Pants on fire

I have posted this about six times, from setting myself on fire about six times. ANYTHING frayed will ignite very very easily. Those old tattered jeans might look cool at the mall, but in the shop, they will blaze in a heartbeat.

Been there, done it, and done it enough times to FINALLY learn that when a pair of jeans or a welding shirt gets frayed, it is time to chuck it, or at least bar it from the welding area.

Hmmmmmmmmmm ........... I smell smoke ................... my leg is warm ................. my leg is hot .................. holy, shit, it's MEEEEEEEEE ................... jump, hop, slap, jump, hop, slap ..........................

Lucky I didn't get hurt bad.

Steve

"SteveB" wrote in news:biZkc.48027$Jy3.44082@fed1read03:

Thanks guys, I feel better now. I did this several times during the 70's. At least I know I'm not the only one

Rob

Posted 6 times. I've only posted this once before. Wait till the frayed knee hole in your jeans gets rapped around a thin set mixer and a drill motor and takes you off your feet. All I saw was blue sky and my finger still holding the trigger on , it took awhile just to get my hand off the drill. Then thinking hey I'm the only one at this address , if it wasn't for the razor knife in my back pocket I don't know what I would have had to do to get on my feet again. It was a hopeless feeling being stuck to a full 5 gallon bucket , a shaft and a drill .

For welding never put your prescription sun glasses in your shirt pocket. Can't recall ever setting myself on fire.

This has happened to me SOOO many times but now at my age I have to ask: Is this a wet warm or a dry warm??? :')))) Randy

And never, *NEVER* weld wearing sneakers with vinyl uppers. The little balls of hot molten steel will quickly melt through the vinyl, and your socks (even thick woollen ones) before lodging firmly between your toes. The resulting "welder's jig" has nothing to do with obtaining good workpiece alignment :-)

It only took about three times before I made it a ritual to always wear good leather boots when MIG welding :-)

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That one definetly caught me off guard- I blew my soda out my nose and ALL OVER MY KEYBOARD when I read that- Thanks Randy! (I think)

Now you can come over and help clean up this mess :-)

Larry

'Web Guy & Hobbyist Welder'

Been there, done that. Which is why I wear Carhartt bibs whenever Im using the fire axe or rod burner. I hate the smell of burning hair.

Gunner

No 220-pound thug can threaten the well-being or dignity of a 110-pound woman who has two pounds of iron to even things out. Is that evil? Is that wrong? People who object to weapons aren't abolishing violence, they're begging for the rule of brute force, when the biggest, strongest animals among men were always automatically "right". Guns end that, and social democracy is a hollow farce without an armed populace to make it work. - L. Neil Smith

Don't do welding while there are a couple of left-over fireworks on the bench at the other end of the shop. Don't do welding near the uncovered granite surface plate.

Luckily the fireworks were small and there was nothing else flammable near them and the microscopic marks left on the surface plate after removing the spatter don't protrude.

Mark Rand RTFM

It's not so rare as one might think. Just about every blacksmith/welder I know has done it at least once. If the fire gets well-enough established, one might well experience both types of warm!

My favorite is a very accomplished pattern welder who, upon having: "Mr, Mr. You're on fire!" finally reach through his concentration, replied: "Well, put me out, dammit, I'm busy!"

IIRC, it was a fellow who calls himself Oso, a blacksmith/knifemaker who apprenticed under Jim Hrisoulas.

I was pouring some cast iron one day. I use a full face welders shield with a light colored lens, and I kept smelling rubber burning. I cold not figure out where it was coming from but I kept on poouring my molds, with the face shield down and all along the smoke kept getting stronger smelling and then all of a sudden my one foot was getting extremely hot, but I never stopped pouring, just started to stomp my foot and pour until all the cast iron in the crucibnle ws gone. Flipped up my face shield to find the entire sole of my boot on fire and burning like a tire on fire. Evidently I stepped on some spilled molten cast iron and it was sufficient to catch the sole on fire. I have stepped on molten alumn before and never had this happen. I wound up steaming the side of my foot and three toes pretty darn good that they blistered up pretty quick, but it could have been worse.

