He most likely just listened to his friend tell him it was after midnight and didn’t look for himself. The flames happen at the top because you can’t see the flames until they reach the top. Your experience of no fire was likely due to the VOCs evaporating before combustion temperatures were reached. Perhaps the contained you used acted as a heat sink and also prevented it from reaching the combustion point of your rag. This video also smacks a bit of flat earther type reasoning. A couple of half truths and ignoring the full picture. It’s kind of like a ‘forest for the trees’ type thing. In this case the reasoning seems to be that a tree is dead so therefore the entire forest must be dead.
I don’t think anyone, including you, tells the truth anymore. So I do my own research and come up with my own answers. Sometimes I’m wrong but usually I’m not. I still thoroughly enjoying watching all of the AvE videos. That wood-elf’s videos are meant for entertainment and not information if I want information and knowledge, I will look elsewhere.
I'm not only a former firefighter but I have a big woodshop/shop... its not a myth but it doesn't just POOF catch on fire like that. Its more of a smolder and burn thing then an eruption of flames. Its all about how SMALL the container is and how much heat the vessel can hold and build up.
What's that other word that translates to: "Mass destruction by fire / Burned religious sacrifice" Oh, yeah. "Lightning", the other business venture of god.
When I was a kid in the first year of high school (11 in the UK), our science teach spent half an hour explaining how thermometers work, he then had us all make one using a PE bottle with a straw and water. We had to then place our creations in hot water and record our results. Nearly everybody (including me I'm ashamed to say), wrote that the water raised up the straw when in reality it fell. He then explained that it was a ruse, because we hadn't considered that the PE bottle would expand more than the water. A brilliant lesson from a great teacher about the importance of recording facts and something I've never forgotten.
Sounds like a great teacher 👍. I've seen multiple scientists & engineers create the results they were testing for because the opposite result wouldn't help their cause. We humans are crazy animals sometimes haha
My high school chemistry teacher was a retired petroleum engineer and she was all about accurate reporting. The equipment we had for the lab segments was crap, often contaminated, like pipettes with mold inside. As a result, many of the experiments just didn't work like they should have. The teacher didn't care about the actual results, she just wanted to see how we documented the failures, including listing possible reasons why things went wrong. In college, my Chem I TA was the exact opposite. She docked us points for not getting the "right" results even if it was because of defective gear, and docked more points for "unnecessary commentary" in our lab reports documenting such problems.
I wrote a paper in college about hemp production in Kentucky. The hemp seeds would often be stored in a bin. And spontaneous combustion was not uncommon. So they constructed the bins in way to stop the build up of internal heat. My history professor was surprised when the paper I turned in was a serious explanation of hemp farming, rope production, and no jokes about the alternative use of the leaf. I had one footnote that explained that the strain of hemp they grew was bred for it's fiber qualities and had almost none of the intoxicant properties.
@@davidramey7186 as others have indicated, heaped organics and decomposition processes. Specifically, the growth of bacteria and mold which excrete flammable alcohols like ethanol and methanol, and amino acids that may polymerize like linseed oil under certain circumstances.
In college, roommate had a bag of floor stain soaked rags spontaneously combust. At midnight. Smoke detector went off because that b*tch was rollin coal in the front room. Roommate panics and tries to grab said burning bag and throw it outside, hilarities ensue because the bag disintegrates in his hands and now we have many small fires all around the front room.😂😂 And that was the night the local fire department explained to my roommate about spontaneous combustion 😊
@@rdizzy1 nah they smoke even more when they finally DO catch fire though, which indicates that there was no linseed oil in any of those cans that caught fire. Even if it was hot enough to burn perfectly with no smoke, the shop would still be FILLED TO THE BRIM with thick white acrid smoke. He would have had to let it air out for an hour to get the visible particles settle out of the air.
You know, my first job was working in the laundry department of a medical facility. Every night, the night shift would have to wash and then air dry the dietary grease rags. There was two fires that broke out. Both times, the night shift guy said that he washed and air dried the rags and that it was spontaneous combustion. Well one night I come in and check to see exactly what this dude was doing and sure enough, he had thrown the rags in the dryer and taped the switches down so it would run for hours on end. He did this because he would sleep in his car. Well I then saw him take the greasy, and now hundreds of degrees hot rags in a metal bin and leave it. Needless to say the guy was fired after that. Mind you this was a 50 year old grown man without common sense, and I was an 18 year old highschool drop out who knew better than this dude.
Restaurant owner checking in here. I've had two laundry fires, both caused by the dryer not going through the cool down cycle, due to a sketchy door latch. A pile of hot towels, with even a little residual oil, left in a hot pile, will ignite within an hour.
Spontaneous rag combustion is one of those things where you need the holes in the swiss cheese to align- the correct conditions with an exothermic reaction able to accelerate enough under it's own heat, the insulation to retain that heat, initial raised temperature to get that reaction going fast enough to self-heat and material capable of autoignition under those quite specific conditions. Those trash bags and likely the trash cans would've long shown symptoms indicative of being heated with portions becoming more plastic with increasing temperature leading to deforming, collapsing under their own weight, bonding to nearby material and forming holes under the kind of heat escaping that kind of runaway reaction. I've enough scars from droplets of burning polyethylene to know what it looks like when heated and ignited. The polyethylene trash bag especially has a lot of surface area relative to it's volume which would've lead to it being more prone to autoigniting before the fabric can.
Any rag touching the plastic bag or close to it likely doesn't have enough access to oxygen to heat up. These rags would act as an insulating layer. Meanwhile the plastic would be cooled by the outside air. I don't think it could melt prior to a fire except under very rare conditions.
I'm here with another "I had oily rags catch fire and it looked like a Tatra with busted seals going uphill" story. It was so much oily smoke the workshop still smells of linseed oil years later.
Its not the linseed oil self igniting , that has a flash point of 600°F/315°C , its the rag material with lower ignition point , papers and cotton round 400-450°F/200-230°C
@@pete_lind I'll light a candle to that little factoid! ...please correct me on how I don't drive my car to the store, but rather the ECM controls the combustion parameters, that drive the potential/kinetic energy conversion, something, something... I never had my car.
@@jxvz4895 no, he's saying the oil isn't what's self igniting. The combustion of the oil is being bootstrapped by material with a lower combustion point
@@pete_lind the oil would burn immediately with the rag and create a lot of smoke. Linseed oil and its characteristic stinky dirty smoke is described often in older texts.
Some paint strippers I've seen have had strong acids it them. Seems so have the notion of softening the wood to force the paint to let go....But they absolutely will react with some organics (including sawdust itself in the right circumstance) to produce heat ... quite easily enough at times to cause combustion. Look at some "elephant's tooth" reactions and you will see smoke quite often in such videos. Don't know that the acids in (some) paint strippers are quite as strong as near pure sufuric, but even quite weak acids can react to produce considerable heat in the right circumstance.
Worked for Jeep in Old Paint / paint repair as a painter. We had pre-treated wipes that included chemicals like 99% alcohol, Methyl ethyl ketone peroxide, AKA: MEKP or DBJ, AKA: Deformed Baby Juice and a couple others. To give an idea how bad MEK was/is, out of 8 painters and 4 utilities that either worked in the booth or covered them, I am literally the last one alive. That said one of the biggest issue was spontaneous combustion. Although we had special grounded containers to prevent this from static, they would also combust from just the heat. Include that with painters who were from the main paint line filling in for overtime and who never dealt with this issue. They would toss wipes in any trash container including trash containers right next to 55 gallon drums of the same chemicals. Good times. We got the high risk of cancer as well as the possibility of fireworks going off in our faces. I saw it happen more times then I care to remember.
@Lesardah MEK is just the precursor bud. As bad as MEK is, people saw it, realized that, and said, 'I bet it'd be cool if we added a bunch of extra oxygen to the mix'. Exposing yourself to MEKP(peroxide, one oxygen per hydrogen = unstable/super reactive) is like spraying shitty grafitti over your DNA with cancer paint.
About 35 years ago, I was building some wood bases for some architectural models. I coated these with Watco Danish Oil and threw the oily soaked tee shirts in my kitchen trashcan about 5 o'clock that evening. The dinner trash went on top of the rags and about 2 AM I woke up with the smoke detectors in my house going off. Spontaneous combustion does happen.
If he had 2 cameras recording the "'whole" time. The easiest thing to do is to upload the full video unedited. Also would have been nice if he had a clock going in both of the shots.
Also, "having the cameras running the whole time" on time lapse means that you could easily pause the time lapse even for a few minutes and restart it, and you would never be able to notice the difference. Agreed on uploading the whole thing: an actual good use of TH-cam's 10 hour limit. Just put in chapter markers and/or note the timestamps in the description.
@@erikdietrich2678 It would probably be very hard to tell, but if something all of a sudden moved, you would be able to see it. Also there is probably an algorithm out there that could detect movement in a video. Lastly the Slow Mo Guys 2 has a video that's 19 hours long, unless they just put that limit in place.
cap'n tight pants and the mysteriously handy undersized winter jacket.... show at 11 mystery miniseries of the hipster beard and skinny jeans conspiracy Sherlock AvE and the mystery of the smokeless smolder and convenient mic coincidence ...yknow...im getting tired of convenient conspiracy coincidences...let alone noticing them.. all the time
@@TheNapalmFTW true but in that video he did use old and already largely reacted linseed oil. i dont necessarily believe it can start a fire but i never understood why AvE didnt use a fresh can of oil.
