays"!
Hard to debunk when i have seen it firsthand. Had a pile start smoking after about 7 hours, which was sitting in the sun. pulled the pile apart to dissapate the heat. The center was black and smoking, while the rest was still white and stained with Linseed Oil. It was from applying the oil with rags on the porch.
I have had a oil soaked rag (lightly soaked) catch fire once. I have always been careful and always put them in a steel bucket outdoors on a non-flammable surface with some large stones to ensure the rags stayed in the bucket, so when it caught fire it was no big deal, but I was still surprised.
I have worked with oil rags and got ignition once but the bag was in the sun that time.. i always filled the bag with water before throwing it away as a safeguard. Cant catch fire if wet with water.
@@lokelaufeyson9931 tell that to sodium. Or lithium. ;)
@@IceBergGeo when they add sodium or lithium to wood oil im getting a new job :)
Reminds me when my dad was welding near a box of fireworks that spontaneously caught on fire in the garage. Thankfully it was winter.
Beirut, Lebanon had worse results from the same cause.
I don't know what started it but I found a neighbor's garbage can on fire one day as I was passing on my bike. I helped her put it out with the garden hose. She said all she'd done was dumped some trash and old chemicals, etc. from cleaning out her garage. She said she hadn't put some smoldering coals or a live battery in the can, so I can only guess it auto ignited from whatever cocktail she'd mixed up.
Emptied the ashtray 😏
That's why we have a special hazmat disposal site in the main dump where I live. All chemicals need to stay in their original containers (and it's free to drop off) or if you've mixed something, they'll either take it for a large fee (presumably to test and treat it immediately) or they won't take it at all.
Nearly burned my house down painting a chassis in the garage. Borrowed some air handlers from work, put cheap filters on them, and made a makeshift and super dangerous air filtration system. Worked fine until I turned them off and went to throw away the filters. Tossed the first one in, closed the trash can, grabbed the second and re-enacted Backdraft when I opened the trash can. No seals were injured during that experiment
@@hotshtsr20 Have you ever blown a seal?
@@hotshtsr20 so the injured seals were there BEFORE the explosion, ok.
😂
Also most wood shops using BL oil based stains would not be rubbing stain with terry cloth rags. Every shop I ever worked in (25 years) used premium cotton white t-shirt rags for stain work. Bought in 50lb bundles. The one "fire" we had didn't burn the shop but happened in a 55 gallon plastic drum that was used a trash can in the finish department. There was a huge black soot mark on the ceiling above (concrete thank bejeesus) and the nastiest melted puddle of ash and plastic polymer on the floor. The entire shop was soot covered. But the rags used were folded a few times into "applicator" sized pads and were thoroughly saturated but were fairly "dry" You leave one of these on the table and it would be 100+ degrees in an hour or so. We used Delta brand "in oil" (ie: Raw/Burnt Umber in oil) pigments to make our own stains, mixing with BLO and mineral spirits. Which is a typical formulation for alot of shops.
Quote of the decade : “Where your mortgage and your affiliate links rub together.”
🏆
We had 2 bin fires at a large commercial woodshop I worked at years ago. The cause both times was rags used to do spray gun and work area cleanup after applying clear poly finish. The rags were tossed in the bins with shop sawdust, wood cut-offs, etc. After the second fire, management had several water-filled 50 gal. drums placed around the shop for the express purpose of disposing of any and all used rags. We never had another fire after that.
I’m just sayin, poly seems to cause a lot of problems in the fumes and interaction with other oily junk.
missed opportunity to add moths to see if they are attracted to linseed oil flames
One of my take-aways from this is that 24 hours is a long time to run an experiment, but when it comes to leaving oily rags around, 24 hours is just tomorrow. Which brings me back to a memory of a rag bin at my father-in-law's shop that was fairly heavy duty and self-closing - likely self-sealing, too. Just cause it doesn't burst into flames immediately doesn't mean it's fully safe either, and an ounce of prevention is worth saving yourself the headache of the fumes, not to mention the entirely possible fire tomorrow (or the day after). I also put linseed oil + cotton rags on my personal watch list.