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Speaking of "frayed" stuff catching fire, how many of you guys know that fine steel wool will support combustion quite nicely in air?

Skeptical? Try it...I suspect it's likely another example of a high surface area to mass ratio, the kind of thing which causes "dust explosions." Or maybe there is an anti-corrosion coating on steel wool which provides additional fuel?

I learned this one the hard way, not from weld splatter, but because my oldest son, who during his toddler years got his hands on a D-cell flashlight battery and a pad of steel wool at the same time. His "experimenting" with the those two items resulted in current from the battery setting the steel wool ablaze. Nothing more serious that a scar to the playroom vinyl flooring resulted from that escapade, but I sure was suprised.

Said son mended his ways, but continued his mechanical enterprises and some twenty five years later, started what's now a successfull metal product manufacturing business. Proud papa plug at:

Jeff

I make sure to vacuum away the dust from grinding axe and knife blades, etc, for just that reason. It only took once finding an accumulation of it burning from the sparks hitting it to convince me that clean is good! :)

Another one to watch out for is grinding aluminum and steel/iron and allowing the dusts to layer up. The two will combine and as the iron/steel rusts, the mix can become pretty powerful if ignited. Thermite fire in your shop anyone?

In one of the woodworking groups a guy mentioned starting a fire because he tossed a cordless drill battery on the workbench and it happened to land on some steel wool. I'm sure some sparks would do wonders as well.

Joel. phx

Last week, I stepped on a piece of 2"x2" square tube that was about one inch long that I had just cut off. Went almost through the sole on my Redwing Wellingtons. It was on the dirt, so I didn't notice as much that I was stepping on something out of the ordinary. Had to pull it out with a pair of pliers.

Damn.

Steve

--Reminds me of the strangest fire incident I ever experienced. I went to visit a guy who was making surfboard fins in his garage. I was wearing T-shirt and long sleeve flannel shirt over this. Outer shirt was open at the front, as it was starting to warm up that day. Visited my friend in the shop; he had on a respirator and was pouring catalyzed resin onto a cookie-sheet like tray, building up a sandwich of many layers of fiberglas. We talked for a bit and then I left, walked across the driveway and entered the back door of the house. Just inside the door was a gas stove, which was on at the time. Suddenly I felt *very* warm: fumes caught between my inner and outer shirt had ignited and I became a giant catalytic heater!. Shucked the shirt pronto, but the fire went out when the fuel-air mixture was no longer optimal. Lesson learned: an exhaust fan is a good idea, even in the small shop. Next time I paid a visit he'd installed one...

-- "Steamboat Ed" Haas : Money talks; it Hacking the Trailing Edge! : says "Goodbye"...

---Decks a-wash in a sea of words---

Using Steel wool and a battery to light fires was in a book we had to read back in 5th or 6th grade. Of course I had to see if it really did work so the minute I got home I scrounged a 9V and my dad's bag of steel wool. I managed to burn up 1/2 the bag of steel wool before my parents caught on and put an end to that.

Sparks from grinding metal will also set it ablaze.

Nate

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I have posted this several times in threads regarding welding safety. Those may have been in other welding groups, and you missed them. When a newbie writes in about what to watch out for safety wise, usually several people who have set themselves on fire respond with a caveat about frayed clothing. If you haven't set yourself on fire yet, you are either very lucky, very careful, or haven't been welding that long.

And I don't understand about glasses. The two dollar plastic cheapos will shed the sparks very well. The expensive glass ones (the ones you think should repel sparks because glass is harder than plastic) will get pitted in no time. Go figger.

Steve

Using steel wool as "tinder" to start a fire is a documented method of fire starting for the Boy Scouts. Either a battery (as mentioned here) or sparks from flint-and-steel can be used. About 15 years ago during a scout meeting (indoors) someone was surprised how well it actually worked when they ended up with a flaming ball of steel wool in their hands.