@@zacharytuttle5618 I agree with you, but I'm referring to financially-driven practices that compromise the quality and/or performance of a design such as substituting sub-par or even dangerous designs/methods to save a buck.
Can confirm it will smoke like snoop doggie dogg. Happened when I was a kid in our basement garage and my mother had time to remove all of us, lock all pets in a room with water soaked rags under the door with no active flame. This was the late 90s and even the firefighter told us he had a pile of rags he would dispose of promptly.
There's different types of linseed oil too. I know of a rather large insurance claim at a public hall due to oily rags smoking. Notice I said smoke. Lots of smoke. No fire.
The two times i've witnessed oil rags spontaneously combust, they started by smouldering. You'll smell it before you see smoke, and you'll see smoke before you see flames. ... Unless your fire is starting in a dumpster in the hot sun, then you might see flames first. I didn't witness that one but the charred stairs at work are still there.
Yeah we smelled it an was looking for like 10 min where the smell was from an found it smoking just outside the door in the leantoo area, nasty smell smoldering like when using embers to start a fire in the woodstove no flame but hot as hell when we found it moved watered an then poured it out to keep from rebuilding heat to be safe so we could go back to work
@@BillJBrasky sounds like damage control to me: the one thing he can say that isn't instantly verifiably false. Where's the smoke? Even on low quality cameras, we should see quite a bit. Also, the way heat moves is pretty universal: the fires shouldn't be starting on top. Also, the containers being unaffected shows some remarkable polymer characteristics: those bags and bins must have cost hundreds of dollars each! As I asked another commenter, what's more likely: did a guy try to make a video showing a known danger not get the result showing the danger, so he faked it, or did physics just break down in his corner of the world for an afternoon? In my experience, the laws of nature are a lot more reliable than humans...
I’ve personally had solvent soaked rags spontaneously catch fire, while at work no less. It happened after I turned my back to grind welds to the customer’s specs. I was busy grinding and being mesmerized by the glowing sparks shooting up through the air, as one does, to see exactly how or when the rags mysteriously lit themselves on fire...
Some people just don't get it do they? I always forget how the saying goes, but isnt it, "You can lead a whore to water, but you can't make her......?" I can never remember that 2nd part though?
Dude I had the same thing happen! I put a 5 gallon bucket of oily rags under my plasma cutting table and was just going about me day. The SECOND I was concentrating on making a plasma cut the rags spontaneously combusted! It's always when you take your eye off them
At around 29:30 in his video, when two of the piles magically reignite, there is an awful lot of blue flames near the base of the fires. Looks and burns very similar to the way lighter fluid does when burning from a flat surface like concrete or other semi porous object.
The other 2 bags were poofed up, but if the fire wasn't visible it wouldn't be a good angle for the camera, so the bag that ignited was flattened for the shot.
I worked in a business forms print factory back in the dark ages and there was a shriveled old ex-alcoholic that worked as general broom boy. The paper offcuts from the machinery was whisked away by a series of vacuum hoses to a side room with a bolted down hay baler where it was compressed into bales. Part of his rota of jobs was to check on this room, stack the bales, etc. He was a chain smoker, there was a doggy-do roll-your-own permanently stuck to his bottom lip. One Saturday morning, a meeting of the almighty white shirts was interrupted by a knock on the door. Then another knock when no response from the deities was forthcoming. Finally one of bosses yelled out to come in. Ol' pecker entered, apologized for interrupting, and only then told the Supreme beings that the factory was afire. Keep an eye out for paper dust. That stuff can be seriously bad for your wealth.
BUT BEFORE WE GET INTO THAT, I'D LIKE TO TAKE A MINUTE TO TALK ABOUT SHOP SAFETY. BE SURE TO READ, UNDERSTAND, AND FOLLOW ALL SAFETY RULES AND REMEMBER, THERE'S NO MORE IMPORTANT RULE THAN TO WEAR THESE, SAFETY GLASSES.
Former firefighter…..these things can happen. 10 guys on smoke break might help us make s’mores early, don’t worry kids the rags make the marshmallows taste better.
I watched this last week. As a firefighter, I knew that something was fishy when he carried those out with his hands in the bag/can. He would have needed a scoop shovel to get that out. That bag and can would have been a molten pile of goo. And undoubtedly sent him to the sink, rinsing his 2nd and possibly 3rd degree burns.
The heat is likely concentrated inside the rag pile, only a small portion needs to get hot enough to smoulder. This may still be a setup, but the entire can does not need to get to 400*
A friend of mine who is a carpenter and I once saw a spontaneous combustion with our own eyes when we had some rags we had used to wipe up linseed oil with which we had put on the asphalt in the driveway. We were only sitting a couple of meters away when it started to smoke and after a while it started to burn. If I hadn't watched this happening I would been far more sceptic to your focus on the absence of smoke in his video because when I watched the rags catching fire it was smoking for quite a long time before we saw any flames.
I keep mine in a dry wooden box next to my 55 gal drum stove, never had a problem. We did have a corn silo combust from the pressure and heat of the summer that was cool and scary. One time in the Afghanistan we had the humvee we were in spontaneously combust from a road side bomb.
You Sir owe me a new monitor and a pint of Ale. Who knew Ale could be fired out of the nose with such violence that it can ricochet out of the glass onto a monitor three foot away.
If i went to the trouble and spent the money on all those brand new garbage cans, you bet I would too. Gotta make that youtube money. Cant do that with a no-show.
I worked at a Bio Diesel plant that used soy bean oil as the feed. We had the Bio Fuel eat the seals out of the distillation tower discharge line and the day crew spread clay oil dry on the spill. The day crew placed the Bio Fuel/ oil dry into 55 gallon drums and left them open topped. 7 hours later I walked by and the drums were about 240 deg F. ( they were under the main pipe rack with feed oil, glycerol and methanol pipes.) The day temp was 90 deg f and the temp on my night shift was 60 deg f.
Which is proof that bio-fuels basically eat anything made of older synthetics, like seals and gaskets. It reminds me when they switched everything to unleaded. Many mods had to be made to the ~5 year old engines just so they wouldn't eat themselves. I gotta tell you, having worked in factories that had titanium dust in the atmosphere, MEK, Trichlor 1-1-1 and LOTs of acids, your walkby must have scared the ever loving beJesus out of you. That's some scary stuff.
@@jadesluv IDK, an employer who leaves meth pipes laying around must be pretty chill, but they shouldnt be feeding anyone soy oil let alone eating seals, that isnt a balanced diet
I am a backyard biodiesel maker and have have not less than three soaked rags catch fire, only when left in the sun outside, inside the shed in the shade seems to be fine, I won't leave them in the shed just in case. I generally burn them myself to know they are gone for good
Many years ago I was working a security shift in a youth prison. There was a wood shop class in the school area that was part of my patrol zone. five-six hours after school ended(HOT DAY over 100 F) I noticed smoke coming from a window. I checked it out, decided it was safe to open the big metal door. I found a pile of rags under a wood chair that was sitting on top of a work bench, on fire. The chair was burning at that point too. You could not see across the shop from the super thick smoke, we turned the lights on and you couldn't tell! So yeah, that schmoo smokes a lot!
I saw that video when he put that out. I won’t accuse him of fabricating the results but I absolutely have had a linseed soaked rag start smoldering after I used it. And it wasn’t left very long either. Got my attention when I went to grab it and it was super hot and already had scorched holes eaten into it. Learned a lesson for sure.
Had not thought about the smoke when watching the video. When I ran into this issue it was with deck stain and a microfiber towel. I was not aware this could be an issue, I found it from a strange smell and when I opened the garbage can there was a ton of smoke, no fire but the bag was melting as I got it outside.
I woke up one night in the wee hours worrying about the rags at a maple gymnasium refinish I was doing and drove down there to find the rags too hot to touch, ready to go off. Could have burned the place down, had to be divine inspiration.
When I was younger I worked in fiberglass mold shop. We had this mold where we put the fiberglass mat in the mold and closed the press. We had a gun that mixed the resin and catalyst to inject into the mold. Now between moldings we had to flush the gun with a conectes line containing acetone. We would spray the gun into a 55 gal steel drum to do this. Also when the heated mold opened we would trim off the excess glass fiber wetted with resin that was partially kicked off. With a hook knife. That also got thrown into the 55 gal barrel. Now you could imagen with all that catalyzed resin acetone in that barrel it would be a real fire hazard. In fact after quite a while of doing this we did have that barrel catch fire. ( now I’m getting to the point of this long explanation). The fire looked nothing like what we’re seeing in this video. There were no visible flames. Just a lot of smoke. We barely had time to roll the drum outside. It was not possible to stand next to the drum like he is doing in this video. The fumes from the exit hermit fire/smoke were very intense. I repeat NO VISIBLE flames at the top of the drum!!! In fact I could not look into the drum because of the intense fumes/smoke coming out of it.
He sat there and stared at those rags for over 11 hours, mic fully charged the whole time, and got THREE fires (each on a different scenario). The last one he was watching Seinfeld and still got to the fire within a few seconds. Also, watching Seinfeld with a hot mic? Seems likely.
