While many a stiff rag has been made from the after effects of some friction, thankfully the inclusion of boiled linseed oil in the mix seems to be rare.
I bust in my mom's panties and put them back in the dirty clothes. I'm sure she's found them while loading the washer by now. She probably thinks she just has some extra cheese.
Been a firefighter for 25 years and been to a few spontaneous combustion fires at woodworking shops and a few shops usually at machine shops with fine shavings from lathe and mill work usually involves exotics like magnesium and fine aluminum with older shop rags heavily worn and an amagumation of cleaners or lubricants, we tried at the station many times the exact same experiments as you and 9 times out of 10 no success but the times it did chooch believe me she chooched hard and fast once it starts the smolder it’s all over
As a painter of 30 years I can say that spontaneous combustion is real. Been many times we’ve had to put our own fires out. Watco oil is the most combustible.
We used to have old oil drums cut down and the top rolled, used as waste bins, all cloths were put in there and collected to be sent out for cleaning, they were used for everything, started out white or yellow, ended up dirty grey/black, covered in oil, cutting fluid, grinding fluid (like paraffin) the guy who came round was on holiday, so they didn't get emptied, one started smoking and caught fire, it does happen, no external source, heat built up some sort of reaction and woof it went up.
@@michaellong4897 I had a fire in a building just a couple of weeks ago whose source was bagged varnish rags. Oh that one's gonna cost'm. Thankfully, the nearest sprinkler activated.
Fifty odd plus years ago at an elementary school assembly on fire safety the instructor put some oily rags in a metal case with a glass front door. He told us it may or may not produce results by the end of the presentation. The presentation was also notable in that he had a large glass jar that he put a few drops of gasoline in then rotated it around to smear the gas around. He then put a cup or so of soapy water in the jar, shook it around to wash out all of the jar and poured it out. Then he lit a long wooden match and stuck it in the jar. WOOSH! There were enough fumes left to blaze, however briefly. By the end of his presentation the spontaneous combustion experiment was starting to produce visible smoke. Didn't learn a lot that I should have in school but this has stayed with me.
My father once tried pouring diesel from a jerry can to get a fire going a bit better and it blew out the back of the can, turns out there had previously been gasoline in it before the diesel that was currently in it. Might have been made worse by the fact that it was below freezing in the middle of winter.
As a lad my family had a powerboat on lake Erie. One day in early summer, probably June, I was tasked with oiling the teak handrails and walk boards. I would have been using Teak Oil which is probably an amalgamation of various oils. Anyway, at one point I set my rags down on the back of rhe folded down bench seat which was red vinyl. When I turned around to grab them a few minutes later they were emitting copious amounts of smoke and were almost too hot to pick up and throw in the lake. Fortunately the vinyl upholstery was not damaged, otherwise my backside would have been. In my case a little sunshine and a warm surface were all that was needed for combustion to commence. Love your videos. Keep up the good work
@@Scrogan Hey James. As I said in my post they were almost too hot to pick up. I believe I quickly swept them off the bench and into the water. This was over 40 years ago so I’m not positive as to how I handled them. They weren’t on fire but smoking and hot. Cheers
Worked for 30+ years in a large fire dept, have seen linseed oil auto ignition a few times over the years. One common thing: rags usually made of old worn cotton clothing and they are not soaked with oil, just damp from rubbing wood (heeey-oh!) and crunched up in a bucket or trash can. They are a bitch to find when we are called for smell of smoke in the house and can't figure out where it's coming from... until you notice the nice freshly oiled antique furniture. :)
45 years ago I was a painting and custom decorating contractor. I had come into the trade under the tillage of a couple of very old time masters of the trade. So long ago that I was taught the art of faux finishing using feathers and combs to create a wood grain finish. Job site security and job site housekeeping were important. Two basic rules: 1) Never put a lid on a can without ensuring that it is properly sealed. Having the lid leave the bottle as you picked it up was a recipe for disaster. Knocking over a gallon of paint was an expensive mess. 2) Do not leave the rags you used to rub down oil based stain in a heap. Spread them out or put them in the metal air tight container, preferably outside. I got a contract to work with a designer in a very interesting small multiplex condo project. Custom wood cabinets and trim, beautiful fabrics to hang on the walls, great finishes and colours to work with. Nice job. One day another tenant approached me about doing some work in his unit. We discussed the project on site. He came to the conclusion that my price was too high. Early Sunday morning a couple of weeks later I got a call from one of my lead hands. He had a significant problem on a side job, "Could I come down and give him some advice?" I knew the site as he gave me the address. Steve hand rubbed wood filler and stain into the wood for a wall of book case. Took his oily rags, wadded them up and threw them into a corner on the concrete sub-floor. Over night they oxidized in an exothermic reaction and burst into flames. The room was covered in soot and very fine ash. Steve was very lucky. The smoke and soot damage had been limited by a closed door, the rags were mainly good old cotton t shirts and the wad was not that big. No insurance but limited damage. I turned to the owner and told him that we would have it cleaned up in 48 hrs. Brought in a couple of apprentices to wash the fine strings of black carbon soot off of every surface. Dust and vacuum the rest of the apartment. Steve and I refinished the walls, ceiling, trim and woodwork in the room. Never brought it up to Steve again. He could leave any time he wanted. He became one of my most skilled and loyal employees. He went on to a successful career in the painting industry after I retired.
I imagine that to get actual flames you need a "perfect storm" of material, oil content and ventilation which is why it is a rare event. But you got your rags hot enough to worry about, so good job scooching it under the welding machine. Those units know how to handle heat.
Friend almost burnt down her house this way, was rags in the sink in the laundry getting hit by direct sunlight through the window that was cracked for ventilation.
Put them in the summer sun. They'll be smokin more than a deadhead in no time. Uv makes the oil cure faster, which makes heat. I coated some beams for a raised bed in late June last year. The beams actually heated enough I could've cooked on them. Hotter than the adjacent concrete. The rags I tossed to the side were smoking when I came back from my AC break. Maybe 20-30 after use. Note, I had been fully saturating them. Old 100% cotton reusable diaper liners. Told the wife she should've used em as granny-string liners, see as how cold it seems to have been lately
I left can of boiled linseed oil in my garage for 10 years. And no fire. That is because it is in the can. If it was waded in rags and news paper. Then that garage would have been burnt a while ago. Only reason it was never on fire is cause I listened to the old guys when I was a kid some 20 years ago. I am a millennial that listened. Shocking isn't it. And yet I get told that i am not listening and doing things wrong. That couldn't be further from the truth because those are women that make these odd claims.
I worked in HVAC. I designed refrigeration pack units (the engine unit that makes the cold out the back of the factory/ supermarket) We had lagging( plastic based) on installed units catch fire. We experimented with this in the factory and couldn get the insulation to catch fire with the oxy acetylene torches, it just melted and burned. But we ignited it with a end of a cigarette. We concluded the torch was too hot and efficient and it reacted with all the oxygen and so the lagging (plastic) couldn't. So it melted and burned rather than inflamed. I.e. the cooler heat sources could ignite it, whilst the extremely hot (brazing) tempretures could not.
The one I saw personally was a job site wherein they were spraying hardening oil finish onto the old but newly-exposed rafters of a remodel. The cleanup rags were properly disposed of in an enclosed water filled metal bucket. The floor was carefully swept and dumped in a plastic waste container. It was the latter that self ignited, with the construction dust mixed with the fine overspray droplets of oil, igniting several hours after work was completed. Luckily it was discovered before it caught the subfloor afire, so the only damage was noxious smoke stink and a fair bit of melted trash can plastic to be scraped off the floor.
Take one of those rags, saturate it with linseed oil and wring it out. Then wad up that rag and put it under that pile of rags and wait. If it's in a warm or hot location it can catch fire in an hour or less. I have seen it happen. If it's in a cold location like inside my garage in the winter it can take as much as 12 hours. Yes, before I knew about this, I treated a cutting board with linseed oil and threw the used rag back in my box of rags. It caught fire and burned down the garage about 12 hours later. A completely saturated wet rag will not self ignite and I know painters that have been storing staining rags inside their cans of stain for years. If you lay or hang a rag with linseed oil on it out in the open it will not build up enough heat to ignite. Linseed oil is in many stain and oil finish products. To be safe you must treat them all the same way. The Chief of the fire crew that extinguished my garage told me BBQ charcoal briquettes can also spontaneously ignite if they are allowed to get moist and they are stored where there is little or no circulating air. The first thing he asked me as he was filling out his report was if I had oily rags or charcoal briquettes stored in the cabinet where they determined the fire originated. What a life lesson that was!
In my case, the (almost) fire was caused by BLO soaked paper toweling (used to clean up a spill) with used cotton rags (used for oil application) on top, piled fairly tightly in a little steel waste can..I wanna say it stood for maybe three-four hours before it cooked off, and I tossed it outside in the snow before actual flames..it was charred in the middle pretty well, though..filled my basement with smoke, by yimminy!
I'm afraid I lack experience with boiled linseed oil, but I do know that regular vegetable oil on 'clean' cloths will spontaneously ignite, given half a chance. My son was working at a restaurant just up the road from our house when a large tub of cooking oil was spilled in the kitchen. The crew grabbed every dishcloth they could find and mopped it up; kitchen was clean, but they were now very short of dishcloths, so one of the guys brought them home for a quick wash. They came back as a neat stack of freshly laundered and folded towels and were left in a side room. My son kept smelling smoke and checking the room, but there was nothing to see. He was about to leave for the day, but stuck his head in the room one last time, to find a thick column of smoke rising from the dishcloths. Opening the window, he grabbed the stack and threw them out. As they opened out in the fresh air they ignited and it took a fire extinguisher to put them out. Turns out that oily cloths in a modern washing machine at the default setting - probably 40 centigrade - meant that they looked clean, but still held a lot of oil. A good run through the drier on a high setting and a quick folding made for a thick stack of hot, oily cotton. From that start it took less than an hour for them to reach flashpoint.