One of the variables is ambient temperature. When you turned on the thermometers it was around 15C - a bit chilly. The rate of chemical reactions roughly double for every 10 degress C. If your shop was a balmy 30C what would happen?
Also if you had it in a plastic garbage bin that was outside in the hot sun, on a hot day.
@@rdizzy1 Heat fromt he sun will make it burn, been there don it but its not a real life test (its not 20-30C at floor level in a workshop)
"If your shop was a balmy 30C what would happen?" - DD's Speed Shop left his diesel shop heater on until it reached 140'F (60'c) to test this. It only took a few hours to light up the linseed rags, not 24h.
@@MattsAwesomeStuff Yeah, it could also easily reach that temp outdoors in a plastic garbage can/bin in the sunlight on a hot day. I saw a study that showed temps in a car in Arizona summers could reach 160F in just 1 hour.
@@lokelaufeyson9931 Damn, here in Australia it can be 30C by 10 in the morning. Lying on the floor of the shed just gets the boss mad at you.
If you speed up the epoxy curing process using external heat you will generate more Carbon Monoxide. My CO meter goes mad whenever I use a heat gun to kick off the epoxy quicker.
My cheap solution has been to soak rags in water. I wonder if you need a lot of sawdust or if just the residual off a workpiece that was sanded is enough?
Thats what I was wondering. A rag getting its fibers stretched out then getting sawdust and oil on it seems like it might take off sooner
Damn, I just made the same comment about fine sawdust and working the rag fibers lol
Guess I should've read down here...
Must admit I always dunk my Linseed oil soaked rags haven’t combusted yet 😀
Agreed. Unless the rag is soaked with linseed oil it's not gonna spontaneously combust. I soak dirty rags in hydraulic or motor oil then when I weld and have some sparks fall on them nothing happens. The only way I could get one to catch fire was by putting it in the spark shoot of an angle grinder outside since I was curious. Had to bathe it in sparks to get it to light up. But it burned slowly and with a lot of smoke so it wouldn't be undetected in my shop.
My favorite memory from metal shop class - one of the guys was welding, and as I walked by I noticed the leg of his jeans just caught fire from the welding sparks. Me being an asshole, I just kept walking, waiting to hear something. I walked back and it was half way up to his ass and I tapped him on the shoulder. (and everybody hit him with welding blankets) He was still welding. The ragged edge of his jeans on the floor lit pretty easily.
@Ryan Roberts damn it you ruined his weld with those blanketa
every situation Ive seen with oil rag fires also involved wood floor refinishing and lots of wood dust from prior sanding. not sure if that makes a difference or not
Watch the vajayo
It's got a lot to do with the stains and catalyzed finishes. I worked in the industry for a few years and saw at least 3 incidents of spontaneous combustion.
23:15 i was so close to burn, was a cm spot catching an ember at the lower Left'ish in the big black spot.
Think for optimal performance you have to use/saturate the cloth and then ringe it almost dry before "tossing" it as that is how most people will throw the rag
Absolutely love the lengths taken to prove a point.
Never get in a argument with a enginerd, after a couple of hours you're going to realize the bugger likes it.
As the saying goes,
An enginerd would climb over a mountain of virgins to F* one mechanic 😂
It's not that thorough
indeed, it's more ridiculizing than educational
Foam sponges made by Dural get mighty hot when left after applying BLO, to the point they go black and smell awful. No cotton used. Try using nothing but ordinary foam sponge and you will very likely get same results. I have experienced this dozens of times over the years. They tend to get this reaction more reliably after they have been used for a hour or so whilst applying BLO on terracotta tiles. Not sure if the terracotta adds something, or maybe just the working action triggers something.
two thoughts: 1) could the phenol smell be the epoxy, not the BLO? 2) what about thinning the BLO before adding it to the rags? like you say below, it needs time to dry out; a more moderate amount of thinner oil might give you that more quickly.
i mean if you got the blow right there, the smell is probably coming from the hooker's hair products.