Now I’m going be agnostic on the verdict for the time being but he does mention it’s cold in his shop so it’s not surprising he’s wearing the jacket when sitting around waiting and taking it off for composed shots.
I have seen first hand a sander filled with linseed oil sawdust burn. It did not conflagrate but it produced enough heat to burn through the 3/4 hardwood 3/4 subfloor and was found sitting on the drywall of the first floor ceiling.
I’ve experienced this, granted I didn’t see the flame because I left work but it was over my high school shop teachers house one summer, he hired me to help at his house. We sanded and oiled the porch with some 11 herb and spice Australian teak oil or something. We used heaps of paper towel to wipe it off (likely the plastic variety technically) and threw them in a metal trash can with a black bag liner. Also the roller rested over the barrel full of spent towels and dripped in a few times, so the rags were plentiful and very saturated. Anyway that evening on his way to bed I think it was his young son asked what the flickering light was out the window, it was the barrel on fire under the porch overhang. We were a few minutes away from burning the hacienda down! My personal policy now is dry used rags in a single layer or seal them in a can with water and leave outside in the open. Also this guy in the vidya seems full of shit, stay skeptical!
This is a great topic and I would very much like to invite you to discuss this with Jason on my podcast. Please contact me to set up a time. Thank you!
@@arduinoversusevil2025 I'm simply offering an opportunity for both of you to discuss it. I have no bias. Bourbon Moth has agreed to this and is willing to discuss your contentions openly with me as a mediator. I am just waiting for you. My apologies for having to contact you in this manner, but you have no other contact info and no social media presence that I can find. Again, please contact me via any of my platforms. Thank you! 👍
I would really like to see this. I feel The bearded froth has some explaining to do. The reality is not many opinions or beliefs will change either way. (Do it though, doitdoitdoitdoit.
In the video of the fire you can see the metal can and, further back, the trash bag on fire. BourbonMoth clearly stated the rags had been placed into a garbage bag. Maybe to throw out? IDK Hence the reason he used plastic. After staining a table years ago and before I knew better, I threw oily rags and paper towels into a plastic shopping bag then tossed them into a trash can next to my garage. The bag was not tied. I came out to ash the next day. No lighter fluid needed. So, yes, it does happen. Did Bourbon Moth fake it? I doubt it.
All I know is solvent or oily rags can and do combust through the very well understood process of oxidation as the temperature rises due to oxidation trapped heat ( pile of rags ) can surpass ignition point. That is why aircraft hangars and some mechanic shops store them in a steel can with lid. The lid is most important as it’s slows the oxidation process, and starves the fire of oxygen.
"Oh my gosh! I can't believe I lied! Good thing I caught it all on tape for the insurance!" Ehh.. "I don't waste alot of time online, but when I do; I make shit up." - Jebus
Why does this remind me a a nightline expose on chevy trucks? No time lapse either - not like you need special equipment to make a time lapse of BOTH of your cameras you had over 6 hours of footage from.
In our machine shop, it was a combination of oily rags and kerosene rags, the two most common cutting fluids for steel and aluminum back in the 80s. We never had any incidents, since we used one of those foot activated lid, fire engine red safety cans. A few floors down in the wood shop, though, they had a few smouldry incidents with various polymerizing oil finishes and rags/paper towels. As far as i know, never any open flames in the four years I was there.
Kerosene and cutting oil doesn't self ignite. Only substances that self heat, usually ones that polymerize, are a risk of fire. Woodworking oils are the most common offenders. Stains and polyurethanes are aggressive in their thermal generation as they cure.
@@knurlgnar24 I suspect in the machine shop, it was just a matter of prudence. Ever light steel wool on fire? I've seen it catch in an over-full chip bin on a lathe. Depending on the material and the cut, some chips are incredibly hot. Not to mention welding and grinding. Wise not to have especially flammable odds and ends laying around.
Insurance companies, the people with the most financial skin in the game, and firefighters have exhaustively studied spontaneous combustion. Those interested can refer to their literature. The National Fire Protection Association have ample material. The process includes self-heating (measurable by thermocouple in tests if anyone wants to play), thermal runaway and finally auto-ignition. The process would have affected the plastic bags before reaching ignition temperature which is several hundred degrees.
I was 15 and my grandfather was doing some body work on an old van and it started to rain, so he threw all his stuff in a recycle bin and brought it inside to the basement. it was a very hot day so I was napping down there on the granite floor. I wake up to fire alarms going off and the whole basement filled with smoke. The bin caught fire and started to burn a wall, a quick squirt with a fire extinguisher put it out. If that fire went for even a minute longer I'm not sure I'd have been able to put it out.
40 years ago I got close to a fire, I spilled Lind seed and Japan dryer so I mopped it up with a pair of old Levi’s and after a half hour it started to smoke and became so hot it was hard to pick up. I threw the pants in the bath tub and flooded it with water. There was a lot of smoke since it almost filled my apartment. Don’t ask, it was a bad day.
According to my high school shop teacher, shortly after you get any chemical on a rag you'll be responsible for the deaths of nearly every single kid at the school.
Look up 2-ethylhexyl nitrate. It's what helps Diesel go boom in your engine. Not my words but says "It undergoes a self-accelerating decomposition reaction if heated " above 100C (212F)
The cynicism was hard to pick up. I will say that like most Americans nowadays we will give this guy a pass and name a school after him or maybe a new crypto coin.
Yeah bro SpontaneousCombustionCoin (SCC) is the next big thing... you put in $10k and BOOM.. overnight it bursts into flames and disappears. All in 4k too! Dont miss out!!
You’re absolutely right. It may be spontaneous combustion but there is lots of heat right before the actual combustion. just like how a wet hay bale will catch on fire 👍
Ooh fuck. Now we have to worry about wet hay bales?!! I'm calling the gun control advocacy group, these spontaneous fires have to be stopped. We need spontaneous combustion free zones and permits for those who absolutely must do it.
Yup, same as how a compost pile gets steaming hot inside even on a cooler day. Now imagine a compost pile made of flammable organic solvents on cotton rags in a trashcan inside a 90f work shop. The organic solvents break down, create heat similar to a compost pile. Only difference is the compost pile isn't highly flammable like the rag pile.
"I'll go all in with a pair of sevens", thanks mate. I saw that video and though it was exceptionally uhm.. Strange somehow, but you really put the finger on it and with your comedic twist this was an absolute treat to watch. Thank you.
I don't even need to pay attention to the lack of smoke, wardrobe, mic, and time fuckery. The plastic would have started to sag and melt before flames would even appear if this was all real and kosher.
I work in a cabinet shop. I’ve tried to replicate this spontaneous combustion experiment a few times over the years, always outside and never in the shop. I have yet to succeed in starting a fire spontaneously, which is disappointing. I know it can happen and I’m always very careful to dispose of oily rags properly because of that, but it doesn’t happen easily in my experience. I’ve left the contaminated rags in a box for days at times too.
I was a full time fire service fire investigator, as part of my research I attempted to recreate a spontaneous combustion of cotton rags with numerous non synthetic oils - we were unable to get a full combustion but did achieve some good heating and some discolouration. From our investigation into reports of spontaneous combustion many reports turn out to be incorrect or just repeating of claims made by others. I am fully aware of the science involved, however the conditions required for the "perfect storm" of a rag to burst in to flames is extremely hard to achieve - so to summarise - this gentleman is bullshitus maximus!
you still got any buddies in the fire investigation business? I'd be super interested in seeing them try to reproduce his experiment. If he got 3/18 to ignite, that's worth a retest.
@@root1657 I retired 4 years ago after 30 years service, most investigators wouldn't be interested in it I think as it is considered a minor ignition source. There are plenty of references to self heating and spontaneous combustion in the main FI reference books such as Kirks.
yes, there is various woodshop trash in that particular barrel. He set up various scenarios with various chemicals to try to account for various factors that might come into play. That's why there was the grid system, different chemicals, different trash.
The important question isn't what catches fire without smoke, but what catches fire without smoke and burns with easily visible flames. I remember helping my buddy out at the lab a few years back, he was complaining that something weird had started growing in one of the incubators and he wanted to burn the insert clean so it stopped contaminating his samples, he'd poured on way too much ethanol/IPA mix based surface cleaner and then tried to set fire to it using one of the torches for melting glass. I told him the problem and then went to show him by just spreading a thin layer of the disinfectant on a regular metal-topped cart, and when fire came anywhere near the vapor cloud it went up in an invisible fireball, it was only after we stopped laughing that we noticed that I'd pulled that stunt right below the sensor for the fire alarm, but thankfully it apparently couldn't see the fire either.
I've lit several trash cans and plastic bags on fire, not to mention fields full of sagebrush, a barn, and countless cigarettes. But I thought that was called "Arson", not spontaneous combustion, and NEVER would I have thought to record myself doing it.
Pretty sure you can see a tiny bit of paper ash float out of the bin right when he panned over to the bin and you paused... a little bit of paper to ignight the accelerant gives just enough time to walk away and very little smoke.
Wow, I can't believe I bought this guy. That's right the rags should've melted the plastic; the trash cans should've buckled and the bags should've shrunk. And of course there should be smoke before fire.