Ooo yeah, use those rags to sop that oily goodness and chooch er round. Wanna make sure that’s all soaked and saturated, like you were oilin yer “ insert ya crude Canuck slang here “ Let that cookin in a pile in da middle of your most flammable possessions and Bob’s yer Uncle! Also works wit epoxy resin, wood dust and juuuust the right amount of moisture Go ahead, ask me how I know
There are a number of variables at play. First off is ambient temperature. Reactions happen faster with increasing temperatures, and the more the fuel has to heat to reach the "runaway" point, then the more likely it is to remain cool enough not to get there. Next is the composition of the oil. Specifically the amount of drying agent (oxidation catalyst) that has been added. "Japan drier" is added so you don't have to wait a week between coats, and it contributes to spontaneous combustion issue. The form of rags and rag-heap is another can of worms. To get fire, oxygen needs to be able to reach the oil, and loose crumpling (or even spreading out) helps that. BUT the more the rags are spread out, the more surface area they have to lose heat. The more rags you have in a pile, the more the central rags are insulated, which helps heat build, but the denser and bigger the pile, the harder it is for combustion products to escape and allow more oxygen in (smothering). The texture of the rags will drastically alter how they insulate, and how much surface area they have. Terry cloth is probably about optimal for getting fire. How saturated the rags are with oil is another variable. Too wet and it is harder for the O2 to reach the inner parts, too dry and the reaction may be slowed too much. How hard the rags are to start with matters quite a bit. If the oil has completely cured already, it isn't going to oxidize farther and cook off...so fresh oil is probably most prone to cooking off, and if the rags are quite wet, it is thin enough to soak through a rag heap and improve oxidation potential. Finally, there is altitude. In the summer, there is about 20% less O2 available in Denver vs. sea level, so that will help keep things a bit cooler. (In the winter, the cold increases density a bit, but that helps prevent the fire as well, so probably it offsets.) Keep in mind, that there will often be just enough of a reaction to reach combustion, so slowing things down by 20% will be plenty of difference in many cases.
With the pile/trash can, I feel like it _must_ be oxygen starved to start a fire. The core of the pile gets hot but doesn't ignite, which speeds the drying reaction, which generates more heat, which speeds the reaction, etc. After this cycle runs for a while, the outer layers that _do_ have enough oxygen start to smolder and eventually burst into flames.
Jewish fire investigator here, and that "Jewish Lightning" had me rolling on the floor. In our area, we have seen an increase in these kinds of fires. Your insight into old rags vs new rags is interesting. Most of the fires that we have seen involved old rags. Many have involved a certain yellow canned stain from the local Home Despot.
Saul and Hymie are sitting on the beach in Miami. Saul ask Hymie how things are. Hymie says: “Ok. My business burned to the ground, but I got the insurance and was able to retire here. How are you?” Saul replies: “Good, good. But I have a very similar story! My business was destroyed by a flood, but I too collected the insurance and was able to retire here.” They both sit for a minute, contemplating the sea, then Hymie turns to Saul and asks: “A flood? How do you start a flood?!”
Hey AvE, Just a heads-up, it’s probably boron, not bromine, that’s the fire suppressant. Boron used to be used for treating drapes for theaters, to keep them for catching fire in old theaters. Boron (or more specifically, boric acid) is also used to treat paper wadding to keep the separation charge in model rockets from scorching/burning holes in the recovery parachutes. Bromine, on the other hand, is a really nasty element. If you want, go check out nilered’s video on distilling it. Not really something you want to use near people, side effects tend to include rapid onset death. Love what you’re doing, keep up the good work!
Bromine absolutely used to be used in FR clothing and some other fire-resistant materials, but efforts have been made to find better alternatives due to the concerns of toxicity. Not sure to what degree it has been phased out nowadays, but for a while it was basically the mainstay of fire retardants!
This sheds new light on why WW2 aircraft carriers (and maybe current ones, too, I don't know) had dedicated storage space for oily rags that could be doused with C02. I guess it would be just embarrassing to survive a dive bomber attack and lose the ship to a... rag.
I have to admit that I assumed this exothermic reaction only happened with oils that "cure", like boiled linseed oil. I didnt realise that non-curing oils could ignite too. The pyromaniacs of the world salute you Sir.
Your standard pyromaniac wouldn't be too excited at the off chance of leaving an olive oil soaked rag and it setting alight. Your standard arsonist on the other hand...
Our 33 gallon rubbermaid outdoor "Brute" trashcan burned last night, down to a pile of ashes in the surrounding leaves. My son had applied Presealer with red, paper shop towels followed by stain with red, paper shop towels. Though the paper towels appeared dry, when thrown into this outdoor trashcan, and the lid put on, the chemical reaction was enough to catch fire.
Glad you revisited this, I had no reason to suspect my experience with it happening at work was insurance fraud. Especially because they put it out before real damage was done. Also, if I use BLO, I burn the rags when I'm done.
Maybe its the pyro in me but that is exactly what I do... Just put the used rags in an empty 1 gal METAL paint can ... Place the can on the driveway and hit it with a propane torch... 20 min later problem solved. I like my fires and all but only on my own terms :-)
I worked in a paint store in a former life, we cleaned up a spill once with cotton rags, and next morning the can was smoking. It may not happen often, but it only has to happen once for a come to Jesus moment. YMMV.
Clean your tree carcass oven with one of those rags and add it to the mix, will help it chooch. Also you are right with the assumption that older fabric catches on fire better, not only because of chemicals, but also because the fibres are a bit worn down and have more surface area.
Your channel is so amazing. I watch often and review older videos all the time. I like to read comments where people try to imitate your language and dialect. I understand that imitation is the best way of flattery. You are unique and that is what I find wonderful about your channel.
The resident elder at work says you need to mix it with turpentine. He says equal parts boiled linseed and turpentine is what his grandad used to waterproof his old cedar picnic table...
Pool shock and brake fluid....there's a reaction to watch. I'm a retired firefighter and also fire investigator. That was one of the combinations we were taught in investigation class (which is really and how to class on how to be an arsonist and not get caught) when talking about HTAs (high temperature accelerants). That combo burns hot enough to melt glass and will spontaneously ignite over time but even quicker when heated. Putting brake fluid in a coffee pot with the pot filled with pool shock was a popular arson trick at one time. I think the pool shock chemicals have changed a bit over time though
Hey man really great video even though nothing really happened. A thrilling saga of danger, doubt, some Latin, and explosive textiles. Ya even left us with a cliffhanger.
@@arduinoversusevil2025 That looked like you might have been using 'creatively aquired' hospital linen, generally pre-treated with bromine anti flame and anti bacterial, woulda impaired self ignition so you did well. :)
I've put cloth in the microwave all my life, one day I put a towel in and instant fire. I found out that towel manufactures have taken precautions to insure there is no metal particles in the fabric since the microwave became popular, but from the early 90s back did not. Don't put your grandmother's towels in the microwave.
Might try old cotton t shirts? We use old t shirts as rags frequently. Lacl of bromine in the t shirts. Plus the cotton has been worn in stretched and the fibers have a bit more frayed edges. Just a thought?
@@russelltom2087 Was reading tips for budget cooking so tried the suggestion of microwave popcorn kernels in a paper bag, the brown paper bag instantly went incandescent; then burst into flame upon the door being opened, spitting hot popcorn everywhere :)
Many years ago, my boss told me about his apprentice days working in a boatyard, building fiberglass-hulled yachts. Big, expensive boats. Anyway, after they got the top and bottom parts glued together, crews had to go inside with grinders and clear up all the flash and nastiness sticking out everywhere. Apparently some chemical off-gassed by the fiberglass resin is quite flammable, and it was a common occurrence that a crew would be inside a hull grinding away, there would be a WHUMP, then the they'd come walking out, clothes smoking and looking slightly dazed. More to the point here, the leftover resin also couldn't be left in a big pot to harden, since it would easily heat up to the point of blackening and potential ignition.
The wife overheard the vijeo as often happens. Wife: Homunculus, that’s the human representation of the parts of the brain. Me: is it? Wife: wait, is he talking about wacking off into a sock Me: maybe Wife: I’m out!
The area I grew up in had more than a few, shall we say, unexplained fires. To the point that we stopped referring to them as 'arsons', but instead called them 'aggressive urban renewal'.
What people don't realize in this specieisist world is that hard times aren't limited to humans. With an economic downturn the increased stress is invariably linked to higher rates of smoking and in turn we seem to find more mice with matches. Most people are unaware that mice with matches are extremely careless and dangerous, causing many fires that would otherwise seem suspicious. As a corollary, my experience is that warm weather is another time we see increases in the number of mice with matches in outdoor settings. They pop up in many recreational areas and like anything else they like to kick back and relax after a long week with a nice cheese infused microbrew IPA and a pack of Miceboros, next thing you know a brush fire breaks out... Those mice with matches can rival the worst of any Jewish lightning supercells.
The common thread in all these stories seems to be an overfilled trashcan. The dense packing gives you the smoldering heat, and the looser pile on top gives you the surface area to start a fire.
I was installing cabinets in a very expensive house a few years ago, I came in to work one morning and was on the upper floor of the house working and I could smell a burning smell, I knew it wasn't a good smell. I started going around the house trying to find the source of this smell. Turns out the carpenters building the house oiled the back deck late the day before and the apprentices left all the oil soaked rags piled up on the kitchen counter on top of cardboard floor protection in front of a fan! I found the pile of rags smouldering and smoking, which was the cause of the burning smell! They were extremely lucky they didn't burn this house to the ground, say if they did this on a Friday afternoon and the rags had longer to smoulder!!! I had always been taught that this could happen, but this was the first time I had experienced it first hand.
From my experience, as have had and seen this happen: To get the reaction faster, a lack of fresh air that cools the rags seems to be important. I actually think this is like what happens in a pile of green mulch and may be related to bacteria. I do not think the result happens as much with clean oil/rags. I have seen it happen in a relatively air sealed bin. IE: A deep pile of dirty linseed soaked rags will ignite faster. Likewise a small pile in a deep container will ignite faster. Likewise as you mentioned higher temperatures also accelerate the reaction. The wetter/dirtier the rags seems to be a factor. It does take a couple hours. Set up a 20-30 gallon metal trashcan outdoors with tight pile of dirty linseed soaked rags at the bottom and a camera nearby. It will happen when the factors come together.
At least some types of rotting are exothermic. If you roll hay that isn't properly dried (and especially if you stack it in a barn with front forks after doing so), the barn will burn to the ground. I'm not sure if the underlying plant content of the hay (fescue vs clover vs. whatever) matters.
The go-to way to dealing with oily rags is either a) stick them in one of those dedicated, sealable fireproof rag cans, or b) hang them up with good ventilation where any heat that comes from them curing cannot build up to ignition point. As someone who oils my tools' shafts only rarely, I peg 'em on the ol' Hills Hoist over night.
I usually hear these starting from an over filled trash can. When a trashcan is full, what do we do? Cram it down as tight as we can. Once you can't cram it, you just pile it on top. The tightly compressed rags generate a ton of heat, igniting the loosely piled rags that have enough oxygen to ignite. The other way I hear about it happening is when they're in a mound on the floor, usually in a shop or some place with still air. The core of the mound gets hot because there's no air movement, but once it's past a certain point the heat rising starts to draw air into the bottom of the pile giving it an oxygen source to start smoldering.
I own a laundromat. A local restaurant was cleaning their rags and one time I was cleaning lint drawers and I opened the dryer door as I thought I saw smoke. When I opened the door it ignited and flames shot up. So told the owner, please don’t wash your oil and grease soaked rags in our gas driers, it could burn the building down. Two weeks later, I’m working at my day job as a metal roof installer and I get a call from someone saying my laundromat was on fire. The restaurant owner did it again. Luckily it only ruined my $4500 drier, and thankfully a cook at a different restaurant smelled smoke and put the fire out. I looked at my security camera footage and the rags ignited 2 hours after the drier had stopped. The owner with the rags said he would pay for the drier, he soon sold his business and never did.
