# Up in flames....no pun intended.



## cwkelley75 (Aug 9, 2012)

When I was "working" in the trade, I worked for a company that made neurological mumbo jumbo. One of the parts I made were titanium bone screws. When I parted the screws off, I was left with a nasty "tit" for a lack of better words. To get this off, I would hit it on a grinder to preserve the life of my cutting inserts. Well, two weeks prior, the girlfriend spilled a large amount of laundry detergent on my jeans.

One day while grinding my bone screws, I feel a heat on my left leg. My first thought, Shop Shananigans a foot. I looked back expecting to see a co worker with a heat gun...nothing there. I ground two more screws and the heat became overwealming. I took another look and found my pant leg on fire and already gone almost to my knee!!!! Luckily, I was able to get the fire out and those jeans became shorts for the rest of the day.

I had washed the pants after the detergent was spilled, I assume it acted as an accelerant.


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## Tin Falcon (Aug 9, 2012)

having ones pants on fire is no fun DNAMHIKT . I expect the detergent did one of two things . Possibly both. I expect most denim indeed most fabrics have some degree of treatment with flame retardant. the detergent may have removed the treatment. the other thing is various cleaning agents like clorine bleach oxy clean etc are oxidizers due help in combustion. be safe 
tin


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## purpleknif (Aug 10, 2012)

I suspect that the titanium dust caught fire all by itself.  I was working in a plce once where a guy was grinding a magnesium fixture with an 8" snag grinder. As he was grinding, every now and then there would be a flash as the fine dust would ignite in mid air. Funny how you can weld and cut it when the heat can transfer but small enough particles will catch fire quickly.
  My night man had a fire when he was fly cutting a face at high RPM and low feed.  :fan:


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## cwkelley75 (Aug 10, 2012)

The ends I was grinding would burn and seem to almost "evaperate" not long after being on the grinding wheel. Hopefully everyone can learn from my mishap.


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## rake60 (Aug 10, 2012)

Titanium can be a very dangerous material under the certain circumstances.

In solid state it has an auto-ignition temperature of 2200F. 
That's pretty low.
Titanium _*powder*_ in air, will auto-ignite at only 480F.

If you add a carbon base material to that formula such as oil, grease or detergent, 
you will get a fire that can be as hard to extinguish as a magnesium metal fire is. 

Glad to hear you were not seriously burnt!

Rick


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## lemelman (Aug 12, 2012)

rake60 said:


> Titanium can be a very dangerous material under the certain circumstances.
> 
> In solid state it has an auto-ignition temperature of 2200F.
> That's pretty low.
> ...


Hmm, that's interesting. The melting point of Titanium is 1660C, or 3020F.


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## rake60 (Aug 14, 2012)

lemelman said:


> Hmm, that's interesting. The melting point of Titanium is 1660C, or 3020F.



To be safe, read a current _*MSDS Sheet*_ for what you are working with.

Rick


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## purpleknif (Aug 15, 2012)

rake60 said:


> To be safe, read a current _*MSDS Sheet*_ for what you are working with.
> 
> Rick


  Does anybody actually do that ?


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## terrywerm (Aug 16, 2012)

Sure, they just don't admit it!  ;D


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## Ken I (Aug 17, 2012)

All finely divided metals are potentially flammable, pyrophoric even.

The more finely divided, the greater the risk.

When you see sparks - that's not just "hot" its actually burning - the rate of heat being produced by oxidation is self sustaining - as particles become smaller, the surface area (and its ability to generate heat) gets exponentially greater than its volume (hence mass and ability to absorb heat) - so very small particles burn readilly and can even self ignite.

Ken


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## rake60 (Aug 17, 2012)

purpleknif said:


> Does anybody actually do that ?



Most people do not read a MSDS.

Any time you are working with an "exotic metal", you *SHOULD*!

I have never seen a titanium fire in person, but I have seen 2 cases 
of magnesium fires in my machining career.
Both instances involved fine stringer chips lighting up.

The people working the magnesium were educated via the MSDS of how 
to deal with that situation.

Someone who didn't know may have thrown water on the fire.
That would produce hydrogen gas turning a pile of smoldering chips into a 
blow torch.

Hit it with a CO2 fire extinguisher, and the reaction will create magnesium oxide.
Now you have rocket fuel!

*Is IS important to read the MSDS sheets!*

Rick


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## scooterman (Aug 26, 2012)