I do not understand why the plastic did not melt. Experimentation and the sample of rags with linseed oil started smoking then the summer sun hit it, and the shop rag dipped in used motor oil finally lit with a lighter, then smoldered and went out. The opinion among friends was that it was the anti-oxidents that kept it from burning. I still used a metal can with a treadle-operated lid
Leftover epoxy in a mixing pot can surprise you and it doesn't take long depending on the type of hardener. I use gallons in boatbuilding and you have to pay close attention to your working times and not mix any more than you need. Oily rags..well oil generally has a high flash point but still I've seen machines on fire. Wood finishes are what you have to be careful of and old rags are set outside to dry. I've had these rags go off.
What temperature does oil auto-ignite? Now that you have researched this temperature: How does a rag soaked in moisture sitting in a bucket increase its own temperature until spontaneously combusting? This will happen with freshly mixed epoxy in large quantities. Or white phosphorous. White phosphorous will definitely do that.
I didn't think it was lighter fluid, I thought it was alcohol, maybe bourbon. Also, when he pointed the non-contact thermometer at the plastic bag that ignited was the temp above the melting temp? I might rewatch that bit.
With highly volatile fuels, as they burn they also cool the surface they sit on via evaporative cooling. The IR thermometer will be showing the temperature based on emission from the flame while the substrate can be quite cool by comparison. I wouldn't recommend it but you can have burning fuel on bare skin under the right conditions without burning yourself.
I watch this guy's woodworking videos from time to time.... has an interesting sense of humor. I actually saw this video and it didn't occur to me it might be faked... You raise some interesting questions AVE, you really do!
@@colinhudson3723 Anyone who goes YT full time is going to do some cringey stufffor clicks/views/revenue. I have a hard time taking full time YT personalities seriously. Then again it could just be my latent "trust issues" honed over my personal life, and after retiring from the military, cropping up but I'm always asking myself, "What's their angle?"
Disappointing, his woodworking content is good, he gets plenty of views…maybe all the crafty DIY Swiss Family Suburbs stuff has been sliding since it’s pandemic height.
I just started watching this guy, he’s pretty entertaining and does nice work. I turned this video off after the first fire, way to convenient, then 2 more fires. No way.
Anyone who actually follows Jason and has for years, knows that he did not fake anything. I am a no-one in this scene, I don't usually comment, but I follow a lot of woodworkers/makers online and there really is not anyone more genuine (Maybe Diresta...) than Jason, and it is disheartening to see how fast people can jump to conclusions. Listen to his podcast, or watch his whole library and tell me this is a guy who would go through all of that effort to get more views...not buying that at all. I LOVE(D) AvE content, but this seems like one hell of a reach without much info, even for him...Maybe we should all get to know/understand people before we claim they are a sham...
The fact that he kept his radio mic on the outside of his t shirt and inside of his jacket tells me that he quickly turned it on and clipped it to his shirt whenever he needed to say something. And as somebody who will occasionally film reality TV productions, keeping a lav on somebody all day isn’t out of the ordinary. And then along those same production lines, it’s hard to see smoke on camera unless it’s backlit. You need contrast, especially on lower quality consumer grade cameras. I’m not saying that he didn’t lie to us, but I don’t think you necessarily disproved anything either.
Ave would you be willing to run this experiment yourself? I know you would be honest and stuff and he gives you all the materials so it shouldn't be hard to reconstruct.
I had just watched that video last night and my BS detectors didn't go off! Not even once! 😂. I guess I should have been paying a little closer attention!
i work as a carpenter and we do finish the wood tables, oak and wallnut, with linseed oil; one day the guy responsible for oiling the tables forgot to take the bag of oily rags out to a special container; the smoke alarm went on during the night and the worst was prevented; next day at 7 we couldn t work in the shop because of the smell
That very same thing happened in our welding shop. We've had our plastic garbage cans full of paper and oily rags catch on fire for no apparent reason. Only difference, there was smoke and i didnt have my jacket on for the -35 winter day. I'd like to blame god, but it was probably the guy next to the can grinding.
At my shop they used to have buckets of solvent laying around.. I don't remember the name, it's a 3 letter acronym and highly carcinogenic, and some guy caught one on fire while welding next to it.. he never bothered to check, guy got fired. Complacency is dangerous..
Periodic Videos had a video on this. Their new physics building was being built out of wood, and someone left oily rags out one night. It burned down, but thankfully, no one was there.
This video is the scam…. Don’t watch it. He makes these ridiculous leaps to try to prove it’s fake.
Your wood-elf buddy is lying to you Kane.
You think he’s lying. You don’t actually know
@@kanerman I do know he's lying. And if you listen to your gut, you'll know it too.
He most likely just listened to his friend tell him it was after midnight and didn’t look for himself. The flames happen at the top because you can’t see the flames until they reach the top. Your experience of no fire was likely due to the VOCs evaporating before combustion temperatures were reached. Perhaps the contained you used acted as a heat sink and also prevented it from reaching the combustion point of your rag.
This video also smacks a bit of flat earther type reasoning. A couple of half truths and ignoring the full picture. It’s kind of like a ‘forest for the trees’ type thing. In this case the reasoning seems to be that a tree is dead so therefore the entire forest must be dead.
I don’t think anyone, including you, tells the truth anymore. So I do my own research and come up with my own answers. Sometimes I’m wrong but usually I’m not.
I still thoroughly enjoying watching all of the AvE videos. That wood-elf’s videos are meant for entertainment and not information if I want information and knowledge, I will look elsewhere.
I'm not only a former firefighter but I have a big woodshop/shop... its not a myth but it doesn't just POOF catch on fire like that. Its more of a smolder and burn thing then an eruption of flames. Its all about how SMALL the container is and how much heat the vessel can hold and build up.
In Australia linseed rags freeze and do not combust. Yes , toilets water swirls in reverse duh. Also firefighters have fewer days off.
Correct.
We had a thermal fused can we put oil soaked rags in. Lid closes if it gets hot and chokes it down.
Yep, which is why Bourbonmoths video is BS
@@tokin420nchokin yeah this same concept is used for trash compactors at the bottom of tall buildings
Oily rags usually only spontaneously combust when the mortgage shorts out against the insurance policy.
I've heard that as a friction fire. they rub against each other and poof.
What's that other word that translates to: "Mass destruction by fire / Burned religious sacrifice"
Oh, yeah. "Lightning", the other business venture of god.
Lol, Jewish lightening!
😂😂😂
When I was a kid in the first year of high school (11 in the UK), our science teach spent half an hour explaining how thermometers work, he then had us all make one using a PE bottle with a straw and water. We had to then place our creations in hot water and record our results. Nearly everybody (including me I'm ashamed to say), wrote that the water raised up the straw when in reality it fell. He then explained that it was a ruse, because we hadn't considered that the PE bottle would expand more than the water. A brilliant lesson from a great teacher about the importance of recording facts and something I've never forgotten.
Sounds like a great teacher 👍. I've seen multiple scientists & engineers create the results they were testing for because the opposite result wouldn't help their cause. We humans are crazy animals sometimes haha
I'm going to use this with my kids!
@@WhenTheManComesAround The almighty dollar sure gets the results you need.... I know 1st hand and it broke my heart
My high school chemistry teacher was a retired petroleum engineer and she was all about accurate reporting. The equipment we had for the lab segments was crap, often contaminated, like pipettes with mold inside. As a result, many of the experiments just didn't work like they should have. The teacher didn't care about the actual results, she just wanted to see how we documented the failures, including listing possible reasons why things went wrong.
In college, my Chem I TA was the exact opposite. She docked us points for not getting the "right" results even if it was because of defective gear, and docked more points for "unnecessary commentary" in our lab reports documenting such problems.
@@drcornelius8275 - sounds like when NBC rigged Chevy trucks to explode in certain tests for its weekly Dateline expose' show back in November 1992.
I wrote a paper in college about hemp production in Kentucky. The hemp seeds would often be stored in a bin. And spontaneous combustion was not uncommon. So they constructed the bins in way to stop the build up of internal heat.
My history professor was surprised when the paper I turned in was a serious explanation of hemp farming, rope production, and no jokes about the alternative use of the leaf. I had one footnote that explained that the strain of hemp they grew was bred for it's fiber qualities and had almost none of the intoxicant properties.
Would like to know what made the seeds combust
@@davidramey7186 Decomposition. Grain bins will catch fire if grain is left in there for a year or two
@@davidramey7186 It can happen in aggregations (piles, mounds, containers, etc.) of a variety organic matter.
@@davidramey7186 as others have indicated, heaped organics and decomposition processes. Specifically, the growth of bacteria and mold which excrete flammable alcohols like ethanol and methanol, and amino acids that may polymerize like linseed oil under certain circumstances.
I designed an irrigation system for a hemp farm for my fluid dynamics class 😆
In college, roommate had a bag of floor stain soaked rags spontaneously combust. At midnight. Smoke detector went off because that b*tch was rollin coal in the front room. Roommate panics and tries to grab said burning bag and throw it outside, hilarities ensue because the bag disintegrates in his hands and now we have many small fires all around the front room.😂😂 And that was the night the local fire department explained to my roommate about spontaneous combustion 😊
This.