When my kitchen caught fire from BLO soaked paper towels, they were in a black plastic garbage bag laying on the linoleum floor of the kitchen. It was an 80+ degree day, and the garbage bag was lying in the fairly intense afternoon setting-sunshine. The smoke must have been pretty intense because there was an oily soot baked onto every other surface in the house. I had to gut all the inside of the house and repaint every surface of every piece of wood framing in the entire house to seal off the smoke smell. IIRC, it took like 50 gallons of BINS sealer/shellac.
Watching you for a long time and I'm glad to see that you're calling out the bullshit when you see it.
I almost burned my house down from one balled up rag that was saturated in linseed oil that was on top of a plastic ice chest in summer sun. The rag got hot melted the plastic lid and started burning. It was put out before it caught the storage tent it was next to thankfully.
Honey, baby, sugar, AVE said I needed to take all these shots.
All I know is Ive seen oily rags ignite "spontaneously"...however direct sunlight was involved and it was used/old oil...not fresh oil unused oil...I'm guessing it was cotton rags I don't know, whatever the uniform companies use for "shop rags"...it was a pile of dirty shop rags in direct sunlight on a fairly warm day and they did ignite
I tell you one thing that's even more dangerous that oily rags and that's steel wool, I was grinding one day and some sparks hit some steel wool and set it alight, luckily I caught it, before it caught too much else alight.
I actually use steel wool and a ferro rod to light my forge.
I really appreciate that you put the results in the video description so that watching the content is purely for entertainment rather than information transfer. So refreshing compared to the usual formula of "Find the two very important sentences in 20 minutes of rambling" that most TH-cam videos follow.
This is my favorite TH-cam creator drama ever.
I work in the mining industry, and this usually happens in oxygen rich underground environments or near leaky oxygen tanks.
I never knew the oil rag danger.
But my grandfather warned me about cut grass and leaves on the compost pile reaching run off temperature.
He toght me how to monitor, first it's steam you can still stop it by moving and cooling the pile.
When there is already the slightest bit of smoke, if you try to fix it and disturb it, then oxygen rich air makes it burn with a load of smoke.
If you put water on it it will start smoking again, maybe days later. better spread the stuff around in smaller portions.
I once nearly caught my shop on fire with linseed oil on paper towels. I spilled a bunch and soaked it up thinking I could just pour water in the trashcan with the rags and that would prevent a fire. I'll never forget that smoldering linseed oil rag smell. Very distinct and alarming.
Cotton rags can absorb more than paper. That means they must have more surface area for stuff to stick to.
"The angle of the dangle is proportion to the lust of the thrust provided the urge stays constant" atleast that's how I got taught it not factoring in the giant north American Rosie's
I'd recommend you test your CO2 meter against a known good meter. If I recognize that model properly it is known to simply make up a CO2 number based on other temp/humidity/random data.
Exactly, it does not have a CO2 sensor inside
Tear gas (CS gas) is some kind of non-flamable solid that turns to a cloud of irritating fumes when heated. It's the "heater" portion of gas grenades that tends to catch trapped peoples' surroundings on fire. In the USArmy basic training NBC course, the enclosed room where they expose new soldiers to the gas contains an electric hotplate, an old skillet, and then they throw a puck into the pan, which makes the smoke... Or, occasionally, on the hot manifold of the chow truck that delivers hot food to soldiers doing a field training exercise, but without fail, every horizontal surface will be occupied by a soldier, eating their meal... Until their eyelids start getting crispy.
Yet drill Sargent walks in unmasked and smokes you lol. Good times!
@@jeremyboecker9236 Well, the initial moments of being gassed are absolutely wonderful. For me, it either simulates or causes a massive adrenaline rush, so I can imagine many a DI looking forward to those opportunities. CS could literally be used as a performance enhancing drug (for some people). That's probably why they use pepper spray (AKA OC gas) for messing with crowds of law-abiding folks (for pain), and CS (Mace-on-HardMode) to Judge Dread trapped folks that may have fresh air access, and HC to de-life those that may have gas masks, but can be isolated from high-exchange fresh air.