The MAN holds you down by forcing you to go to special trash collection points. Don't let the scheme of "fire safety" get in your way of convenience. Besides, a healthy neighborhood naturally catches on fire once or twice a year during dry season, fire suppression systems have gotten in the way of this.
Created an oily rag fire myself. In this case it was rags from a hotel kitchen. I washed them and dried them (propane fired dryer), then placed them in the bucket to take back up to the kitchen. I went back to folding sheets but soon my eyes were stinging. Looked around and the laundry was full of smoke. Looked down at the bucket just as it burst into flames. So, grabbed the handle and out to the parking lot to dump it and stomp it out. Turns out the rags had wound around one another into a tight mass and smoldered in the bucket. Helps to start with a heat source for sure.
I’ve had linseed oil rags get warm, but what I’ve have nearly ignite were shop towels and rags used to clean up a gallon of bleach that spilled. Charred up and started smoking in minutes!
True story. We have a large US Forest Circus fire and admin complex in our border town below the Quetico. Standard maintenance protocol calls for re-finishing of all hand tools (shovels, collins axe etc). Linseed is the drink of choice. Almost burnt their brand new facility down.
I can't be the only (former) furniture maker who finds it hard to believe that these fires started in a rag barrel that had exclusively BLO rags in it. Why? Because I've never seen carpenters give enough of a rats arse to actually keep those rags separated. The solution is obvious though, don't use a barrel, just use a laundry rack. That way the heat dissipates easily and no fire will happen. Fires happen when BLO rags are balled up with carnauba wax and shellac rags. The BLO provides the heat and the carnauba wax is usually dissolved in turpentine, and obviously shellac is dissolved in alcohol. Both of those have low enough autoignition points where the vapour could actually ignite. It's like a molotov, you put in diesel (blo) for the staying power, but you need petrol (turps/alcohol) to get the party started. But again, in all the wood shops where I have worked, if there was a rag barrel, no one would care enough to not just toss their rag with whatever solvent or oil on it in that barrel. It's 5'o clock. It's time to go home. The boss man ain't payin no more. Rag in the barrel is all the effort they can expect at that point.
I had a rag spontaneously combust after oiling some axe handles with boiled linseed. However there were other solvents on said rag previously. But within 15 minutes of me setting the rag down she was in full flame.
About 20ish years ago, when I was a young NDT tech working at the Esso refinery in Nanticoke, Ontario, I saw such a thing. No fire. We got there before it happened. But it was smoking the whole fab shop up and it was freaking hot! Just a bunch of machine shop rags in a steel drum in a hot building.
Once found charred kraft insulation paper during a remodel. No electrical or plumbing nearby. There was a joist cavity used as an air return. Sealed with untreated sheet steel...
I dunno I've always had trouble getting those to burn vs. washed 100% cotton t-shirt style rags... not sure what they were maybe a poly blend, but they just kind of melted instead of burning good 🤷♂️ (I was using various old rags to light up and use to torch off some jacket nests and brush piles, some oil soaked, some diesel soaked all lit with a torch though 😉 just talking burn factor (these were the typical 3 color cheap bulk automotive detailing style microfiber towels red,yellow, and either green or blue.)
Hey I was thinking, old rags pick up urea from sweat. Urea is broken down into nitrites(NO2-) by bacteria, and then subsequently into nitrates(NO3-). Now nitrates can oxidize "fuels" when they break down under heat. So if you have charring going on, and are getting close to the ignition temperature, depending on the concentration of the nitrates, it might 'make it go', so to speak. Another possibility is that if the old rags are covered in a lot of fine fibers (fluff, basically) of cotton or wool, that's an ignition source right there, no nitrates needed.
When I was in the infantry early to late 80's, we used to use boiled linseed oil on the wood hardware of the FNC1 and C2 rifles. We always had to make sure at the end of the cleaning session, all rags were collected, put in a metal container outside and away from the building, lest something combusts. We also used a lot of CLP as well. Not sure if it's the combination on the two oils being used or not. I don't recall ever seeing a fire myself, but have heard tales of it happening and thus the process for cleanup afterwards.
The piece missing here is the cleanup ! If you stain something you have to clean up ! Mineral spirits, acetone or denatured alcohol is used to clean ! This I believe is the catalyst to get things started…
Cabinets shops that have had these fires (including one I personally worked at) use cotton t-shirt rags for the stain process and most make their own wood stains by mixing pigments in oil mixed with mineral spirits and boiled linseed oil. This mixture is then wiped/brushed on and wiped off. The application rags are thoroughly soaked with this mixture. There may be something in the pigments that aid in the combustion or just the way they are saturated. There also may be some super fine sawdust left from the prep sanding involved. I 100% know these fires can happen, we were lucky and it only got the plastic 55 gallon drum and didn't spread. But it was a disaster to clean up. 4500sq ft shop covered in soot. A helper had tossed some of the rags in the general drum trash bin instead of the safety can.
Those kitchen rags are supposed to be heat resistant for grabbing hot pots and pans out of the oven and off the grill. I would recognize that blue stripe anywhere.
I was going to say, you need old worn out shop rags / T -Shirts that have seen better days and washed about a million times , then you need to use them on a project and have them soaked but not saturated ...there is a difference ...I would say you throw them hap hazardly into a box / can ,etc leaving the lid off in a slightly ventilated garage or out building/ shop ...try this and you should get a fire...the rags should be cotton and ambient air temprature should be between 75° and 90° F for best results place near a rare and expensive wood working or Automotive project , motorcycle perhaps ♥ 🤔 I'm just trying to figure out the best conditions for the perfect experiment for our Good buddy AvE ! Cheers keep your Dick in a vice and spanks for watching !
Had it happen in a military maintenance shop. Steal trash can, oily rags and a wide variety of refuse. Probably some MEK, denatured alcohol and mineral spirits rags in there with rubber cement towels, too. We did outboard engines and rubber zodiak repairs. Got it outside quick fast and in a hurry. I’d agree that this is something that happens when the stars align but I don’t want them to align on my watch.
I’ll admit how I almost burned down the cabinet shop. I ran the construction business up front, the bosses brother in law was kept in beer money by way of building him a cabinet shop in the back. Full tilt German machines of the 80’s. Anyhow, I decided to make my father a frame for a painting I bought him. Linseed oil was the stain. I simply dropped the stain cloth and the wipe off cloth on the concrete floor. This was Saturday. Fast forward to Monday and my boss beat me to work, and asked about the rags. They were smoldering and he smelled the smoke. Once it happens to you, you don’t question why you can’t get it to work when you want too. You just make sure they won’t.
I was working with my dad in a canbinet shop as a kid. We had a belt sander burn itself to shit because the laquer we just sanded off was was still curing. It got hot in the collection bag and it went up in smoke. Luckily my dad had set it down on a metal table instead of the job we had just finished sprayng. We didnt lose the shop, luckily, and we learned a valuable lesson. Just because its not likely, doesnt mean it cant happen. Different material than BLO, but why take a chance of losing your empire of dirt over a stupid.
I saw a documentary a while ago about the mystery of a burnt mummy inside its own sarcophagus. They concluded that the mummy has been prepared in a hurry and they didn’t let the linseed oil dry before covering the mummy with linen strip (they used linseed oil to preserve the body of the mummy). Maybe to get a spontaneous reaction, you need a thinner material or linen cloth but it’s very common.
You want to force it? Pretreat the oil. Get a bottle and fill it about a quarter full of BLO. Add a dash of japan dryer or extra fine oxidized metal dust; iron is good, nickel is great, cobalt is outstanding. Lead technically better than all of them but you know the problems. Now, close the bottle and shake vigorously. Open the bottle and blow some air in, repeat. If it starts thickening at all stop immediately and get it on your cloth... most realistic way is basically to use it like it would be used, find a surface, soak one rag, smear it around, wipe it up with a dry rag. Max catalyst. Max absorbed oxygen. Max exposed surface area for extra oxygen. Minimal heat loss. There is indeed a moving sweet spot that guarantees a bigger pile is more susceptible because it compacts under it's own weight and at some point it's heavy enough to have a "perfect zone" of air permeability and heat retention. And you're probably on to something about the fire retardants, I'd never considered it. Soaking cloth overnight in oxyclean or the knockoff brand that is actually affordable should remove BFRs. You want to really double-whammy yourself, toss some used 0000 steel wool in with the cloth as it soaks, that'll load it with iron ions for catalysis. There's a reason dirty auto shop rags go up too, and it's catalyzed oxidation... no shortage of metal ions around an auto shop. Or you could just blow O2 from a welding torch through the pile. Don't stand too close.
@Ave Glad you came around to reality bumblfck! I can tell you I had a huge garage fire this way. An "antique finishes" brand Tung Oil soaked simoniz microfiber cloth balled inside a nitrile glove, I did It another time for science and it went again. I still have some of the stuff if you wanted i could mail it to you.
I dropped a gallon of liquid rawhide putting it away back in to 90s, used sawdust and the rags we sell, made out of old t-shirts, to clean it up. Shoveled it into my dumpster, didn't give it a second thought. Opened up the next morning and I could smell smoke, it's a lumber yard, so smoke is a particularly bad smell. I then spotted the dumpster, it was blue when I left, but it was black now. Went from right full to a few inches of ash in the bottom. It was a super hot day, and liquid rawhide was crazy flammable, I was never sure if it was actual spontaneous combustion or some idiot through out their still smoldering cigarette butt.
I once nearly burned my parents house down after spilling boiled linseed oil on the ground and soaking it up with paper towels and stuffing it in the garbage can. I knew about the spontaneous combustion thing but thought it was rare, so I just dumped a glass of water in and left. Maybe two hours later I walked in to a smoldering trash can and it burst into flames just as I walked in! I felt so stupid after that lol.
50 years ago as a technician for a building products firm I encountered 2 fires caused by exothermic reactions . One was with linseed oil soaked rags . The other was with the curing of phenolic resin bound mineral wool insulation boards...We had made a 4' x 4' x 3' skid load of the 1 inch insulation boards in our pilot plant and went to lunch . When we came back from lunch we found the load was on fire.. The interior of the load was a sphere of .molten mineral wool . The phenolic resin cure was also an exothermic reaction and we had mistakenly stacked the boards before the cure was completed . The curing heat built up so much it caused the fire .
I think the crux of the matter is the density of rags. To compact and they don't get enough oxygen for the reaction to occur. To loose and they don't hold hold in enough heat to ignite. Seems to me like there is a very narrow goldilocks zone where fire is possible.
I finished old Mosin stocks with with my buddy using linseed and the rags started smoking on the counter. This is a thing that happens. Even more fun after a couple cases of military grade beverages
My uncle's shop burned to the ground several years ago. He was a wood worker but also tinkered with tractors. If memory serves me, the fire Marshall deduced it started from old rags with linseed oil in a trash can but there was also other rags. Brake cleaner, carb cleaner, etc... possible that more than one chemical or off gas caused the ignition.