The burbon ratfaced cuck should have to pay me a dollar everytime he says spontaeous combustion😮
.. everyone who watches IT crowd knows you put the fires together with the other fires while you email the fire department. what a noob!
@@notsonominal
That episode was hilarious.
...and everybody stood up and clapped...?
I watched this video and missed the smoke part - and I've actually had rags go up, and they smoke like a 80s mother at thanksgiving
Smokes like that same mom on movie intermission.
I find it likely he just cut that part out of the video, no need to show smoking bags.
@@rdizzy1 I think we all know what he really cut out...
@@rdizzy1 nah they smoke even more when they finally DO catch fire though, which indicates that there was no linseed oil in any of those cans that caught fire. Even if it was hot enough to burn perfectly with no smoke, the shop would still be FILLED TO THE BRIM with thick white acrid smoke. He would have had to let it air out for an hour to get the visible particles settle out of the air.
You know, my first job was working in the laundry department of a medical facility. Every night, the night shift would have to wash and then air dry the dietary grease rags. There was two fires that broke out. Both times, the night shift guy said that he washed and air dried the rags and that it was spontaneous combustion. Well one night I come in and check to see exactly what this dude was doing and sure enough, he had thrown the rags in the dryer and taped the switches down so it would run for hours on end. He did this because he would sleep in his car. Well I then saw him take the greasy, and now hundreds of degrees hot rags in a metal bin and leave it. Needless to say the guy was fired after that. Mind you this was a 50 year old grown man without common sense, and I was an 18 year old highschool drop out who knew better than this dude.
It's it crazy the difference in diligence between people? Some 30 year old are no smarter than 16 year olds. Lol
There is no such thing as common sense
Restaurant owner checking in here. I've had two laundry fires, both caused by the dryer not going through the cool down cycle, due to a sketchy door latch. A pile of hot towels, with even a little residual oil, left in a hot pile, will ignite within an hour.
@@PatrickPecoraro plenty of uncommon sense to go around 😊
@@PatrickPecoraro There used to be, but it was outlawed by government to make sure we're all to blame for everything... :P
Spontaneous rag combustion is one of those things where you need the holes in the swiss cheese to align- the correct conditions with an exothermic reaction able to accelerate enough under it's own heat, the insulation to retain that heat, initial raised temperature to get that reaction going fast enough to self-heat and material capable of autoignition under those quite specific conditions. Those trash bags and likely the trash cans would've long shown symptoms indicative of being heated with portions becoming more plastic with increasing temperature leading to deforming, collapsing under their own weight, bonding to nearby material and forming holes under the kind of heat escaping that kind of runaway reaction. I've enough scars from droplets of burning polyethylene to know what it looks like when heated and ignited. The polyethylene trash bag especially has a lot of surface area relative to it's volume which would've lead to it being more prone to autoigniting before the fabric can.
Any rag touching the plastic bag or close to it likely doesn't have enough access to oxygen to heat up. These rags would act as an insulating layer. Meanwhile the plastic would be cooled by the outside air. I don't think it could melt prior to a fire except under very rare conditions.
I think, he used polyethylene for a reason, it's incredibly CHEMICALLY resistant. Something could be missing from the equation.
I just love how the restoration videos find a hidden gem in the woods, and it's all covered in an even coating of red mud.
I'm here with another "I had oily rags catch fire and it looked like a Tatra with busted seals going uphill" story. It was so much oily smoke the workshop still smells of linseed oil years later.
Them Bohemians sure knew how to make a smoke screen... :)
As the saying goes. Where there's smoke there is fire.
Oh no, that isn't smoke. That's steam, from the steamed rags we're having. Mmmm, steamed rags!
The dude was blowing so much smoke of his own that there was none left for the fire.
...or someone getting high enough for the Good Idea Fairy to pay a visit.
I think it's more likely where there's smoke there's probably bullsh*t.
...And when there is not, you're a liar.
The amount of absolutely choking, foul smoke they pack into even a tiny bit of oil is very impressive. Ask my kitchenware how I know.
Its not the linseed oil self igniting , that has a flash point of 600°F/315°C , its the rag material with lower ignition point , papers and cotton round 400-450°F/200-230°C
Are you saying that only the rag would burn, not the oil?
@@pete_lind I'll light a candle to that little factoid!
...please correct me on how I don't drive my car to the store, but rather the ECM controls the combustion parameters, that drive the potential/kinetic energy conversion, something, something... I never had my car.
@@jxvz4895 no, he's saying the oil isn't what's self igniting. The combustion of the oil is being bootstrapped by material with a lower combustion point
@@pete_lind the oil would burn immediately with the rag and create a lot of smoke. Linseed oil and its characteristic stinky dirty smoke is described often in older texts.
The other day I lit a candle in my woodshop for a vid-ya-o. Against all odds, my shed did not burn to the ground. :-)
Oh! Ya dirty stinker!
Some paint strippers I've seen have had strong acids it them. Seems so have the notion of softening the wood to force the paint to let go....But they absolutely will react with some organics (including sawdust itself in the right circumstance) to produce heat ... quite easily enough at times to cause combustion. Look at some "elephant's tooth" reactions and you will see smoke quite often in such videos. Don't know that the acids in (some) paint strippers are quite as strong as near pure sufuric, but even quite weak acids can react to produce considerable heat in the right circumstance.
Worked for Jeep in Old Paint / paint repair as a painter. We had pre-treated wipes that included chemicals like 99% alcohol, Methyl ethyl ketone peroxide, AKA: MEKP or DBJ, AKA: Deformed Baby Juice and a couple others. To give an idea how bad MEK was/is, out of 8 painters and 4 utilities that either worked in the booth or covered them, I am literally the last one alive. That said one of the biggest issue was spontaneous combustion. Although we had special grounded containers to prevent this from static, they would also combust from just the heat. Include that with painters who were from the main paint line filling in for overtime and who never dealt with this issue. They would toss wipes in any trash container including trash containers right next to 55 gallon drums of the same chemicals. Good times. We got the high risk of cancer as well as the possibility of fireworks going off in our faces. I saw it happen more times then I care to remember.
From now on, in my lexicon, Methyl Ethyl Ketone is now Deformed Baby Juice. LOL, it's brutal but I love it!
Good ol methyl ethyl kill you.
@Lesardah MEK is just the precursor bud.
As bad as MEK is, people saw it, realized that, and said, 'I bet it'd be cool if we added a bunch of extra oxygen to the mix'.
Exposing yourself to MEKP(peroxide, one oxygen per hydrogen = unstable/super reactive) is like spraying shitty grafitti over your DNA with cancer paint.
About 35 years ago, I was building some wood bases for some architectural models. I coated these with Watco Danish Oil and threw the oily soaked tee shirts in my kitchen trashcan about 5 o'clock that evening. The dinner trash went on top of the rags and about 2 AM I woke up with the smoke detectors in my house going off. Spontaneous combustion does happen.
Ave never says it doesn’t, he even has a video showing it does
Did he say smoke alarms went off? There you have it, smoke before the fire
Right there would be a lot of heat and smoke before any flames
If he had 2 cameras recording the "'whole" time. The easiest thing to do is to upload the full video unedited. Also would have been nice if he had a clock going in both of the shots.
Also, "having the cameras running the whole time" on time lapse means that you could easily pause the time lapse even for a few minutes and restart it, and you would never be able to notice the difference. Agreed on uploading the whole thing: an actual good use of TH-cam's 10 hour limit. Just put in chapter markers and/or note the timestamps in the description.
@@erikdietrich2678 It would probably be very hard to tell, but if something all of a sudden moved, you would be able to see it. Also there is probably an algorithm out there that could detect movement in a video. Lastly the Slow Mo Guys 2 has a video that's 19 hours long, unless they just put that limit in place.
Sad cause the risk of linseed rags is a real thing, but “proving” it by setting up a fake video doesn’t help the cause.
There's a vijayo on here about it from a few years ago
cap'n tight pants and the mysteriously handy undersized winter jacket.... show at 11
mystery miniseries of the hipster beard and skinny jeans conspiracy
Sherlock AvE and the mystery of the smokeless smolder and convenient mic coincidence
...yknow...im getting tired of convenient conspiracy coincidences...let alone noticing them.. all the time
@@TheNapalmFTW true but in that video he did use old and already largely reacted linseed oil. i dont necessarily believe it can start a fire but i never understood why AvE didnt use a fresh can of oil.
If linseed oil rags catch fire ya think I would have seen it once in 55 years of metal buckets full of em, maybe the equatorial zone is exempt.......
You'd need a spark. This is reality.
The pursuit of views plagues good content just as prioritizing profit is the blight of good engineering.
PVC trash cans inside his insured building while trying to catch things on fire, hopefully his insurance agent sees this
One could argue good engineering fits inside its budget...
@@zacharytuttle5618 I agree with you, but I'm referring to financially-driven practices that compromise the quality and/or performance of a design such as substituting sub-par or even dangerous designs/methods to save a buck.
like when NBC rigged Chevy trucks to explode in certain tests for its weekly Dateline expose show back in November 1992.
So...I should spray down my old rags with lighter fluid to reduce smoking and melting?
Can confirm it will smoke like snoop doggie dogg. Happened when I was a kid in our basement garage and my mother had time to remove all of us, lock all pets in a room with water soaked rags under the door with no active flame. This was the late 90s and even the firefighter told us he had a pile of rags he would dispose of promptly.