In the hardwood flooring industry we always had to be very careful with the rags we used to dry off the stain and the dust from buffing between top coats especially with catalyzed top coatings. If you put the rags or sanding dust in a black trash bag and compressed them it would combust pretty reliably. I believe if you ran your tests again and just placed a weight on top of the rags you would have different results.
The point wasn't to prove you wouldn't get flame - the point was to show you get a shitload of smoke. There's another youtuber who basically faked one of these videos and used some kind of accelerant that didn't produce smoke. Possibly because they fucked up the experiment and didn't get visually interesting results.
100% correct! My Son did hardwood floor refinishing and had a black plastic back of stain soaked rags spontaneously combust in the back of his truck.
@monkeywentbananas we had a vaccum combust in the back of a truck at lunch one day. Luckily, we saw the smoke and only lost a 500$ vaccum.
@@JuryDutySummons ahh, I didn't get the pretext.
The black plastic bags absorb heat, they also can create static electricity with linens inside of them, as can bedliners in trucks
I trust the guy who uses steel containers over plastic buckets when testing for spontaneity of combustion.
Man I tell you, this spontaneous combustion is hard work!
I'm gonna guess that cotton fabric rags allow air to flow through them way better than paper shop towels do. If you force our self-heating fuel of oxygen to depend on oygen drawn over its surface by convection instead of flowing through the weave, it's gonna take longer for actual combustion to get going if it ever does. I think you inflicted the same handicap on the activated carbon and charcoal.
Also, there are shop rags that have dull red dye in them, some with dull blue dye, others with no dye at all like you used (looked more like liberated motel towels to me but not judging). Does the presence or absence of dyes make a difference?
Cotton cloth = more surface area
Liberate and liquidate 😂
For this scenario, a plastic bucket (particularly with some thickness, and even better with a bin liner to get a small air gap) may be better at retaining heat. And to have it cook off quickly, increase the air-exposed surface area to mass ratio - a rag floating in oil isn't going to do anything, a rag saturated with oil won't do much, but if you take a bunch of saturated rags and wring them out (e.g. by rubbing them on something... ... that will soak most of it back up, like timber) you might get more of an effect. A stack of such rags seems the more likely danger.
The demos that show linseed oil soaked rags catching on fire usually have said rags stuffed in an open can or box where it traps in heat but where there's still oxygen reaching the rags. And it's more likely to happen when the they're somewhat crumpled up rather than laid out flat.
But yeah - this happened with a neighbor of mine and fortunately the fire spread really slowly..
I can attest to this , I was finishing an oak hanging pot rack and shelving for a kitchen... I just dropped the rags into the open top metal bin as I was going along... forgot to lay them out that evening... It gets warm here in NC, When I went out to the shop at around 1 pm the next afternoon, I smelled an acrid wet hardwood smoke smell, smoke in the air, immediate tears and snot... It was a warm can, but just not enough to get her choochin... scared the bejezzus out of me though... you have so much knowledge in your nugget... I thank you Uncle Bumblefuck. BTW, I love the milled stainless pencil top mini swing press/thumb locater you have... drives small roll pins quite efficiently.
My father used boiled linseed oil to finish some furniture. He threw the used rags in a metal garbage can with a cover. After dinner, he took out the garbage and when he pulled the cover off the pail, the rags were hot and smouldering. When he pulled the rags out they burst into open flame. Spontaneous combustion does happen. It takes several hours and exposure to oxygen as it is the oxidation of the organic oil that generates the heat.
I had a accetone soaked bin of rags ignite in a strip mall that I provide sprinkler maintence for. Owner swears that all the curling irons were off(sure thing miss), but regardless the sprinkler head put the fire out.