Heya AvE. As a kid, they always said in our textbooks, to never keep any oily rags near the furnace. We had Natural Gas -Methane, and never any oil. Confused me for years.
I’ve used varathane high solids floor stain in the gallon cansand applied it to hardwood floors with cotton towels and old t shirts and thrown the rags in a pile in the yard and they self ignite every time generally within two days
We get the same solution when we bail wet hay. It is the volume of liquid that causes the problem. What I would do is find a second hand clothing store and collect multiple types of fabrics. Tightly or loosely woven, knit, towel, and stuffed animal fur would all react differently to the oil. The stuffed animal fur seems strange until you realize that some paint brushes are made from this fabric. Cotton, silk, bamboo, wool, and so on will all react with different ignition times. Time to go full scale Sparky and burn down a building! There is nothing more dangerous than a certified electrical engineer!
Hah. I learned the term from a Jewish friend of mine. He was explaining why my neighbors warehouse likely caught fire and burned down. As for being offensive, it's only offensive if you let it be. I'm Greek... can you imagine all the things i could be offended about? I'd sure rather be called stingy than a h0m0. (oops... now alphabet+ is going to be offended)
Make no mistake, wet linseed and cotton rags stored in a cotton bag can burn!! Almost burned down our hangar one time after doing a Bell 47 center frame modification (soloy turbine conversion-chromoly tubes need to be filled and coated with linseed)-the rag bag and rags were found next to the drill press in a pile of ash, completely consumed. Coincidence and good house keeping kept the fire from proliferating and burning down the whole place. Stay frosty my friends👍🙏
I was pretty disappointed after the rather feeble attempt made in the previous video on this subject- you usually approach subjects like this with a little more sound research to make a fair test. It did in fact happen to my previous workplace - a heavy truck fabrication shop in Edmonton. Just a few months before my stint with them they built either a large trailer or flat deck truck with a wood deck. they slathered it with boiled linseed oil - applying it and cleaning up with rags. All the oily rags went into a couple of normal shop trash cans and were emptied together into the garbage dumpster on Friday afternoon. The manager got a call from the fire dept that weekend to come open the gate. The resulting fire did not involve any vehicles or buildings thankfully but caught everything else in the dumpster on fire and lit the cardboard recycling bin next to it as well. The local fire station is only maybe 6 or 8 blocks from the shop so once they got the call they were there very fast. Glad to see you took a second more educated attempt to resolve the confusion on this subject.
My recollection- from the many myths learned in childhood -is that the oily rags were dangerous only when stored in a closed container. This is a remembrance from the 50's and 60's, so I can't vouch for the accuracy (or the reality) of the memory, or truth that spontaneous combustion of oily rags is a 'thing'.
Closed was something I remember and something. About a certain oil that’s used and broken down is a catalyst to avoid and can’t remember what it even is
I was the most junior carpenters’ assistant on a crew in Martha’s Vineyard in 1994, and we were frantically finishing an upstairs room in a race to complete the job before a high fallutin’ honcho from some bank arrived with his family. Ambient temp was 95 American, humidity about the same percentage-wise. The contractor had made us all wear super-heavy rubber gloves as we rubbed every exposed surface with linseed oil finish. He’d instructed us, once a rag got too worn out, don’t put it down, just fling it out the giant open window at the north end of the building. So I wear my rag to lint, frantically rubbing the oil in, and like a good kid, I launch that rag out the window before looking for a fresh one. The cries from the exterior crew arrested me. That rag of mine burst into flame the second it left my hand. Burned the whole way down, and there wasn’t much to extinguish when it landed. It’s real. Not real common. But get the right combination of saturation, external temp, and a starter, in my case friction, and add oxygen. Fellah, it will ignite. Love your work. Love your stickers, teaching the new generation a respect for machines, and 70ies humor.
Hopefully you see this one, will you ever do a video on the Surfside condo collapse? Is their enough public information out there to do a review of what happened?
I didn't want to comment on video #1 because it seemed to be limited to linseed oil. But, now that it's been opened up to other types of oils and rags, I'll share. I used to work at a place that recycled clothing and other cloth into rags. One printing place bought our sweat pants rags, clean and sold them back to us dirty. We started having sporadic fires in our dryers and I began to look into them. It turned out that the "oily knit" which we got back from the printers was left in the dryers (dry) over the weekend and that was true for the previous two fires. I brought it up to management, but they didn't believe in spontaneous combustion. At one point, I reached in and felt heat building up in multiple baskets of these used rags that had been washed and dried. I had Management feel the heat in these baskets that had been processed days before, but they still wouldn't believe that it could get hot enough to eventually burn. Then we had another fire and another and so on (we were luckily able to contain all these fires ourselves). It wasn't until one day they discovered multiple baskets smoldering on the same day, that they began to believe. To remedy the situation, I believe we started washing the clothes with caustic soda, which somehow removed or neutralized the residual contamination, what was causing the reaction. I'm not saying that caustic soda will neutralize all oil in rags, but it worked in our very specific circumstance. Spontaneous combustion can certainly happen, but the conditions have to be just right. Out of the hundreds of baskets we processed, maybe 7 of them caught fire or smoldered. It seems to happen in an anaerobic state (without the presence of oxygen), more towards the inside of a pile of rags. At least that was my observation.
We had a fire start when a guy poured some leftover wood finish into a garbage can, that someone else had filled the bottom with sawdust. Luckily our wood shop was kept fairly clean and was tucked in effectively a concrete bunker. The plastic garbage can burned down but the sprinklers kept it contained to just the can.
Could be metal shavings or tree meat dust enhances the effect. I smell a set of controlled experiments with different mixtures in the works. Also, does modern boiled linseed oil have inhibiting additives?
Get them pretty wet then ring them out and pack them down tight in a bucket, like you're making room for more trash in the kitchen. Paper towels and red rags were the mix that I had pop off. The more violent the polymerization is the higher your chances should be, so more insulation=more better. Not sure if it had anything to do with it but mine was in a Home Depot bucket.
They very much need oxygen. That's one corner of the fire triangle - fuel, oxygen, heat. Remove any one of the three and the fire goes out. It's often recommended to put your used rags in a metal can with a lid. Even if they do stat to ignite, they'll consume all the oxygen in the can and self extinguish.
My crazy theory is that the rags initially need an *absence* of oxygen to slowly build up temperature in the core of the rag bundle, which gradually gets hotter and hotter until it eventually comes into contact with air then flashes over and bursts into flame.
I've experienced toasted rags on many occasions. First time was actually mop strings used to apply boiled linseed oil and graphite to shingles and associated cleanup rags. Smoke arose, and the texture change was obvious the next day. Now I prefer to leave such rags spread out to dry on a concrete patio far away from anything else combustible until they are good and dry. Never had toasty rags when done like that, only when wadded up like in a metal trash can (my second favorite method, still out there on the patio). Filling the can with water seems like a good thing, but makes a mess and the rags still need taken out a few at a time, spread out and left to dry. BTW, the oil polymerizes and the heat of that reaction can be intense if concentrated like in a mass of rags.
You may want to wipe up some dust and cobwebs with those rags before you just ball them up under the welder . The welder your going to write off not the good one😂
I've had a rag spontaneously combust on me while using linseed oil on some wood. Like you said, it was a an old t-shirt which had been washed a bunch. I threw the used rags in a plastic bag, and a few minutes later had a little fireball!
When you finish a piece of furniture with oil, the rag tends to end up quite saturated with oil. Another thing I was told is to never toss it into a ball, to spread it out instead. Also I'm absolutely clueless about stuff like that, but could the rubbing induce a static charge in the rag?
As a somewhat experienced treehumper , In my experience the nicest rags used in a shop are the once not pre-stained… after use those rags are drenched with oil, thrown in a bucket with dust, wood shavings carton boxes, notes and balls of painters tape… now it only needs a warm environment and time.
While many a stiff rag has been made from the after effects of some friction, thankfully the inclusion of boiled linseed oil in the mix seems to be rare.
Need to repeat the test with coconut butter.
When linseed oil is all you've got...
Don't knock it till you try it, right?
@@Electromagnetizery Self warming
More friction needed
My stiff rags only ever seem to ignite a deep resentment and existential dread, but never a fire... perhaps a slight burning sensation
I bust in my mom's panties and put them back in the dirty clothes. I'm sure she's found them while loading the washer by now. She probably thinks she just has some extra cheese.
😆
Better get that checked out
No pain, no gain
What a classy comment
Been a firefighter for 25 years and been to a few spontaneous combustion fires at woodworking shops and a few shops usually at machine shops with fine shavings from lathe and mill work usually involves exotics like magnesium and fine aluminum with older shop rags heavily worn and an amagumation of cleaners or lubricants, we tried at the station many times the exact same experiments as you and 9 times out of 10 no success but the times it did chooch believe me she chooched hard and fast once it starts the smolder it’s all over
As a painter of 30 years I can say that spontaneous combustion is real. Been many times we’ve had to put our own fires out. Watco oil is the most combustible.
We used to have old oil drums cut down and the top rolled, used as waste bins, all cloths were put in there and collected to be sent out for cleaning, they were used for everything, started out white or yellow, ended up dirty grey/black, covered in oil, cutting fluid, grinding fluid (like paraffin) the guy who came round was on holiday, so they didn't get emptied, one started smoking and caught fire, it does happen, no external source, heat built up some sort of reaction and woof it went up.
that's due to the drying agents
@@michaellong4897 I had a fire in a building just a couple of weeks ago whose source was bagged varnish rags. Oh that one's gonna cost'm. Thankfully, the nearest sprinkler activated.
Magnesium and oil do not mix very well. If you don't believe me, believe the paint that burnt off my lathe.
Fifty odd plus years ago at an elementary school assembly on fire safety the instructor put some oily rags in a metal case with a glass front door. He told us it may or may not produce results by the end of the presentation. The presentation was also notable in that he had a large glass jar that he put a few drops of gasoline in then rotated it around to smear the gas around. He then put a cup or so of soapy water in the jar, shook it around to wash out all of the jar and poured it out. Then he lit a long wooden match and stuck it in the jar. WOOSH! There were enough fumes left to blaze, however briefly.
By the end of his presentation the spontaneous combustion experiment was starting to produce visible smoke.
Didn't learn a lot that I should have in school but this has stayed with me.
If only there was a physical demonstration/hands on way to teach calculus or algebra 2, I'd have maybe picked up on it the first try.
Arson 101, another on a long list of subjects axed from our public school curricula, its a wonder kids know anything at all nowadays.