There's different types of linseed oil too. I know of a rather large insurance claim at a public hall due to oily rags smoking. Notice I said smoke. Lots of smoke. No fire.
The two times i've witnessed oil rags spontaneously combust, they started by smouldering.
You'll smell it before you see smoke, and you'll see smoke before you see flames.
... Unless your fire is starting in a dumpster in the hot sun, then you might see flames first. I didn't witness that one but the charred stairs at work are still there.
They have to smoulder before the temp builds enough to a flash point, I find it difficult to see how flames could come first.
Yeah we smelled it an was looking for like 10 min where the smell was from an found it smoking just outside the door in the leantoo area, nasty smell smoldering like when using embers to start a fire in the woodstove no flame but hot as hell when we found it moved watered an then poured it out to keep from rebuilding heat to be safe so we could go back to work
Did you use the same oil? Similar rags? Containers? Setting?
That’s how our dumpster fire started. Rags in a hot dumpster mid-summer. Flames got big with all that cardboard and saw dust.
@@BillJBrasky sounds like damage control to me: the one thing he can say that isn't instantly verifiably false.
Where's the smoke? Even on low quality cameras, we should see quite a bit. Also, the way heat moves is pretty universal: the fires shouldn't be starting on top. Also, the containers being unaffected shows some remarkable polymer characteristics: those bags and bins must have cost hundreds of dollars each!
As I asked another commenter, what's more likely: did a guy try to make a video showing a known danger not get the result showing the danger, so he faked it, or did physics just break down in his corner of the world for an afternoon? In my experience, the laws of nature are a lot more reliable than humans...
I’ve personally had solvent soaked rags spontaneously catch fire, while at work no less. It happened after I turned my back to grind welds to the customer’s specs. I was busy grinding and being mesmerized by the glowing sparks shooting up through the air, as one does, to see exactly how or when the rags mysteriously lit themselves on fire...
Igniting a rag that's loaded with solvent is different than rags igniting due to the heat of oil polymerizing.
maybe from the pretty sparks?
Some people just don't get it do they? I always forget how the saying goes, but isnt it, "You can lead a whore to water, but you can't make her......?" I can never remember that 2nd part though?
No no, he has a point. Because the hat ass in the video spontaneously combusted his rags with a sparking apparatus as well.
Dude I had the same thing happen! I put a 5 gallon bucket of oily rags under my plasma cutting table and was just going about me day. The SECOND I was concentrating on making a plasma cut the rags spontaneously combusted! It's always when you take your eye off them
At around 29:30 in his video, when two of the piles magically reignite, there is an awful lot of blue flames near the base of the fires. Looks and burns very similar to the way lighter fluid does when burning from a flat surface like concrete or other semi porous object.
Most cases of spontaneous human combustion are just a dude lighting another guy on fire
The other 2 bags were poofed up, but if the fire wasn't visible it wouldn't be a good angle for the camera, so the bag that ignited was flattened for the shot.
I worked in a business forms print factory back in the dark ages and there was a shriveled old ex-alcoholic that worked as general broom boy. The paper offcuts from the machinery was whisked away by a series of vacuum hoses to a side room with a bolted down hay baler where it was compressed into bales. Part of his rota of jobs was to check on this room, stack the bales, etc. He was a chain smoker, there was a doggy-do roll-your-own permanently stuck to his bottom lip. One Saturday morning, a meeting of the almighty white shirts was interrupted by a knock on the door. Then another knock when no response from the deities was forthcoming. Finally one of bosses yelled out to come in. Ol' pecker entered, apologized for interrupting, and only then told the Supreme beings that the factory was afire. Keep an eye out for paper dust. That stuff can be seriously bad for your wealth.
I worked at a printing plant that had two fires start when the baler jammed both smoked so bad it set the alarms off and we got out.
BUT BEFORE WE GET INTO THAT, I'D LIKE TO TAKE A MINUTE TO TALK ABOUT SHOP SAFETY. BE SURE TO READ, UNDERSTAND, AND FOLLOW ALL SAFETY RULES AND REMEMBER, THERE'S NO MORE IMPORTANT RULE THAN TO WEAR THESE, SAFETY GLASSES.
just your average ordinary everyday normal Norm.
NORM!!!!!!!
The guy in the video follows the science. He made sure the experimental results matched the conclusion.
Just like high school chemistry!
Former firefighter…..these things can happen. 10 guys on smoke break might help us make s’mores early, don’t worry kids the rags make the marshmallows taste better.
I’ve had lint seed oil combust but under direct sunlight
Edit: it starts to smoke a lot way before it catches alight
I watched this last week. As a firefighter, I knew that something was fishy when he carried those out with his hands in the bag/can. He would have needed a scoop shovel to get that out. That bag and can would have been a molten pile of goo. And undoubtedly sent him to the sink, rinsing his 2nd and possibly 3rd degree burns.
wow, amazing that a supposedly well trained fire fighter would not understand and believe the science behind spontaneous combustion of this type.
@@wilsonmetry Not much experience with arson I guess lol
I’m fairly certain that the plastic bags/bins would melt *before* the chemical reaction would reach the flashpoint of the cotton rags.
The heat is likely concentrated inside the rag pile, only a small portion needs to get hot enough to smoulder. This may still be a setup, but the entire can does not need to get to 400*
@@PVS3 maybe not the bin but those bags should melt very quickly well before combustion
Ditto
*autoignition point
for science
You don't have to reach the flash point of the rags, just the oil. Once the oil starts burning it'll set the rest of the oil soaked rags on fire.
If Burbonmoth has nothing to hide, then he should have no problem releasing the raw footage for download from both cameras of the entire experiment.
A friend of mine who is a carpenter and I once saw a spontaneous combustion with our own eyes when we had some rags we had used to wipe up linseed oil with which we had put on the asphalt in the driveway. We were only sitting a couple of meters away when it started to smoke and after a while it started to burn. If I hadn't watched this happening I would been far more sceptic to your focus on the absence of smoke in his video because when I watched the rags catching fire it was smoking for quite a long time before we saw any flames.
I keep mine in a dry wooden box next to my 55 gal drum stove, never had a problem. We did have a corn silo combust from the pressure and heat of the summer that was cool and scary. One time in the Afghanistan we had the humvee we were in spontaneously combust from a road side bomb.
That happened to me in Iraq. Somebody should do something about those humvees.
@@boneyardrendezvous yeah them men in rags have been on for while.
@@boneyardrendezvous it's not a flaw, it's a feature.
Limiting the oxygen flow prevents combustion.
You Sir owe me a new monitor and a pint of Ale. Who knew Ale could be fired out of the nose with such violence that it can ricochet out of the glass onto a monitor three foot away.
If I spent that much time taping and numbering a grid, I'd make damn sure there's results too
If i went to the trouble and spent the money on all those brand new garbage cans, you bet I would too. Gotta make that youtube money. Cant do that with a no-show.
I worked at a Bio Diesel plant that used soy bean oil as the feed. We had the Bio Fuel eat the seals out of the distillation tower discharge line and the day crew spread clay oil dry on the spill. The day crew placed the Bio Fuel/ oil dry into 55 gallon drums and left them open topped. 7 hours later I walked by and the drums were about 240 deg F. ( they were under the main pipe rack with feed oil, glycerol and methanol pipes.) The day temp was 90 deg f and the temp on my night shift was 60 deg f.
Which is proof that bio-fuels basically eat anything made of older synthetics, like seals and gaskets. It reminds me when they switched everything to unleaded. Many mods had to be made to the ~5 year old engines just so they wouldn't eat themselves. I gotta tell you, having worked in factories that had titanium dust in the atmosphere, MEK, Trichlor 1-1-1 and LOTs of acids, your walkby must have scared the ever loving beJesus out of you. That's some scary stuff.
Ya that could have been real bad.
Did you get 5 weeks paid vacation as a reward or did the manger blame you for moving the barrels?
@@jadesluv IDK, an employer who leaves meth pipes laying around must be pretty chill, but they shouldnt be feeding anyone soy oil let alone eating seals, that isnt a balanced diet
I am a backyard biodiesel maker and have have not less than three soaked rags catch fire, only when left in the sun outside, inside the shed in the shade seems to be fine, I won't leave them in the shed just in case. I generally burn them myself to know they are gone for good
doesn't oil make craploads of smoke? at least every time i set the stove on fire while cooking it makes smoke
Many years ago I was working a security shift in a youth prison. There was a wood shop class in the school area that was part of my patrol zone. five-six hours after school ended(HOT DAY over 100 F) I noticed smoke coming from a window. I checked it out, decided it was safe to open the big metal door. I found a pile of rags under a wood chair that was sitting on top of a work bench, on fire. The chair was burning at that point too. You could not see across the shop from the super thick smoke, we turned the lights on and you couldn't tell! So yeah, that schmoo smokes a lot!
I saw that video when he put that out. I won’t accuse him of fabricating the results but I absolutely have had a linseed soaked rag start smoldering after I used it. And it wasn’t left very long either. Got my attention when I went to grab it and it was super hot and already had scorched holes eaten into it. Learned a lesson for sure.
