Back in my skydiving days we would have nasty winter weather where we couldnt jump, but we always had a campfire for the weekend. One of the guys worked offshore and would bring back large bars of magnesium. Seems that they use a lot of them as sacrificial anodes (cathodes?) whatever. We would throw these blocks into the fire. You had to stir them around to get any good effects. But we always had suntans on monday, so there is a lot of uv coming off of them.
Best shaving/sparking tool is the back of a piece of hacksaw.
These are very common survivalist tools. i must have 6 or 8 of them tucked away here and there.
On the other hand...one of those small butane torches works faster and better unless you are in sub zero temps. So do regular propane torches, particularly when all the available tinder is wet and your hands are so cold you can barely hold the striker of a metal match.
Somone mentioned kersosene. Works ok. On the other hand..some cotton balls soaked in vasoline and kept in a 35mm film can, work quite well too and wont leak into your Cheetos.
and...
Gunner
The big fireball would be from the 5,000 degree magnesium fire and that heat would vaporize the gas rather quickly, adding to the fireball. Still doubtful that a magnesium block would actually get going though.
My brothers did.Since you couldn't put it out he took pictures of it burning. Rubber fuel line was designed so that if it cracks it gravity feeds gas onto the engine. A nice puddle of gas on and under the engine waiting for an ignition source. Gas tank didn't explode it just poured gas into the burning block.
Karl
quoted text -
In my experience..yes the hacksaw blade is better. Ive not bothered testing which works best.bimetal or HSS.
Gunner
Remember, folks: VW blocks are a magnesium aluminum alloy - NOT pure magnesium. Won't light easily by itself, but once it gets going you really need to work at putting it out.
Several years ago I worked at a place where we once had a lot of mag chips to get rid of and the scrap dealer wouldn't take them. I suggested burning some. We filled a cardboard box full and set it on a
5 gallon bucket full of water. The chips were burning for several minutes and had not yet melted through. The shop skeptic groused that nothing would happen, that I was full of s*it. Just then the molten burning mag fell into the bucket. The skeptic says" MY EYES!". Flames and white ash abound. We found another way to get rid of the rest. ERS
I've had friends V.W.s go up from not having enough oil in the engine. It wasn't common, but also not unusual, in L.A./Orange County (So. Cal.), to drive by burning V.W. on the freeway, with the fire department just standing around watching it go. I'd see them, I don't know, maybe once a year or two when I was younger. It's rare to see it now, though.
I've had friends V.W.s go up from not having enough oil in the engine. It wasn't common, but also not unusual, in L.A./Orange County (So. Cal.), to drive by burning V.W. on the freeway, with the fire department just standing around watching it go. I'd see them, I don't know, maybe once a year or two when I was younger. It's rare to see it now, though.
You can also get them at WalMart for about $8.
On Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:03:48 -0700, with neither quill nor qualm, snipped-for-privacy@rgs.uci.edu quickly quoth:
Yeah, I always wondered why Nader went after the Corvair instead of the always-in-flames VWs with the same flaky suspension problems. And I'm surprised that VWs were insurable with as many as I saw smoked.
He did go after them and (I believe) Road and Track published a rebuttal citing every instance of Nader using partial quotes from accident report to support his claims, the false statistics he used to support his claim and in all but words called him a liar and a fake.
As Nader never sued or otherwise attacked Road and Track I'm inclined to believe the R&T article over Nader's article.
Bruce in Bangkok (brucepaigeATgmailDOTcom)
Students from my alma mater were the press and public's targets of blame for a sodium incident which injured several people last month:
Videos here:
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