I'm guessing, it's not unusual to have a little gasoline mixed in with greasy, oily, gritty shop rags
@@deletesoon70 we live in the information age (full of lots of misinformation) if kids didn't know anything kinda on them
My father once tried pouring diesel from a jerry can to get a fire going a bit better and it blew out the back of the can, turns out there had previously been gasoline in it before the diesel that was currently in it. Might have been made worse by the fact that it was below freezing in the middle of winter.
As a lad my family had a powerboat on lake Erie. One day in early summer, probably June, I was tasked with oiling the teak handrails and walk boards. I would have been using Teak Oil which is probably an amalgamation of various oils. Anyway, at one point I set my rags down on the back of rhe folded down bench seat which was red vinyl. When I turned around to grab them a few minutes later they were emitting copious amounts of smoke and were almost too hot to pick up and throw in the lake. Fortunately the vinyl upholstery was not damaged, otherwise my backside would have been. In my case a little sunshine and a warm surface were all that was needed for combustion to commence. Love your videos. Keep up the good work
The sun really is trying to kill us all..
If you couldn’t pick them up, did you grab them with pliers or hook them on a screwdriver or something?
@@Scrogan
_"... were almost too hot to pick up and throw in the lake."_
i think the active word there is "almost".
@@Scrogan He wrote "almost". I guess using some other thing if they were too hot would be a good choice.
@@Scrogan Hey James. As I said in my post they were almost too hot to pick up. I believe I quickly swept them off the bench and into the water. This was over 40 years ago so I’m not positive as to how I handled them. They weren’t on fire but smoking and hot.
Cheers
Worked for 30+ years in a large fire dept, have seen linseed oil auto ignition a few times over the years. One common thing: rags usually made of old worn cotton clothing and they are not soaked with oil, just damp from rubbing wood (heeey-oh!) and crunched up in a bucket or trash can. They are a bitch to find when we are called for smell of smoke in the house and can't figure out where it's coming from... until you notice the nice freshly oiled antique furniture. :)
45 years ago I was a painting and custom decorating contractor. I had come into the trade under the tillage of a couple of very old time masters of the trade. So long ago that I was taught the art of faux finishing using feathers and combs to create a wood grain finish.
Job site security and job site housekeeping were important. Two basic rules:
1) Never put a lid on a can without ensuring that it is properly sealed. Having the lid leave the bottle as you picked it up was a recipe for disaster. Knocking over a gallon of paint was an expensive mess.
2) Do not leave the rags you used to rub down oil based stain in a heap. Spread them out or put them in the metal air tight container, preferably outside.
I got a contract to work with a designer in a very interesting small multiplex condo project. Custom wood cabinets and trim, beautiful fabrics to hang on the walls, great finishes and colours to work with. Nice job.
One day another tenant approached me about doing some work in his unit. We discussed the project on site. He came to the conclusion that my price was too high.
Early Sunday morning a couple of weeks later I got a call from one of my lead hands. He had a significant problem on a side job, "Could I come down and give him some advice?"
I knew the site as he gave me the address.
Steve hand rubbed wood filler and stain into the wood for a wall of book case. Took his oily rags, wadded them up and threw them into a corner on the concrete sub-floor. Over night they oxidized in an exothermic reaction and burst into flames. The room was covered in soot and very fine ash.
Steve was very lucky. The smoke and soot damage had been limited by a closed door, the rags were mainly good old cotton t shirts and the wad was not that big. No insurance but limited damage.
I turned to the owner and told him that we would have it cleaned up in 48 hrs. Brought in a couple of apprentices to wash the fine strings of black carbon soot off of every surface. Dust and vacuum the rest of the apartment. Steve and I refinished the walls, ceiling, trim and woodwork in the room.
Never brought it up to Steve again. He could leave any time he wanted. He became one of my most skilled and loyal employees. He went on to a successful career in the painting industry after I retired.
My stiff socks covered in coconut oil haven't spontaneously combusted yet.
I imagine that to get actual flames you need a "perfect storm" of material, oil content and ventilation which is why it is a rare event. But you got your rags hot enough to worry about, so good job scooching it under the welding machine. Those units know how to handle heat.
Friend almost burnt down her house this way, was rags in the sink in the laundry getting hit by direct sunlight through the window that was cracked for ventilation.
And of course, the likelihood of experiencing combustion is inversely proportional to how much you desire it.
Put them in the summer sun. They'll be smokin more than a deadhead in no time.
Uv makes the oil cure faster, which makes heat.
I coated some beams for a raised bed in late June last year. The beams actually heated enough I could've cooked on them. Hotter than the adjacent concrete.
The rags I tossed to the side were smoking when I came back from my AC break. Maybe 20-30 after use. Note, I had been fully saturating them. Old 100% cotton reusable diaper liners.
Told the wife she should've used em as granny-string liners, see as how cold it seems to have been lately
@@Chris.Davies this comment should be pinned under this video. Also, water takes twice as long to boil if you got your peepers fixated on it.
I left can of boiled linseed oil in my garage for 10 years. And no fire. That is because it is in the can. If it was waded in rags and news paper. Then that garage would have been burnt a while ago. Only reason it was never on fire is cause I listened to the old guys when I was a kid some 20 years ago. I am a millennial that listened. Shocking isn't it. And yet I get told that i am not listening and doing things wrong. That couldn't be further from the truth because those are women that make these odd claims.
I worked in HVAC. I designed refrigeration pack units (the engine unit that makes the cold out the back of the factory/ supermarket)
We had lagging( plastic based) on installed units catch fire.
We experimented with this in the factory and couldn get the insulation to catch fire with the oxy acetylene torches, it just melted and burned.
But we ignited it with a end of a cigarette.
We concluded the torch was too hot and efficient and it reacted with all the oxygen and so the lagging (plastic) couldn't. So it melted and burned rather than inflamed.
I.e. the cooler heat sources could ignite it, whilst the extremely hot (brazing) tempretures could not.
The one I saw personally was a job site wherein they were spraying hardening oil finish onto the old but newly-exposed rafters of a remodel. The cleanup rags were properly disposed of in an enclosed water filled metal bucket. The floor was carefully swept and dumped in a plastic waste container. It was the latter that self ignited, with the construction dust mixed with the fine overspray droplets of oil, igniting several hours after work was completed. Luckily it was discovered before it caught the subfloor afire, so the only damage was noxious smoke stink and a fair bit of melted trash can plastic to be scraped off the floor.
Take one of those rags, saturate it with linseed oil and wring it out. Then wad up that rag and put it under that pile of rags and wait. If it's in a warm or hot location it can catch fire in an hour or less. I have seen it happen. If it's in a cold location like inside my garage in the winter it can take as much as 12 hours. Yes, before I knew about this, I treated a cutting board with linseed oil and threw the used rag back in my box of rags. It caught fire and burned down the garage about 12 hours later. A completely saturated wet rag will not self ignite and I know painters that have been storing staining rags inside their cans of stain for years. If you lay or hang a rag with linseed oil on it out in the open it will not build up enough heat to ignite. Linseed oil is in many stain and oil finish products. To be safe you must treat them all the same way. The Chief of the fire crew that extinguished my garage told me BBQ charcoal briquettes can also spontaneously ignite if they are allowed to get moist and they are stored where there is little or no circulating air. The first thing he asked me as he was filling out his report was if I had oily rags or charcoal briquettes stored in the cabinet where they determined the fire originated. What a life lesson that was!
Reminds me of the time my wife was shocked when she opened the electric bill and water bill at the same time.
In my case, the (almost) fire was caused by BLO soaked paper toweling (used to clean up a spill) with used cotton rags (used for oil application) on top, piled fairly tightly in a little steel waste can..I wanna say it stood for maybe three-four hours before it cooked off, and I tossed it outside in the snow before actual flames..it was charred in the middle pretty well, though..filled my basement with smoke, by yimminy!
I'm afraid I lack experience with boiled linseed oil, but I do know that regular vegetable oil on 'clean' cloths will spontaneously ignite, given half a chance. My son was working at a restaurant just up the road from our house when a large tub of cooking oil was spilled in the kitchen. The crew grabbed every dishcloth they could find and mopped it up; kitchen was clean, but they were now very short of dishcloths, so one of the guys brought them home for a quick wash.
They came back as a neat stack of freshly laundered and folded towels and were left in a side room. My son kept smelling smoke and checking the room, but there was nothing to see. He was about to leave for the day, but stuck his head in the room one last time, to find a thick column of smoke rising from the dishcloths. Opening the window, he grabbed the stack and threw them out. As they opened out in the fresh air they ignited and it took a fire extinguisher to put them out.
Turns out that oily cloths in a modern washing machine at the default setting - probably 40 centigrade - meant that they looked clean, but still held a lot of oil. A good run through the drier on a high setting and a quick folding made for a thick stack of hot, oily cotton. From that start it took less than an hour for them to reach flashpoint.
Ooo yeah, use those rags to sop that oily goodness and chooch er round. Wanna make sure that’s all soaked and saturated, like you were oilin yer “ insert ya crude Canuck slang here “
Let that cookin in a pile in da middle of your most flammable possessions and Bob’s yer Uncle!
Also works wit epoxy resin, wood dust and juuuust the right amount of moisture
Go ahead, ask me how I know
@@wesleach2680how'd you know?
There are a number of variables at play.
First off is ambient temperature. Reactions happen faster with increasing temperatures, and the more the fuel has to heat to reach the "runaway" point, then the more likely it is to remain cool enough not to get there.
Next is the composition of the oil. Specifically the amount of drying agent (oxidation catalyst) that has been added. "Japan drier" is added so you don't have to wait a week between coats, and it contributes to spontaneous combustion issue.
The form of rags and rag-heap is another can of worms. To get fire, oxygen needs to be able to reach the oil, and loose crumpling (or even spreading out) helps that. BUT the more the rags are spread out, the more surface area they have to lose heat. The more rags you have in a pile, the more the central rags are insulated, which helps heat build, but the denser and bigger the pile, the harder it is for combustion products to escape and allow more oxygen in (smothering). The texture of the rags will drastically alter how they insulate, and how much surface area they have. Terry cloth is probably about optimal for getting fire. How saturated the rags are with oil is another variable. Too wet and it is harder for the O2 to reach the inner parts, too dry and the reaction may be slowed too much.
How hard the rags are to start with matters quite a bit. If the oil has completely cured already, it isn't going to oxidize farther and cook off...so fresh oil is probably most prone to cooking off, and if the rags are quite wet, it is thin enough to soak through a rag heap and improve oxidation potential.
Finally, there is altitude. In the summer, there is about 20% less O2 available in Denver vs. sea level, so that will help keep things a bit cooler. (In the winter, the cold increases density a bit, but that helps prevent the fire as well, so probably it offsets.) Keep in mind, that there will often be just enough of a reaction to reach combustion, so slowing things down by 20% will be plenty of difference in many cases.
With the pile/trash can, I feel like it _must_ be oxygen starved to start a fire. The core of the pile gets hot but doesn't ignite, which speeds the drying reaction, which generates more heat, which speeds the reaction, etc. After this cycle runs for a while, the outer layers that _do_ have enough oxygen start to smolder and eventually burst into flames.