25:50 The same blue flames as in the other video but these ones happen to be completely yellow blue flames. It's almost like burning material that contains lotsa carbon like oil or rags produce yellow flames , not blue ones
Love the fact this man uses the scientific method to prove his point. And it stands on its own. Isn't that something?
While quoting the bible. A regular Gregor Mandel.
Its amazing lmfao.
If only the cdc did the same
Until he stops the experiment and the place nearly catches on fire 😅
Watch till the end, his shop almost lights up after it eventually kicks off lol
Im not sure with linseed oil but i have had filters and rags spontaneously combust.
An old job i worked at we did a lot of painting of metal fences. Using oil based paints and paint thinner.
In the summer time when it would get real hot 100F+ the rags and filters would smoke, char and eventually catch fire. If densly packed in a trash can or left in a dumpster or something mind you. The filters were the worst. They would roll them up and leave them on the concrete for weeks. If we didnt drench them in water every few hours they would also eventually light off as well.
Very nice experiment! I read some comment or perhaps you said it in the previous video that it had to do with the drying of the oil, so perhaps soaked rags takes longer than if they had been wringed hard so they had the oil more spread out within the fibers but not soaked to transport heat away and also preventing the drying process. Just a thought. Keep up the good content!
Well established fact that it is drying process that cuases cook off. The drying pricess is exothermic. So set it up to dry in a way that traps heat, common in sawdust filled trask cans and you get a cook off
I've seen accounts of four fires started by spontaneous combustion.
Yeah, it's a very real phenomenon.
Frottage lightweight, understandable though, given the practice restraints of the past few years.
Try Lox and nitrogen tetroxide for the spontaneous combustion win, (safety squints and 1km distance advised)
Hydrazine works better than LOX in that scenario, as LOX and N2O4 are both oxidizers.
@@jeffhurckes190 My bad, serves me right for being a smartass - it usually turns out badly, must remember fuel + oxidizer, fuel + oxidizer........
You described a contractors bag. Sealed at the top. Leakin from the holes in the bottom. Rags, sawdust, sweepings, and random trash all mixed together inside.
I'm pretty sure something here acts as some sort of catalyst for the oil.
Now, i'm no chemist, but if an otherwise stable substance starts being a mighty bit exothermic out of nowhere, there's a good chance it's up to some catalytic fuckery.
Could be either the cloth itself, the thingemeshmoo it's treated with during production, some sort of dye that's acting as a catalyst, or all of the above to varying escalating degrees. (literally)
The fact that it manages to consistently stay below the actual flash-point could indicate that a breakdown of the oil's structure causes whatever reaction is taking place to fail, effectively self-regulating its own temperature to keep it below _just_ flash point.
Granted i have nothing to back this up except my own back end, but in my mind, any reaction outside of a low intensity catalyst would take place much sooner, and catch on fire more easily.
Either that, or God just particularly hates woodworkers.
_The miracles of nature never cease._
I'm old and have had a lot of first aid type and safety training and I never knew carbon monoxide was flammable. I just knew to avoid it the whole breathing thing
A highly entertaining demo - enjoyed it! I had a wad of oily rags in my garage get hot and start to smoke, scaring the britches off me many years ago. I keep one of the little red steel flip-top rag cans in my shop now, just because. I was thinking that a loop of nichrome wire and some DC current might have more closely duplicated the speed and fairness of the moth's experiment...
In 2016, I was oiling my IPE wood deck with a commercial deck oil product (containing linseed oil). I did half of the deck and had to quit for the evening so I piled all my teak furniture and other deck stuff over on the freshly oiled side with the idea I would restart it the next day and finish. The cotton rags I was using were left on the deck and next to some of the teak furniture. They were not in ANY container, just a small pile.
At 4:30AM, I was awoken by the sound of shattering glass and noticed that our bedroom window (which overlooks the deck from above) was glowing orange under the opaque shade. Since the window faces due east, I initially thought it was sunrise, but the clock says 4:30AM and its not supposed to rise until 6AM.
