Debunking oily rag BS.
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 เม.ย. 2023
- Auto-ignition is not spontaneous! • AVE Almost Burned My S...
More rigorous test of oily rags catching on fire:
-Toxic amounts of phenol at low temperature 230F - 110C
-Can take a long time, depends on ambient temp. 24-36 hrs at 60F - 15C.
-Carbon Monoxide may aid ignition
-Cotton faster than paper.
-Prodigious amounts of smoke prior to ignition
@DDSpeedShop - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
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???
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
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.
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
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 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.
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.
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:
"...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.
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 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.
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!
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!
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
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.
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 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....
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.
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.
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 😂
Quote of the decade : “Where your mortgage and your affiliate links rub together.”
🏆
Loving it that youre REALLY not letting this go! Go get 'em boy!
Appreciate you keeping the internet honest and somewhat educated. I have had rags on the floor spontaneously combust while running the 4-1/2” grinder. I didn’t see no sparks get close, but had to stomp it out. No fire watch on the home jobs. Thanks for the education and comedy.
I had some steel wool spontaneously combust when using an angle grinder. a single hot bit of metal is all it takes.
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 :)
Watching you for a long time and I'm glad to see that you're calling out the bullshit when you see it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This would be a lot easier if you just added lighter fluid.
Your average joe might throw all kinds of shop/garage/garden/paint waste into a trash can, not expecting that one of them is going to react with air and produce heat, let alone enough heat to start a fire. I think he absolutely SHOULD give the tests every reasonable advantage. And despite the lies and conflicts of interest... considering the consequences, I'm kinda on the side of the people getting the word out about this and hawking safety products anyway.
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
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...
This video went by so quick. So good
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
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.
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.
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
Thank you much, I had been waiting for you to do this one since a few days ago :)
I kinda felt this one was comin!
you know , cause I am a good room reader-er-ist
You're the best man , more ways than one
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.
😂
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"!
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 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.
Honey, baby, sugar, AVE said I needed to take all these shots.
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.
The fact you pick the picture you did on the catalogue sheet. Personal messager. Mint!
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.
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 😀
I Wish my shop was as organized and clean like yours 😁
I say choochin and skuucum as frig. More often than I can say
I love your content keep it coming man
One of my favorites on TH-cam always a laugh with you. I appreciate you
Love the channel. I am a jewelry maker and a few times, I have left out a pile of cotton rags with used polishing wax on them and seen them light up. But I do live in Arizona (114-118* f) and they were directly in the sun on an old metal refrigerator in the middle of summer.
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!
"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 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.
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
missed opportunity to add moths to see if they are attracted to linseed oil flames
This is my favorite TH-cam creator drama ever.
25:39 that is a really important component I considered - saw dust from the sanding that likely happened before oiling
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.
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
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!
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.
There's a flaw in your methodology for this test man. You didn't use plastic bins, bags, or lighter fluid to accurately replicate the test you're trying to debunk. If there was an affiliate link, I'd have to say this was financially motivated!
Seriously tho, great job putting that nonsense to rest. Another fantastic video!
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
Great video Thank you for your work!
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.
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 😂
I just did some speaker cabs in blo. The rags did get hot but...... they werent saturated. They were only damp or dryer, It only took a few hours to get hot. I think its the surface area of cotton rags that allows for more oxidation to occur.
I have seen this twice myself in new home construction over the years both times the culprit was interior wood stain soaked rags piled up after use it’s best to soak them in water when disposing of or at least separate until dry.
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.
Whelp, I'll be dammned.. He was lying all along! Who'd a thunk?
Last time I checked, he was still claiming he's telling the truth. Having watched the vijeos from both channels, it sure seems Uncle Bumblefuck has proved his point.
@@norahc.Only watched the one video of his. Knows tree mangling since a wee one. Watch uncle bumbles for the learning I taints got, and the funnies.
@@norahc. It's a little bit hard to follow, but I think Uncle Bumblefork will make another about this for people that still don't get it!