Jewish fire investigator here, and that "Jewish Lightning" had me rolling on the floor. In our area, we have seen an increase in these kinds of fires. Your insight into old rags vs new rags is interesting. Most of the fires that we have seen involved old rags. Many have involved a certain yellow canned stain from the local Home Despot.
Also known as "financial combustion".
Most of my old rags are stained yellow….. I’ve said too much.
Saul and Hymie are sitting on the beach in Miami. Saul ask Hymie how things are. Hymie says: “Ok. My business burned to the ground, but I got the insurance and was able to retire here. How are you?” Saul replies: “Good, good. But I have a very similar story! My business was destroyed by a flood, but I too collected the insurance and was able to retire here.” They both sit for a minute, contemplating the sea, then Hymie turns to Saul and asks: “A flood? How do you start a flood?!”
It is always good to remember that just because something doesn't work the first time you do it, doesn't mean it can't work. The bane of science.
Hey AvE,
Just a heads-up, it’s probably boron, not bromine, that’s the fire suppressant. Boron used to be used for treating drapes for theaters, to keep them for catching fire in old theaters. Boron (or more specifically, boric acid) is also used to treat paper wadding to keep the separation charge in model rockets from scorching/burning holes in the recovery parachutes.
Bromine, on the other hand, is a really nasty element. If you want, go check out nilered’s video on distilling it. Not really something you want to use near people, side effects tend to include rapid onset death.
Love what you’re doing, keep up the good work!
Bromine absolutely used to be used in FR clothing and some other fire-resistant materials, but efforts have been made to find better alternatives due to the concerns of toxicity. Not sure to what degree it has been phased out nowadays, but for a while it was basically the mainstay of fire retardants!
This sheds new light on why WW2 aircraft carriers (and maybe current ones, too, I don't know) had dedicated storage space for oily rags that could be doused with C02. I guess it would be just embarrassing to survive a dive bomber attack and lose the ship to a... rag.
I have to admit that I assumed this exothermic reaction only happened with oils that "cure", like boiled linseed oil.
I didnt realise that non-curing oils could ignite too. The pyromaniacs of the world salute you Sir.
Your standard pyromaniac wouldn't be too excited at the off chance of leaving an olive oil soaked rag and it setting alight.
Your standard arsonist on the other hand...
A pyromaniac would never have the patience to wait for a fire to start this way. An arsonist, on the other hand...
@@Bacteriophagebs yeah, us pyros would add some potassium chlorate. Arsonists are scum
coal piles in the basement burned down many houses, always burn all the coal before summer and start a new pile from scratch.
@@wadestanton thx I didnt know that.
Our 33 gallon rubbermaid outdoor "Brute" trashcan burned last night, down to a pile of ashes in the surrounding leaves. My son had applied Presealer with red, paper shop towels followed by stain with red, paper shop towels. Though the paper towels appeared dry, when thrown into this outdoor trashcan, and the lid put on, the chemical reaction was enough to catch fire.
Glad you revisited this, I had no reason to suspect my experience with it happening at work was insurance fraud. Especially because they put it out before real damage was done.
Also, if I use BLO, I burn the rags when I'm done.
Maybe its the pyro in me but that is exactly what I do...
Just put the used rags in an empty 1 gal METAL paint can ... Place the can on the driveway and hit it with a propane torch... 20 min later problem solved.
I like my fires and all but only on my own terms :-)
I worked in a paint store in a former life, we cleaned up a spill once with cotton rags, and next morning the can was smoking. It may not happen often, but it only has to happen once for a come to Jesus moment. YMMV.
Clean your tree carcass oven with one of those rags and add it to the mix, will help it chooch. Also you are right with the assumption that older fabric catches on fire better, not only because of chemicals, but also because the fibres are a bit worn down and have more surface area.
Your channel is so amazing. I watch often and review older videos all the time. I like to read comments where people try to imitate your language and dialect. I understand that imitation is the best way of flattery. You are unique and that is what I find wonderful about your channel.
The friction between the insurance policy and the mortgage causes many structural fires.
The resident elder at work says you need to mix it with turpentine. He says equal parts boiled linseed and turpentine is what his grandad used to waterproof his old cedar picnic table...
The one with the burn stains?
Pool shock and brake fluid....there's a reaction to watch. I'm a retired firefighter and also fire investigator. That was one of the combinations we were taught in investigation class (which is really and how to class on how to be an arsonist and not get caught) when talking about HTAs (high temperature accelerants). That combo burns hot enough to melt glass and will spontaneously ignite over time but even quicker when heated. Putting brake fluid in a coffee pot with the pot filled with pool shock was a popular arson trick at one time. I think the pool shock chemicals have changed a bit over time though
Lol. Thanks for sharing this with all the pyros who watch ave!
Good to see you posting again, Ave. You never fail to inform, entertain and ignite.
Hey man really great video even though nothing really happened. A thrilling saga of danger, doubt, some Latin, and explosive textiles. Ya even left us with a cliffhanger.
Yes! Discourse rather than "don't do that because I heard it was bad".
@@arduinoversusevil2025 That looked like you might have been using 'creatively aquired' hospital linen, generally pre-treated with bromine anti flame and anti bacterial, woulda impaired self ignition so you did well. :)
I've put cloth in the microwave all my life, one day I put a towel in and instant fire. I found out that towel manufactures have taken precautions to insure there is no metal particles in the fabric since the microwave became popular, but from the early 90s back did not. Don't put your grandmother's towels in the microwave.
Might try old cotton t shirts? We use old t shirts as rags frequently. Lacl of bromine in the t shirts. Plus the cotton has been worn in stretched and the fibers have a bit more frayed edges. Just a thought?
@@russelltom2087 Was reading tips for budget cooking so tried the suggestion of microwave popcorn kernels in a paper bag, the brown paper bag instantly went incandescent; then burst into flame upon the door being opened, spitting hot popcorn everywhere :)
Many years ago, my boss told me about his apprentice days working in a boatyard, building fiberglass-hulled yachts. Big, expensive boats. Anyway, after they got the top and bottom parts glued together, crews had to go inside with grinders and clear up all the flash and nastiness sticking out everywhere. Apparently some chemical off-gassed by the fiberglass resin is quite flammable, and it was a common occurrence that a crew would be inside a hull grinding away, there would be a WHUMP, then the they'd come walking out, clothes smoking and looking slightly dazed.
More to the point here, the leftover resin also couldn't be left in a big pot to harden, since it would easily heat up to the point of blackening and potential ignition.
The wife overheard the vijeo as often happens.
Wife: Homunculus, that’s the human representation of the parts of the brain.
Me: is it?
Wife: wait, is he talking about wacking off into a sock
Me: maybe
Wife: I’m out!
You got yourself a keeper!
Your rags have way too little oil on them. Most oil soaked rags are actually soaked!
The area I grew up in had more than a few, shall we say, unexplained fires. To the point that we stopped referring to them as 'arsons', but instead called them 'aggressive urban renewal'.
Like a controlled burn, for the city folks. That's only fair.
What people don't realize in this specieisist world is that hard times aren't limited to humans. With an economic downturn the increased stress is invariably linked to higher rates of smoking and in turn we seem to find more mice with matches. Most people are unaware that mice with matches are extremely careless and dangerous, causing many fires that would otherwise seem suspicious. As a corollary, my experience is that warm weather is another time we see increases in the number of mice with matches in outdoor settings. They pop up in many recreational areas and like anything else they like to kick back and relax after a long week with a nice cheese infused microbrew IPA and a pack of Miceboros, next thing you know a brush fire breaks out... Those mice with matches can rival the worst of any Jewish lightning supercells.
@@autonomousindividual7780 Keeps the economy growing, just like redwood seeds need their coating burned off.
The common thread in all these stories seems to be an overfilled trashcan. The dense packing gives you the smoldering heat, and the looser pile on top gives you the surface area to start a fire.
I was installing cabinets in a very expensive house a few years ago, I came in to work one morning and was on the upper floor of the house working and I could smell a burning smell, I knew it wasn't a good smell. I started going around the house trying to find the source of this smell. Turns out the carpenters building the house oiled the back deck late the day before and the apprentices left all the oil soaked rags piled up on the kitchen counter on top of cardboard floor protection in front of a fan! I found the pile of rags smouldering and smoking, which was the cause of the burning smell! They were extremely lucky they didn't burn this house to the ground, say if they did this on a Friday afternoon and the rags had longer to smoulder!!! I had always been taught that this could happen, but this was the first time I had experienced it first hand.
I remember making 3-2-1 with my father that passed last month, remember him bellowing to lay the rags out flat. Good times
From my experience, as have had and seen this happen:
To get the reaction faster, a lack of fresh air that cools the rags seems to be important. I actually think this is like what happens in a pile of green mulch and may be related to bacteria. I do not think the result happens as much with clean oil/rags. I have seen it happen in a relatively air sealed bin.
IE: A deep pile of dirty linseed soaked rags will ignite faster. Likewise a small pile in a deep container will ignite faster. Likewise as you mentioned higher temperatures also accelerate the reaction.
The wetter/dirtier the rags seems to be a factor.
It does take a couple hours. Set up a 20-30 gallon metal trashcan outdoors with tight pile of dirty linseed soaked rags at the bottom and a camera nearby. It will happen when the factors come together.
At least some types of rotting are exothermic. If you roll hay that isn't properly dried (and especially if you stack it in a barn with front forks after doing so), the barn will burn to the ground. I'm not sure if the underlying plant content of the hay (fescue vs clover vs. whatever) matters.
The go-to way to dealing with oily rags is either a) stick them in one of those dedicated, sealable fireproof rag cans, or b) hang them up with good ventilation where any heat that comes from them curing cannot build up to ignition point. As someone who oils my tools' shafts only rarely, I peg 'em on the ol' Hills Hoist over night.
I usually hear these starting from an over filled trash can. When a trashcan is full, what do we do? Cram it down as tight as we can. Once you can't cram it, you just pile it on top. The tightly compressed rags generate a ton of heat, igniting the loosely piled rags that have enough oxygen to ignite.
The other way I hear about it happening is when they're in a mound on the floor, usually in a shop or some place with still air. The core of the mound gets hot because there's no air movement, but once it's past a certain point the heat rising starts to draw air into the bottom of the pile giving it an oxygen source to start smoldering.
I own a laundromat. A local restaurant was cleaning their rags and one time I was cleaning lint drawers and I opened the dryer door as I thought I saw smoke. When I opened the door it ignited and flames shot up. So told the owner, please don’t wash your oil and grease soaked rags in our gas driers, it could burn the building down. Two weeks later, I’m working at my day job as a metal roof installer and I get a call from someone saying my laundromat was on fire. The restaurant owner did it again. Luckily it only ruined my $4500 drier, and thankfully a cook at a different restaurant smelled smoke and put the fire out. I looked at my security camera footage and the rags ignited 2 hours after the drier had stopped. The owner with the rags said he would pay for the drier, he soon sold his business and never did.
i always followed the rule because i couldn't figure out how the man was holding us down by not throwing oily rags in the trash.