The whole video and he never even attempts to douse his flaming britches despite those pants clearly being on fire
Had not thought about the smoke when watching the video. When I ran into this issue it was with deck stain and a microfiber towel. I was not aware this could be an issue, I found it from a strange smell and when I opened the garbage can there was a ton of smoke, no fire but the bag was melting as I got it outside.
I woke up one night in the wee hours worrying about the rags at a maple gymnasium refinish I was doing and drove down there to find the rags too hot to touch, ready to go off. Could have burned the place down, had to be divine inspiration.
When I was younger I worked in fiberglass mold shop. We had this mold where we put the fiberglass mat in the mold and closed the press. We had a gun that mixed the resin and catalyst to inject into the mold. Now between moldings we had to flush the gun with a conectes line containing acetone. We would spray the gun into a 55 gal steel drum to do this. Also when the heated mold opened we would trim off the excess glass fiber wetted with resin that was partially kicked off. With a hook knife. That also got thrown into the 55 gal barrel. Now you could imagen with all that catalyzed resin acetone in that barrel it would be a real fire hazard. In fact after quite a while of doing this we did have that barrel catch fire. ( now I’m getting to the point of this long explanation). The fire looked nothing like what we’re seeing in this video. There were no visible flames. Just a lot of smoke. We barely had time to roll the drum outside. It was not possible to stand next to the drum like he is doing in this video. The fumes from the exit hermit fire/smoke were very intense. I repeat NO VISIBLE flames at the top of the drum!!! In fact I could not look into the drum because of the intense fumes/smoke coming out of it.
He sat there and stared at those rags for over 11 hours, mic fully charged the whole time, and got THREE fires (each on a different scenario). The last one he was watching Seinfeld and still got to the fire within a few seconds. Also, watching Seinfeld with a hot mic? Seems likely.
Hey he just so happened to be watching 'high SEO keyword' what's so suspicious about that?
And his coat on for the Seinfeld fire
I knew it was BS because no one actually watches sienfeld
Now I’m going be agnostic on the verdict for the time being but he does mention it’s cold in his shop so it’s not surprising he’s wearing the jacket when sitting around waiting and taking it off for composed shots.
@@EvanSamuels Then again, he doesn't have the jacket on while he's in the shop the whole time, just the times he needed to take the fire outside.
I have seen first hand a sander filled with linseed oil sawdust burn. It did not conflagrate but it produced enough heat to burn through the 3/4 hardwood 3/4 subfloor and was found sitting on the drywall of the first floor ceiling.
Wow, that's freaking scary. Someone got very lucky it didn't ignite anything.
I’ve experienced this, granted I didn’t see the flame because I left work but it was over my high school shop teachers house one summer, he hired me to help at his house. We sanded and oiled the porch with some 11 herb and spice Australian teak oil or something. We used heaps of paper towel to wipe it off (likely the plastic variety technically) and threw them in a metal trash can with a black bag liner. Also the roller rested over the barrel full of spent towels and dripped in a few times, so the rags were plentiful and very saturated. Anyway that evening on his way to bed I think it was his young son asked what the flickering light was out the window, it was the barrel on fire under the porch overhang. We were a few minutes away from burning the hacienda down!
My personal policy now is dry used rags in a single layer or seal them in a can with water and leave outside in the open.
Also this guy in the vidya seems full of shit, stay skeptical!
whoever smelt it dealt it..
This is a great topic and I would very much like to invite you to discuss this with Jason on my podcast. Please contact me to set up a time. Thank you!
No, giving him airplay is wrong. It's bullshit, we all see it's bullshit and now he's trying to get more attention out of it. Ignore.
@@arduinoversusevil2025 I'm simply offering an opportunity for both of you to discuss it. I have no bias. Bourbon Moth has agreed to this and is willing to discuss your contentions openly with me as a mediator. I am just waiting for you. My apologies for having to contact you in this manner, but you have no other contact info and no social media presence that I can find. Again, please contact me via any of my platforms. Thank you! 👍
Waste of energy, Steve. You judge the tree by it's fruit; you can see a man by his works.
I smell chicken
I would really like to see this. I feel The bearded froth has some explaining to do. The reality is not many opinions or beliefs will change either way. (Do it though, doitdoitdoitdoit.
In the video of the fire you can see the metal can and, further back, the trash bag on fire. BourbonMoth clearly stated the rags had been placed into a garbage bag. Maybe to throw out? IDK Hence the reason he used plastic. After staining a table years ago and before I knew better, I threw oily rags and paper towels into a plastic shopping bag then tossed them into a trash can next to my garage. The bag was not tied. I came out to ash the next day. No lighter fluid needed. So, yes, it does happen. Did Bourbon Moth fake it? I doubt it.
I always premtively burn all my greasy / oily rags. Never let your enemy choose the battle ground. But then again... I like fire.
This dude is spontaneously busted 😂
Nice
@@dcrog69 Thank you ☺️
Spontaneously con-busted.
@@bobcarpenter1551 😂😂
Spontaneous Con-Busted 😂
He's the Trevor Jacob of shop safety.
All I know is solvent or oily rags can and do combust through the very well understood process of oxidation as the temperature rises due to oxidation trapped heat ( pile of rags ) can surpass ignition point. That is why aircraft hangars and some mechanic shops store them in a steel can with lid. The lid is most important as it’s slows the oxidation process, and starves the fire of oxygen.
His response seems suspiciously corporate. I wonder if his corporate overlords are panicking.
"Oh my gosh! I can't believe I lied! Good thing I caught it all on tape for the insurance!" Ehh.. "I don't waste alot of time online, but when I do; I make shit up." - Jebus
Why does this remind me a a nightline expose on chevy trucks? No time lapse either - not like you need special equipment to make a time lapse of BOTH of your cameras you had over 6 hours of footage from.
In our machine shop, it was a combination of oily rags and kerosene rags, the two most common cutting fluids for steel and aluminum back in the 80s. We never had any incidents, since we used one of those foot activated lid, fire engine red safety cans. A few floors down in the wood shop, though, they had a few smouldry incidents with various polymerizing oil finishes and rags/paper towels. As far as i know, never any open flames in the four years I was there.
Kerosene and cutting oil doesn't self ignite. Only substances that self heat, usually ones that polymerize, are a risk of fire. Woodworking oils are the most common offenders. Stains and polyurethanes are aggressive in their thermal generation as they cure.
@@knurlgnar24 I suspect in the machine shop, it was just a matter of prudence. Ever light steel wool on fire? I've seen it catch in an over-full chip bin on a lathe. Depending on the material and the cut, some chips are incredibly hot. Not to mention welding and grinding. Wise not to have especially flammable odds and ends laying around.
Ambient temperatures play a factor. Pretty easy to get flames during summer time in Texas.
Insurance companies, the people with the most financial skin in the game, and firefighters have exhaustively studied spontaneous combustion. Those interested can refer to their literature. The National Fire Protection Association have ample material.
The process includes self-heating (measurable by thermocouple in tests if anyone wants to play), thermal runaway and finally auto-ignition. The process would have affected the plastic bags before reaching ignition temperature which is several hundred degrees.
I was 15 and my grandfather was doing some body work on an old van and it started to rain, so he threw all his stuff in a recycle bin and brought it inside to the basement. it was a very hot day so I was napping down there on the granite floor. I wake up to fire alarms going off and the whole basement filled with smoke. The bin caught fire and started to burn a wall, a quick squirt with a fire extinguisher put it out. If that fire went for even a minute longer I'm not sure I'd have been able to put it out.
40 years ago I got close to a fire, I spilled Lind seed and Japan dryer so I mopped it up with a pair of old Levi’s and after a half hour it started to smoke and became so hot it was hard to pick up. I threw the pants in the bath tub and flooded it with water. There was a lot of smoke since it almost filled my apartment. Don’t ask, it was a bad day.
The important takeaway is that we should afraid at all times of hobgoblins both real and imagined.
I'm a farmer, and I service my own stuff. I've had a few fires in the shop and not one was spontaneous, lol.
According to my high school shop teacher, shortly after you get any chemical on a rag you'll be responsible for the deaths of nearly every single kid at the school.
Absolutely.
Look up 2-ethylhexyl nitrate. It's what helps Diesel go boom in your engine. Not my words but says "It undergoes a self-accelerating decomposition reaction if heated "
above 100C (212F)
The cynicism was hard to pick up.
I will say that like most Americans nowadays we will give this guy a pass and name a school after him or maybe a new crypto coin.
tight pants coin!!
Can I name the coin and rug pull it after a whole one person invests 50 bucks?
Yeah bro SpontaneousCombustionCoin (SCC) is the next big thing... you put in $10k and BOOM.. overnight it bursts into flames and disappears. All in 4k too! Dont miss out!!
Spontani-coin!
You buy them and they spontaneously deflate the fuck out
Fullashitcoin
You’re absolutely right. It may be spontaneous combustion but there is lots of heat right before the actual combustion. just like how a wet hay bale will catch on fire 👍
Ooh fuck. Now we have to worry about wet hay bales?!! I'm calling the gun control advocacy group, these spontaneous fires have to be stopped. We need spontaneous combustion free zones and permits for those who absolutely must do it.