I don't see how he was lying. The rags can catch fire, that is all that matters. And if you are tossing this shit in a bin, and then you are gone for the weekend, your shop can burn down because of it, that is all that matters, to me at least. (when it comes to the truth) And the comments here are FILLED with real world examples of it happening, with many various solvents, in many various situations and receptacles. Most people don't even know this is a thing that happens, so they will throw a bunch of sawdust, offcuts, etc in a bag with oily rags, then seal it up and leave it out by the dumpster or in a dumpster, not just rags.
Used to work for a transfer station and not only did the rear end loader we sent to a furniture factory catch on fire so did one of the skips.
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.
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.
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 remember when someone put a resin saturated roller in the garbage can at work... smelled great. really enjoyed the smoke.
I swear I had this happen in my garage in 99 degree f summer heat with regular stain soaked rags in a plastic bag tied shut. It was varathane Kona stain and cotton terry shop rags.
I was always taught that the most dangerous situation was a bucket/can with oily rags stuffed in it. Something about the rags being compressed built up pressure and heat. Never seen it but wasn't brave enough to try. Thanks for the info ave!
I've had rags paint filters and strainers catch on fire in dumpster but that was when I worked at a production painting company. First shift didn't wet it down and they would Auto ignite from their own heat generated by chemicals in the dumpster. Several times my shift had to put first shifts fire out.
I have had this process happen much faster while sanding, staining and clear coating soft and hardwood floors. And have even experienced my wood dust from sanding previously varnished floors start to smolder. Rags with floor stain (minwax) in a plastic bag and outside in fresh air will start to heat up fairly quickly and I never leave a job for the day unless these rags are purposely burned by me. I have also seen this happen with paper towel and have even had a small fire in my shop vac.
The realest channel on TH-cam.
Most plastics are (Horizontal Burn) HB self extinguishing. even paper to a certain extent is HB self extinguishing
I work in the mining industry, and this usually happens in oxygen rich underground environments or near leaky oxygen tanks.
I’ve had linseed oil rags combust almost, mostly they got hot and made smoke. Dad fixed it and remember wood shop class
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?
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.
Be interested to see if working the oil thoroughly into the rags makes a difference.
Years ago, I had to sort of "paint" on wood, using quick drying wood stain. Did contain linseed oil. I used an old towel to make smudges, on purpose. After doing that for 30 minutes or so, the towel got hotter and hotter and hotter. I ran towards the other workshop and before I was able to put them in the sink there, the towel was smoking heavily. I had to drown the towel to make it stop. I've had a similar issue with a bunch of paper towels with linseed oil on them (from wiping away, so not drowned in them). I threw them in the bbq, on a saturday afternoon. It was well over 30c/86f. Later that afternoon, I saw it go up in flames. Tried to replicate that last summer, but wasn't able to. Maybe the drying agents changed?
Is it considered a "double blind study" if I kept both eyes (i.e. safety squints) closed during this video?
Cotton rags can absorb more than paper. That means they must have more surface area for stuff to stick to.
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.
Personal experience. Worked at restaurant where we washed our own rags at a local laundry mat. I washed some particularly oily rags one day, may have not washed out all the oil due to lazyness. I dried them, bagged them quickly( didnt let the dryer cool down time run) and they where pretty warm in the bags. 20ish per bag. I drove them back to work and piled all 10 bags into a section for storage. A while later we noticed smoke coming from the backroom. I walked to the pile of bagged rags that where smoking and witnessed them "spontaneously combust". Coolest shit i seen.
Just a thought, but one of those Bluetooth bbq thermometers could be used as an alarm to let you know it's starting to chooch while you're off contemplating your navel.
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........
I built a swim platform for my boat and know very little about any of this. I used a wood called Ipe and you treat it with Ipe oil. After I wiped on a few coats using old t-shirts I threw them in the shop bin and sure enough, it started smoldering away and burned the rag. It wasn't sealed off or anything and there wasn't even a bunch of rap on top of it, so it was a bit surprising to me.
You should try one of the cotton rags after using it to wipe down sawdust/wood shavings. That'd be a realistic form of tinder for the fire.
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...