The MAN holds you down by forcing you to go to special trash collection points. Don't let the scheme of "fire safety" get in your way of convenience. Besides, a healthy neighborhood naturally catches on fire once or twice a year during dry season, fire suppression systems have gotten in the way of this.
Created an oily rag fire myself. In this case it was rags from a hotel kitchen. I washed them and dried them (propane fired dryer), then placed them in the bucket to take back up to the kitchen. I went back to folding sheets but soon my eyes were stinging. Looked around and the laundry was full of smoke. Looked down at the bucket just as it burst into flames. So, grabbed the handle and out to the parking lot to dump it and stomp it out. Turns out the rags had wound around one another into a tight mass and smoldered in the bucket. Helps to start with a heat source for sure.
I’ve had linseed oil rags get warm, but what I’ve have nearly ignite were shop towels and rags used to clean up a gallon of bleach that spilled. Charred up and started smoking in minutes!
thats some hot bleach.
True story. We have a large US Forest Circus fire and admin complex in our border town below the Quetico. Standard maintenance protocol calls for re-finishing of all hand tools (shovels, collins axe etc). Linseed is the drink of choice. Almost burnt their brand new facility down.
I can't be the only (former) furniture maker who finds it hard to believe that these fires started in a rag barrel that had exclusively BLO rags in it. Why? Because I've never seen carpenters give enough of a rats arse to actually keep those rags separated. The solution is obvious though, don't use a barrel, just use a laundry rack. That way the heat dissipates easily and no fire will happen.
Fires happen when BLO rags are balled up with carnauba wax and shellac rags. The BLO provides the heat and the carnauba wax is usually dissolved in turpentine, and obviously shellac is dissolved in alcohol. Both of those have low enough autoignition points where the vapour could actually ignite. It's like a molotov, you put in diesel (blo) for the staying power, but you need petrol (turps/alcohol) to get the party started.
But again, in all the wood shops where I have worked, if there was a rag barrel, no one would care enough to not just toss their rag with whatever solvent or oil on it in that barrel. It's 5'o clock. It's time to go home. The boss man ain't payin no more. Rag in the barrel is all the effort they can expect at that point.
I know numerous floor refinishers that burned their van, shop or even homeowners house down due to stain soaked rags.
I had a rag spontaneously combust after oiling some axe handles with boiled linseed. However there were other solvents on said rag previously. But within 15 minutes of me setting the rag down she was in full flame.
About 20ish years ago, when I was a young NDT tech working at the Esso refinery in Nanticoke, Ontario, I saw such a thing. No fire. We got there before it happened. But it was smoking the whole fab shop up and it was freaking hot! Just a bunch of machine shop rags in a steel drum in a hot building.
Once found charred kraft insulation paper during a remodel. No electrical or plumbing nearby. There was a joist cavity used as an air return. Sealed with untreated sheet steel...
Your vocabulary is incredible! Thanks for the V-J-O 👍🇺🇸🦅🍻
I can guarantee you that a micro fibre cloth soaked in boiled linseed oil, wadded up into a ball will, chooch.
I dunno I've always had trouble getting those to burn vs. washed 100% cotton t-shirt style rags... not sure what they were maybe a poly blend, but they just kind of melted instead of burning good 🤷♂️ (I was using various old rags to light up and use to torch off some jacket nests and brush piles, some oil soaked, some diesel soaked all lit with a torch though 😉 just talking burn factor (these were the typical 3 color cheap bulk automotive detailing style microfiber towels red,yellow, and either green or blue.)
Hey I was thinking, old rags pick up urea from sweat. Urea is broken down into nitrites(NO2-) by bacteria, and then subsequently into nitrates(NO3-). Now nitrates can oxidize "fuels" when they break down under heat. So if you have charring going on, and are getting close to the ignition temperature, depending on the concentration of the nitrates, it might 'make it go', so to speak. Another possibility is that if the old rags are covered in a lot of fine fibers (fluff, basically) of cotton or wool, that's an ignition source right there, no nitrates needed.
Some rental red shop rags towards the end of their service life may be just the tender yer after.
When I was in the infantry early to late 80's, we used to use boiled linseed oil on the wood hardware of the FNC1 and C2 rifles. We always had to make sure at the end of the cleaning session, all rags were collected, put in a metal container outside and away from the building, lest something combusts. We also used a lot of CLP as well. Not sure if it's the combination on the two oils being used or not. I don't recall ever seeing a fire myself, but have heard tales of it happening and thus the process for cleanup afterwards.
What is CLP?
@@Therapistinthewhitehouse Break Free CLP (MIL-SPEC 63460F Type-A) I think it stands for Clean, Lubricant, Protect.
The piece missing here is the cleanup ! If you stain something you have to clean up ! Mineral spirits, acetone or denatured alcohol is used to clean ! This I believe is the catalyst to get things started…
Cabinets shops that have had these fires (including one I personally worked at) use cotton t-shirt rags for the stain process and most make their own wood stains by mixing pigments in oil mixed with mineral spirits and boiled linseed oil. This mixture is then wiped/brushed on and wiped off. The application rags are thoroughly soaked with this mixture. There may be something in the pigments that aid in the combustion or just the way they are saturated. There also may be some super fine sawdust left from the prep sanding involved. I 100% know these fires can happen, we were lucky and it only got the plastic 55 gallon drum and didn't spread. But it was a disaster to clean up. 4500sq ft shop covered in soot. A helper had tossed some of the rags in the general drum trash bin instead of the safety can.
Those kitchen rags are supposed to be heat resistant for grabbing hot pots and pans out of the oven and off the grill. I would recognize that blue stripe anywhere.
I was going to say, you need old worn out shop rags / T -Shirts that have seen better days and washed about a million times , then you need to use them on a project and have them soaked but not saturated ...there is a difference ...I would say you throw them hap hazardly into a box / can ,etc leaving the lid off in a slightly ventilated garage or out building/ shop ...try this and you should get a fire...the rags should be cotton and ambient air temprature should be between 75° and 90° F for best results place near a rare and expensive wood working or Automotive project , motorcycle perhaps ♥ 🤔
I'm just trying to figure out the best conditions for the perfect experiment for our Good buddy AvE ! Cheers keep your Dick in a vice and spanks for watching !
Had it happen in a military maintenance shop. Steal trash can, oily rags and a wide variety of refuse. Probably some MEK, denatured alcohol and mineral spirits rags in there with rubber cement towels, too. We did outboard engines and rubber zodiak repairs.
Got it outside quick fast and in a hurry.
I’d agree that this is something that happens when the stars align but I don’t want them to align on my watch.
As a oil painter yup drying oil will a fire up. Expecialy raw linseed oil, on rags . No rags or raw linseed oil in my studio .
I’ll admit how I almost burned down the cabinet shop. I ran the construction business up front, the bosses brother in law was kept in beer money by way of building him a cabinet shop in the back. Full tilt German machines of the 80’s. Anyhow, I decided to make my father a frame for a painting I bought him. Linseed oil was the stain. I simply dropped the stain cloth and the wipe off cloth on the concrete floor. This was Saturday. Fast forward to Monday and my boss beat me to work, and asked about the rags. They were smoldering and he smelled the smoke. Once it happens to you, you don’t question why you can’t get it to work when you want too. You just make sure they won’t.
old rags, saw dust, just recreate some common woodworkers trash can, put some linseed soaked paper towels in the mix as well.
I was working with my dad in a canbinet shop as a kid. We had a belt sander burn itself to shit because the laquer we just sanded off was was still curing. It got hot in the collection bag and it went up in smoke. Luckily my dad had set it down on a metal table instead of the job we had just finished sprayng. We didnt lose the shop, luckily, and we learned a valuable lesson. Just because its not likely, doesnt mean it cant happen. Different material than BLO, but why take a chance of losing your empire of dirt over a stupid.
What started the fire? Oh look an oily rag! -Burr
Great follow up - starting to sound like your old self again! Thanks for the effort!
I saw a documentary a while ago about the mystery of a burnt mummy inside its own sarcophagus. They concluded that the mummy has been prepared in a hurry and they didn’t let the linseed oil dry before covering the mummy with linen strip (they used linseed oil to preserve the body of the mummy). Maybe to get a spontaneous reaction, you need a thinner material or linen cloth but it’s very common.
sarcophagus
@@JohnLeePettimoreIII Mummy heartburn; a sarcophagus with a hot esophagus..
You want to force it? Pretreat the oil. Get a bottle and fill it about a quarter full of BLO. Add a dash of japan dryer or extra fine oxidized metal dust; iron is good, nickel is great, cobalt is outstanding. Lead technically better than all of them but you know the problems. Now, close the bottle and shake vigorously. Open the bottle and blow some air in, repeat. If it starts thickening at all stop immediately and get it on your cloth... most realistic way is basically to use it like it would be used, find a surface, soak one rag, smear it around, wipe it up with a dry rag.
Max catalyst. Max absorbed oxygen. Max exposed surface area for extra oxygen. Minimal heat loss. There is indeed a moving sweet spot that guarantees a bigger pile is more susceptible because it compacts under it's own weight and at some point it's heavy enough to have a "perfect zone" of air permeability and heat retention.
And you're probably on to something about the fire retardants, I'd never considered it. Soaking cloth overnight in oxyclean or the knockoff brand that is actually affordable should remove BFRs. You want to really double-whammy yourself, toss some used 0000 steel wool in with the cloth as it soaks, that'll load it with iron ions for catalysis. There's a reason dirty auto shop rags go up too, and it's catalyzed oxidation... no shortage of metal ions around an auto shop.
Or you could just blow O2 from a welding torch through the pile. Don't stand too close.
@Ave Glad you came around to reality bumblfck! I can tell you I had a huge garage fire this way. An "antique finishes" brand Tung Oil soaked simoniz microfiber cloth balled inside a nitrile glove, I did It another time for science and it went again. I still have some of the stuff if you wanted i could mail it to you.
I dropped a gallon of liquid rawhide putting it away back in to 90s, used sawdust and the rags we sell, made out of old t-shirts, to clean it up. Shoveled it into my dumpster, didn't give it a second thought. Opened up the next morning and I could smell smoke, it's a lumber yard, so smoke is a particularly bad smell. I then spotted the dumpster, it was blue when I left, but it was black now. Went from right full to a few inches of ash in the bottom. It was a super hot day, and liquid rawhide was crazy flammable, I was never sure if it was actual spontaneous combustion or some idiot through out their still smoldering cigarette butt.
I'll need to rig up some forced ventilation for those old t-shirts that my wife keeps finding between the headboard and the mattress.
You're not talking wnak sock there are we buddy. That would be a whole waste of a pickle.