Running downstairs and out the back door, I saw a horrifying scene where 1/2 of my deck and back of house were on fire! The flames had already consumed all of the teak furniture, railings (in that area) and a hole was burned through the IPE decking right near where I left the rags hours before. I was able to put out most of the flames with my garden hose. Long story short, $230K in damage and confirmation from the FD investigator that it was a classic spontaneous combustion incident caused by leaving those oily rags outside on the deck.
It was explained that a certain scenario had to take place (ambient temps, humidity, concentration of oil residue on rags, rag material, and other combustionable materials in proximity). My situation met all of those parameters. It takes those rags at least 5-8 hours of sitting in the environment to start the exothermic reaction. Once ignition temperature is achieved, things really get intense and can ignite a lot of other stuff located in proximity. This is 100% real, and as an engineer, I would have never believed it...until it happened to me.
Arduino, this is a hefty request:
Can you explain/ demonstrate the thing known as "the coil" that arsonists use to start their fires while being VERY far away?
I think you have touched on the subject here. Im tired of my state being on fire. I think you can unravell the coil. I need to know. Please.
Think they're talking about mosquito coils? They burn ~6 hours usually...
I heard it suggested fabric softener could interfere. I've seen an rag used to wipe down stain a painter sat on the floor and walked away from burst into flames in a few minutes in a room where I and several guys were working. One of them kicked it out the door. I do not recall any weird smell and never saw smoke
Heard this all my life of 55 years and it finally happened to me , a pile of Linseed oil rags went poof !! almost taking my shop with it.
Was there smoke and did it smell bad?
Good Shit! We use a lot of inorganic materials in our stain hole, i.e, foam scraps.
Could you add some nasty foam to the mix? We had an unexpected smoke out, but no flame in an all metal proper receptacle.
Thanks!
I always worry about the horse manure in the wheelbarrow after i muck the stalls. Sometimes when I leave it out a night or two and empty it the metal is hot to the point where it is uncomfortable to keep a hand on. If it is cooler outside it will smoke and the straw is am ash gray. Never had a combustion but I have seen mulch piles catch.
Like your horse manure, it is not uncommon for hay that was stored too wet to spontaneously combust as the bacteria breaking down the glucose in the plant matter raise the temperature of the pile. It has burned down many a barn.
compost piles can catch fire
Thanks for highlighting the dangers without selling me shit
That has to be the longest time I have ever seen a man take to make a fire.
Really great video, I have had rags start smouldering that have been used with boiled linseed oil so interesting to see this breakdown of what happens to cause it.
I wonder if less is more here? Would a rag with a small amount of linseed oil have a higher surface area because its not saturating the fibres?
If it's soaked with oil it would it create a flat-ish film and decrease surface area, reducing the amount of oxygen that reacts?
Would a small amount of oil soaked into the fibres and have a larger surface area because the air gaps between fibres still exist?
Right, is there an BLO soaked rag surface area to oxygen/air ratio at play here?
Agreed, not to mention by completely saturating the stuff you're increasing the thermal mass that has to heat up, making the problem worse
idk about oily rags..but i DO know about rags with paint, they burned down part of our shop.... we have a paint booth n somebody left a pile of paint soaked rags out, which r all supposed to go into a special metal bucket with metal lid thats designed n made specifically for this exact thing.. anyway that pile caught n burned out part of the shop like i said
Spontaneous combustion is definitely a thing. Back in the 1970's I attended a Vo-tech school and had machine shop as my major. We had a towel service that supplied those pink *cotton* rags for the various shops, and also provided air-tight containers for storage of dirty and oily rags. Our shop teacher, in his infinite wisdom, decided it was a good idea to have a 5 gallon (open top) metal can, for us to go around and collect the rags at the end of the day, to eventually be put into the air-tight container. His job was also to make sure us numb-nuts also got said rags INTO the air-tight container before school let out for the day. One warm Friday afternoon, we all got turned loose for the day, and the rag 'collection' can got left near the back wall of the shop, pretty much obscured by a large milling machine. Monday morning, the school was closed and a team of fire safety investigators were crawling all over the place, because the can in question caught fire sometime Sunday. Being as the shop was mostly all concrete block with high open ceilings, the damage was minimal, but we spent the rest of the week cleaning walls and machine tools of the black residue from the fire. Shop teacher was 'retired', and the new guy was definitely more on top of the game.😳
Meanwhile my workshop has never been on fire in the last 20 years. All oily pink paper rags go in the same trash bin as always, never been any issues at all.