Yup, same as how a compost pile gets steaming hot inside even on a cooler day. Now imagine a compost pile made of flammable organic solvents on cotton rags in a trashcan inside a 90f work shop. The organic solvents break down, create heat similar to a compost pile. Only difference is the compost pile isn't highly flammable like the rag pile.
"I'll go all in with a pair of sevens", thanks mate. I saw that video and though it was exceptionally uhm.. Strange somehow, but you really put the finger on it and with your comedic twist this was an absolute treat to watch. Thank you.
I don't even need to pay attention to the lack of smoke, wardrobe, mic, and time fuckery. The plastic would have started to sag and melt before flames would even appear if this was all real and kosher.
I work in a cabinet shop. I’ve tried to replicate this spontaneous combustion experiment a few times over the years, always outside and never in the shop. I have yet to succeed in starting a fire spontaneously, which is disappointing. I know it can happen and I’m always very careful to dispose of oily rags properly because of that, but it doesn’t happen easily in my experience. I’ve left the contaminated rags in a box for days at times too.
I was a full time fire service fire investigator, as part of my research I attempted to recreate a spontaneous combustion of cotton rags with numerous non synthetic oils - we were unable to get a full combustion but did achieve some good heating and some discolouration. From our investigation into reports of spontaneous combustion many reports turn out to be incorrect or just repeating of claims made by others. I am fully aware of the science involved, however the conditions required for the "perfect storm" of a rag to burst in to flames is extremely hard to achieve - so to summarise - this gentleman is bullshitus maximus!
you still got any buddies in the fire investigation business? I'd be super interested in seeing them try to reproduce his experiment. If he got 3/18 to ignite, that's worth a retest.
@@root1657 I retired 4 years ago after 30 years service, most investigators wouldn't be interested in it I think as it is considered a minor ignition source. There are plenty of references to self heating and spontaneous combustion in the main FI reference books such as Kirks.
@@theponkster most may not be interested, but perhaps one could be. You were.....
@@root1657 I just liked blowing things up and setting fires😂 - I havn't any contacts in FI these days but your local team might be up for it
is that wood in the barrel? And why is the plastic not deforming from all the heat? It doesn't go from 0 to 60, its has to get hot first.
yes, there is various woodshop trash in that particular barrel. He set up various scenarios with various chemicals to try to account for various factors that might come into play. That's why there was the grid system, different chemicals, different trash.
@@root1657 gotcha, must of missed that part.
You know that you're onto something good sir when the uploader of said video disables the comment section.
Thanks for pointing out these discrepancies.
One way to settle it, repeat the experiment and see what results you get.
That's the way science works.
The important question isn't what catches fire without smoke, but what catches fire without smoke and burns with easily visible flames.
I remember helping my buddy out at the lab a few years back, he was complaining that something weird had started growing in one of the incubators and he wanted to burn the insert clean so it stopped contaminating his samples, he'd poured on way too much ethanol/IPA mix based surface cleaner and then tried to set fire to it using one of the torches for melting glass.
I told him the problem and then went to show him by just spreading a thin layer of the disinfectant on a regular metal-topped cart, and when fire came anywhere near the vapor cloud it went up in an invisible fireball, it was only after we stopped laughing that we noticed that I'd pulled that stunt right below the sensor for the fire alarm, but thankfully it apparently couldn't see the fire either.
I've lit several trash cans and plastic bags on fire, not to mention fields full of sagebrush, a barn, and countless cigarettes. But I thought that was called "Arson", not spontaneous combustion, and NEVER would I have thought to record myself doing it.
Your detective work is impeccable.
Pretty sure you can see a tiny bit of paper ash float out of the bin right when he panned over to the bin and you paused... a little bit of paper to ignight the accelerant gives just enough time to walk away and very little smoke.
I thought I saw something. I thought it was just a bit of smoke.
Fire Marshall needs to have a talk with this fire bug.
He put in ripped up magazine to "mimic" a shop trash can.
Yeah I saw the paper fly out as well.
Wow, I can't believe I bought this guy. That's right the rags should've melted the plastic; the trash cans should've buckled and the bags should've shrunk. And of course there should be smoke before fire.
I do not understand why the plastic did not melt.
Experimentation and the sample of rags with linseed oil started smoking then the summer sun hit it, and the shop rag dipped in used motor oil finally lit with a lighter, then smoldered and went out. The opinion among friends was that it was the anti-oxidents that kept it from burning. I still used a metal can with a treadle-operated lid
This is too good! You need to do more of these videos lol
I've seen the ol spontaneous combustion routine live. Usually opens with a lot of smoke before the flames show up
Leftover epoxy in a mixing pot can surprise you and it doesn't take long depending on the type of hardener.
I use gallons in boatbuilding and you have to pay close attention to your working times and not mix any more than you need.
Oily rags..well oil generally has a high flash point but still I've seen machines on fire.
Wood finishes are what you have to be careful of and old rags are set outside to dry. I've had these rags go off.
That microphone knew when to attach itself, we call it magic mic.
What temperature does oil auto-ignite?
Now that you have researched this temperature: How does a rag soaked in moisture sitting in a bucket increase its own temperature until spontaneously combusting?
This will happen with freshly mixed epoxy in large quantities. Or white phosphorous. White phosphorous will definitely do that.
I don't always set fire to my shop but when I do I damnedwell catch it on camera.
I didn't think it was lighter fluid, I thought it was alcohol, maybe bourbon. Also, when he pointed the non-contact thermometer at the plastic bag that ignited was the temp above the melting temp? I might rewatch that bit.
With highly volatile fuels, as they burn they also cool the surface they sit on via evaporative cooling. The IR thermometer will be showing the temperature based on emission from the flame while the substrate can be quite cool by comparison. I wouldn't recommend it but you can have burning fuel on bare skin under the right conditions without burning yourself.
I watch this guy's woodworking videos from time to time.... has an interesting sense of humor. I actually saw this video and it didn't occur to me it might be faked... You raise some interesting questions AVE, you really do!
He's pretty comical . Bourbon Moth if I remember correctly.
Disappointing that he could have faked this .
Almost as entertaining as AVE
@@colinhudson3723 Anyone who goes YT full time is going to do some cringey stufffor clicks/views/revenue. I have a hard time taking full time YT personalities seriously. Then again it could just be my latent "trust issues" honed over my personal life, and after retiring from the military, cropping up but I'm always asking myself, "What's their angle?"
Disappointing, his woodworking content is good, he gets plenty of views…maybe all the crafty DIY Swiss Family Suburbs stuff has been sliding since it’s pandemic height.
I just started watching this guy, he’s pretty entertaining and does nice work. I turned this video off after the first fire, way to convenient, then 2 more fires. No way.
Anyone who actually follows Jason and has for years, knows that he did not fake anything. I am a no-one in this scene, I don't usually comment, but I follow a lot of woodworkers/makers online and there really is not anyone more genuine (Maybe Diresta...) than Jason, and it is disheartening to see how fast people can jump to conclusions. Listen to his podcast, or watch his whole library and tell me this is a guy who would go through all of that effort to get more views...not buying that at all. I LOVE(D) AvE content, but this seems like one hell of a reach without much info, even for him...Maybe we should all get to know/understand people before we claim they are a sham...
I'm just glad it wasn't a starched sock fire caused by frantic friction...
yep... awkward...
Props for calling it like you see it.
The fact that he kept his radio mic on the outside of his t shirt and inside of his jacket tells me that he quickly turned it on and clipped it to his shirt whenever he needed to say something. And as somebody who will occasionally film reality TV productions, keeping a lav on somebody all day isn’t out of the ordinary. And then along those same production lines, it’s hard to see smoke on camera unless it’s backlit. You need contrast, especially on lower quality consumer grade cameras. I’m not saying that he didn’t lie to us, but I don’t think you necessarily disproved anything either.
I think you nailed it. Couldn't easily get the results he wanted so, helped 'er along a lil bit for the sake of his vid.
Ave would you be willing to run this experiment yourself? I know you would be honest and stuff and he gives you all the materials so it shouldn't be hard to reconstruct.
I had just watched that video last night and my BS detectors didn't go off! Not even once! 😂. I guess I should have been paying a little closer attention!
i work as a carpenter and we do finish the wood tables, oak and wallnut, with linseed oil; one day the guy responsible for oiling the tables forgot to take the bag of oily rags out to a special container; the smoke alarm went on during the night and the worst was prevented; next day at 7 we couldn t work in the shop because of the smell
That very same thing happened in our welding shop. We've had our plastic garbage cans full of paper and oily rags catch on fire for no apparent reason. Only difference, there was smoke and i didnt have my jacket on for the -35 winter day. I'd like to blame god, but it was probably the guy next to the can grinding.
Should have had the apprentice catching the sparks
At my shop they used to have buckets of solvent laying around.. I don't remember the name, it's a 3 letter acronym and highly carcinogenic, and some guy caught one on fire while welding next to it.. he never bothered to check, guy got fired. Complacency is dangerous..
The spontaneous oil combustion thing only happens with drying oils. The lubricating oils don't heat up as they oxidize.
Love that this hipster “woodworker” finally got called out. The cringy carpenter.
We're going full schizophrenic mode today boys
Periodic Videos had a video on this. Their new physics building was being built out of wood, and someone left oily rags out one night. It burned down, but thankfully, no one was there.