I literally had a spontaneous oil rag fire in my shop a day after your first video... coincidence? I think not!
I once nearly burned my parents house down after spilling boiled linseed oil on the ground and soaking it up with paper towels and stuffing it in the garbage can. I knew about the spontaneous combustion thing but thought it was rare, so I just dumped a glass of water in and left. Maybe two hours later I walked in to a smoldering trash can and it burst into flames just as I walked in! I felt so stupid after that lol.
50 years ago as a technician for a building products firm I encountered 2 fires caused by exothermic reactions . One was with linseed oil soaked rags . The other was with the curing of phenolic resin bound mineral wool insulation boards...We had made a 4' x 4' x 3' skid load of the 1 inch insulation boards in our pilot plant and went to lunch . When we came back from lunch we found the load was on fire.. The interior of the load was a sphere of .molten mineral wool . The phenolic resin cure was also an exothermic reaction and we had mistakenly stacked the boards before the cure was completed . The curing heat built up so much it caused the fire .
I think the crux of the matter is the density of rags.
To compact and they don't get enough oxygen for the reaction to occur.
To loose and they don't hold hold in enough heat to ignite.
Seems to me like there is a very narrow goldilocks zone where fire is possible.
Maybe that guy who was kind enough to compact the trash caused it lol
I saw a rag that had MEK on it self ignite that was thrown in the air. Humidity, temperature, barometric pressure, and all had to be just right.
I finished old Mosin stocks with with my buddy using linseed and the rags started smoking on the counter. This is a thing that happens. Even more fun after a couple cases of military grade beverages
Its because the garbage rod is fire
My uncle's shop burned to the ground several years ago. He was a wood worker but also tinkered with tractors. If memory serves me, the fire Marshall deduced it started from old rags with linseed oil in a trash can but there was also other rags. Brake cleaner, carb cleaner, etc... possible that more than one chemical or off gas caused the ignition.
The grey beards I used to work with called it Jewish lightning. The young bucks I work with now call it Greek lightning
Unclear why lightning is involved.
The awful joke I'm familiar with ends "How do you start a flood?" (told to me by my Jewish stepfather)
@@markfergerson2145 lightening strike caused the fiahhh
@LabRat Knatz force majeurely big insurance payout
This series should be called: Oily, Stiff Raggs: When Loneliness and Despair turns into a house fire and a very awkward insurance meeting
Heya AvE. As a kid, they always said in our textbooks, to never keep any oily rags near the furnace. We had Natural Gas -Methane, and never any oil. Confused me for years.
I’ve used varathane high solids floor stain in the gallon cansand applied it to hardwood floors with cotton towels and old t shirts and thrown the rags in a pile in the yard and they self ignite every time generally within two days
We get the same solution when we bail wet hay. It is the volume of liquid that causes the problem. What I would do is find a second hand clothing store and collect multiple types of fabrics. Tightly or loosely woven, knit, towel, and stuffed animal fur would all react differently to the oil. The stuffed animal fur seems strange until you realize that some paint brushes are made from this fabric. Cotton, silk, bamboo, wool, and so on will all react with different ignition times. Time to go full scale Sparky and burn down a building! There is nothing more dangerous than a certified electrical engineer!
Yeah I told me mum linseed oil was the reason thr socks under my bed were crusty and stiff and discolored too
As a Jewish man I can confirm Jewish lightning is an offensive phrase and I can also confirm my great uncle went to jail for it in the 1940’s.
Hah. I learned the term from a Jewish friend of mine. He was explaining why my neighbors warehouse likely caught fire and burned down. As for being offensive, it's only offensive if you let it be. I'm Greek... can you imagine all the things i could be offended about? I'd sure rather be called stingy than a h0m0. (oops... now alphabet+ is going to be offended)
Make no mistake, wet linseed and cotton rags stored in a cotton bag can burn!! Almost burned down our hangar one time after doing a Bell 47 center frame modification (soloy turbine conversion-chromoly tubes need to be filled and coated with linseed)-the rag bag and rags were found next to the drill press in a pile of ash, completely consumed. Coincidence and good house keeping kept the fire from proliferating and burning down the whole place. Stay frosty my friends👍🙏
I was pretty disappointed after the rather feeble attempt made in the previous video on this subject- you usually approach subjects like this with a little more sound research to make a fair test. It did in fact happen to my previous workplace - a heavy truck fabrication shop in Edmonton. Just a few months before my stint with them they built either a large trailer or flat deck truck with a wood deck. they slathered it with boiled linseed oil - applying it and cleaning up with rags. All the oily rags went into a couple of normal shop trash cans and were emptied together into the garbage dumpster on Friday afternoon. The manager got a call from the fire dept that weekend to come open the gate. The resulting fire did not involve any vehicles or buildings thankfully but caught everything else in the dumpster on fire and lit the cardboard recycling bin next to it as well. The local fire station is only maybe 6 or 8 blocks from the shop so once they got the call they were there very fast. Glad to see you took a second more educated attempt to resolve the confusion on this subject.
Glad you revisited/updated this. Was a little surprised at your previous skepticism. Citizen science is exactly that; fun but not always science;)
My recollection- from the many myths learned in childhood -is that the oily rags were dangerous only when stored in a closed container. This is a remembrance from the 50's and 60's, so I can't vouch for the accuracy (or the reality) of the memory, or truth that spontaneous combustion of oily rags is a 'thing'.
Closed was something I remember and something. About a certain oil that’s used and broken down is a catalyst to avoid and can’t remember what it even is
I was the most junior carpenters’ assistant on a crew in Martha’s Vineyard in 1994, and we were frantically finishing an upstairs room in a race to complete the job before a high fallutin’ honcho from some bank arrived with his family. Ambient temp was 95 American, humidity about the same percentage-wise. The contractor had made us all wear super-heavy rubber gloves as we rubbed every exposed surface with linseed oil finish. He’d instructed us, once a rag got too worn out, don’t put it down, just fling it out the giant open window at the north end of the building. So I wear my rag to lint, frantically rubbing the oil in, and like a good kid, I launch that rag out the window before looking for a fresh one. The cries from the exterior crew arrested me. That rag of mine burst into flame the second it left my hand. Burned the whole way down, and there wasn’t much to extinguish when it landed.
It’s real. Not real common. But get the right combination of saturation, external temp, and a starter, in my case friction, and add oxygen. Fellah, it will ignite.
Love your work. Love your stickers, teaching the new generation a respect for machines, and 70ies humor.
Hopefully you see this one, will you ever do a video on the Surfside condo collapse? Is their enough public information out there to do a review of what happened?
Check out Building Integrity, he's done many videos about that.
I didn't want to comment on video #1 because it seemed to be limited to linseed oil. But, now that it's been opened up to other types of oils and rags, I'll share.
I used to work at a place that recycled clothing and other cloth into rags. One printing place bought our sweat pants rags, clean and sold them back to us dirty. We started having sporadic fires in our dryers and I began to look into them. It turned out that the "oily knit" which we got back from the printers was left in the dryers (dry) over the weekend and that was true for the previous two fires. I brought it up to management, but they didn't believe in spontaneous combustion.
At one point, I reached in and felt heat building up in multiple baskets of these used rags that had been washed and dried. I had Management feel the heat in these baskets that had been processed days before, but they still wouldn't believe that it could get hot enough to eventually burn. Then we had another fire and another and so on (we were luckily able to contain all these fires ourselves). It wasn't until one day they discovered multiple baskets smoldering on the same day, that they began to believe.
To remedy the situation, I believe we started washing the clothes with caustic soda, which somehow removed or neutralized the residual contamination, what was causing the reaction.
I'm not saying that caustic soda will neutralize all oil in rags, but it worked in our very specific circumstance.
Spontaneous combustion can certainly happen, but the conditions have to be just right. Out of the hundreds of baskets we processed, maybe 7 of them caught fire or smoldered. It seems to happen in an anaerobic state (without the presence of oxygen), more towards the inside of a pile of rags. At least that was my observation.
Cotton + linseed oil +oxygen = auto ignition. Put a lid on the rag bucket you will be fine.
We had a fire start when a guy poured some leftover wood finish into a garbage can, that someone else had filled the bottom with sawdust. Luckily our wood shop was kept fairly clean and was tucked in effectively a concrete bunker. The plastic garbage can burned down but the sprinklers kept it contained to just the can.
Could be metal shavings or tree meat dust enhances the effect. I smell a set of controlled experiments with different mixtures in the works.
Also, does modern boiled linseed oil have inhibiting additives?
The whole point is that it has reaction accelerators(certain metal containing molecules). Raw flax oil is very slow.
Get them pretty wet then ring them out and pack them down tight in a bucket, like you're making room for more trash in the kitchen. Paper towels and red rags were the mix that I had pop off. The more violent the polymerization is the higher your chances should be, so more insulation=more better. Not sure if it had anything to do with it but mine was in a Home Depot bucket.
Can you test compression vs air flow? Do they need oxygen or does a heavy weight on top help set it off?
They very much need oxygen. That's one corner of the fire triangle - fuel, oxygen, heat. Remove any one of the three and the fire goes out. It's often recommended to put your used rags in a metal can with a lid. Even if they do stat to ignite, they'll consume all the oxygen in the can and self extinguish.
Need an oxidizer? Use bleach
My crazy theory is that the rags initially need an *absence* of oxygen to slowly build up temperature in the core of the rag bundle, which gradually gets hotter and hotter until it eventually comes into contact with air then flashes over and bursts into flame.
I've experienced toasted rags on many occasions. First time was actually mop strings used to apply boiled linseed oil and graphite to shingles and associated cleanup rags. Smoke arose, and the texture change was obvious the next day. Now I prefer to leave such rags spread out to dry on a concrete patio far away from anything else combustible until they are good and dry. Never had toasty rags when done like that, only when wadded up like in a metal trash can (my second favorite method, still out there on the patio). Filling the can with water seems like a good thing, but makes a mess and the rags still need taken out a few at a time, spread out and left to dry.
BTW, the oil polymerizes and the heat of that reaction can be intense if concentrated like in a mass of rags.
You may want to wipe up some dust and cobwebs with those rags before you just ball them up under the welder . The welder your going to write off not the good one😂
I've had a rag spontaneously combust on me while using linseed oil on some wood. Like you said, it was a an old t-shirt which had been washed a bunch. I threw the used rags in a plastic bag, and a few minutes later had a little fireball!
When you finish a piece of furniture with oil, the rag tends to end up quite saturated with oil. Another thing I was told is to never toss it into a ball, to spread it out instead. Also I'm absolutely clueless about stuff like that, but could the rubbing induce a static charge in the rag?
if the air is dry enough and its the right fabric, yes
I was told that too.
As a somewhat experienced treehumper , In my experience the nicest rags used in a shop are the once not pre-stained… after use those rags are drenched with oil, thrown in a bucket with dust, wood shavings carton boxes, notes and balls of painters tape… now it only needs a warm environment and time.