A point about filing copper to try and make an oxidation catalyst-- there is a huge difference between an elemental solid, and an ion. Consider solid sodium versus the sodium +1 ion in table salt.
The additives used as oxidation catalysts are ionic metals. The empty valence allows them to chelate the double bonds and help activate them for oxidation. Sadly elemental metal, like copper fillings, will not work.
I've seen it first hand...kinda. I had to go pull footage at a place we installed the cameras. Employees left around 3pm. They had thrown some staining rags into a little trash trailer parked in their big warehouse. Around 5:30pm a little plume of smoke started coming up out of the trailer. Then it best into flames and burned the contents of the trailer. No other damage from the fire...HOWEVER, once the restoration company was called they demanded that the building be brought back down to steel and concrete, because of the smoke. Seemed like complete bullshit to me but that's what they did. Close to half a million dollars for some soot.
I dunno about your CO meter but I've noticed with mine I'll get a lot of false positives. For example, brake cleaner and refrigerant being sprayed nearby can cause a false spike up to 30+ ppm on the reader.
The only oily rags some of these people have seen are the piles of ones made of tissue next to their PC that they spontaneously combust all over.
Gross, dude.
.. spontaneously cumbust when looking at Miss Spillings? It took some effort, but..
😏
Never heard of thermal grease causing spontaneous combustion events, but maybe I'm doing something right using a piece of toilet paper to clean up thermal grease and then disposing of it in the toilet afterwards.
So what your saying, if I'm understanding right... Jet fuel won't melt steel beams?
I have actually seen this happen where oily rags get hot. I'm a painter and we were using Tung oil to finish wood and Those things will just catch fire if you don't soak them in water. We used to just spray them with a hose outside on the gravel. Trust me they do catch fire. I picked one of the rags up once just to try to throw it in a bucket of water. It was smoking and when I picked it up it was already on fire and sort of disintegrated when I dropped it. It's real dude. Trust me. Thing is I do most of my work in California where it gets to be 110F and the ground on gravel there probably is much hotter.
Was it smoldering first, smells, etc?
@@bobert4522 Yes it was. And the fact is when that happened I was a bit taken back by it. I dropped that thing like a hot potato. Then the hose comes in play. That wasn't the first time it happened. It also happened when we were using outdoor stain. You can just hose the rags down and they wont react to the temperature.
25:39 that is a really important component I considered - saw dust from the sanding that likely happened before oiling
Maybe budlightmoth is a fan and just wanted some longer AVE vijayos.
The issue is entirely regarding boiled linseed oil, not just any oily rags. Yes, as a matter of fact boiled linseed oil soaked towels will in fact get hot enough to smolder and possibly ignite, if the towel is smooshed in a container (trash can) with some air exposure and some insulation so it can warm up. It takes a while, let’s off tons of acrid fumes, and will smolder, smoke, and char the towel. I have watched this happen.
get the rag that hangs out at the garage. The one that mops up small spills and is old enough to speak a language.😂 that one will burn well
Find a little iron sulphide and throw in there. Years ago, while working in a sour gas field in northern BC, one of the jobs was ‘pigging’ the lines to remove the water. We had several pig senders downstream of line heaters. This caused the iron sulphide inside the senders to be warm and relatively dry. I had many experiences where the sulphide would catch fire when we opened the sender to insert the pig. I just rammed in the pig, closed up the sender cutting off the oxygen, and carried on! Big fun in the patch!