+Adding fuel to the fire! I used to take my lunch hour down at this local airport near where I worked. This particular hanger/ shop was the home of Stolp Aviation, they built hand crafted aerobatic biplanes, namely the Stolp AcroDuster, StarDuster and few more. These aircraft were the absolute in craftsmanship and detail. I had been keeping progress watch on TR111 an Acro Duster, from start to this particular day. The fuse was covered with the engine on the fire wall, tail feathers installed and covered, all done up in silver ready for the color coats of a cream white. I was sitting in my car munching away on a sandwich and one of the guys walked up to the pedestal grinder about twenty feet from where this fusealage was sitting on its landing gear and started to take a fine cut on the wheel to a bracket he was fitting up. Well, let me tell ya , 4130 steel makes very fine high intense sparks when being ground, sure enough, a spark mades its way onto the aircraft somewhere, and it went up! Not only did it go up in flames, it consumed the fabric covering and the glue holding it to the structure, and litterly "cleaned" the tube chassis right down to the yellow painted metal of any and all little bits of chared material!, The fire ball was very note worthy as it roared out the hanger door! My mouth was full of sandwich and my eyes musta have bugged outta my head and I did manage to get outta the car, speechless! Seems the MEK and acetone, plus the clear dope had filled the interior of the craft with fumes as they were flashing off from the work several days before! Nothing eles caught on fire and there was some smoke in the hanger! Poor dude on the grinder mustta had to go change his shorts after that display!


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## Krutch (Dec 8, 2012)

Ya don't wear frayed jeans when welding either. I did when working on a hay rake and both legs got lit up. Looked like the dancer in the PI doing the candle dance. No real damage to me as I caught on pretty quick. My dad thought it was funny.


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## Woodster (Dec 8, 2012)

I used to machine Titanium parts for prosthetic joints and when taking a fine finishing cut i would get a "birds nest" of fine swarf which i could light with a cigarette lighter. The addition of a blast from an airline and it goes up like magnesium ribbon!


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## Lance (Dec 8, 2012)

rake60 said:


> To be safe, read a current _*MSDS Sheet*_ for what you are working with.
> 
> Rick


I'm in the automotive business and the most disturbing MSDS was for airbags. It seems the solid rocket fuel inside, that is made by Morton-Thiekol ,<-SP? , (yes the same people that got blamed for blowing up the space shuttle) has been "known to cause mutations in animals". Somehow I never got a warm and fuzzy feeling after reading that, and not wanting to grow a third leg, I have paid real close attention to all MSDS sheets and handling precautions contained therin.


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## skyline1 (Dec 9, 2012)

Fine metal dust can be flamable even explosive. Powdered aluminium and iron oxide (basically rust) sounds harmless enough, but it is the recipe for thermite. A thermite reaction is extremely hot and vigorous. They use it for welding railway track (under carefully controlled conditions of course).

Finely divided dust clouds of even normally pretty harmless materials can be dangerous, I was once putting some new plant in a flour mill when there was a flour dust explosion. No one was seriously hurt, luckily, but the blast took every window out of the building, and blew me clean off my feet.

Flour milling equipment has spring loaded "Explosion doors" for just this reason and these prevented an unpleasant "Bang" from becoming a lethal one.

Regards Mark


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## Saminaz (Aug 24, 2018)

As a point of interest, Nitric acid and Titanium do not play together well.
Nitric and Titanium will explode.
We had a customer change their deposition chemistry to include titanium without letting us know, our tech lowered the stainless parts with what was supposed to be only copper deposition into heated nitric.
Large boom, 70 gal of 170 degree nitric airborne.
Always wear your PPE!
Tech was unhurt, but the tank was trashed and the customer paid for an expensive hazmat cleanup.
Please don't try removing a tap from titanium with nitric!
Sam.


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## Naiveambition (Aug 24, 2018)

Does the powdered alum. and rust  pertain to swarf.?  Like fine metal dust laying around could be combustible? Or does this apply to airborne particles?    
Had no idea about grain explosions and was raised in a farm community. As a boy I worked my share of dusty days on the farm, and with cows the added methane mix.   lol    Gotta respect the farmers a little more now


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## Cogsy (Aug 24, 2018)

Naiveambition said:


> Does the powdered alum. and rust  pertain to swarf.?  Like fine metal dust laying around could be combustible? Or does this apply to airborne particles?
> Had no idea about grain explosions and was raised in a farm community. As a boy I worked my share of dusty days on the farm, and with cows the added methane mix.   lol    Gotta respect the farmers a little more now


The mix has to be in a fairly tight range to make thermite, plus it needs to be fairly fine as well. It is difficult to ignite (normally a fuse of something like magnesium strip is used) but burns spectacularly when ignited. There is a common display at my uni where we light a small amount in a high temp vessel with a hole in the bottom, which is suspended over a tank of water with sand in the bottom. Liquid iron pours out the bottom hole into the water at such a high temperature that water is split into hydrogen and oxygen and burns as well. So we set water on fire! It is fun to see/do.

Grain dust explosions, while not common, were something we feared and had to deal with when harvesting wheat with the old equipment. Add in some wind and you could get a nasty dust mix swirling around inside the header, then a spark or failing (very hot) bearing would set it off. Again, much like petrol/gasoline and air, the ratio has to be correct or it won't burn. For example, an amount of petrol/gasoline in air of less than about 1.2% by volume will not even burn. Similarly, More than about 8% by volume in air won't burn either - it simply will not ignite. But between those two limits you have a bomb. Same goes with dust/grain explosions but with different rates.

*Don't try this at home but*...a little custard powder or non-dairy creamer in the palm of your hand then gently blown over a lit burner on your gas stove will yield an impressive flare and give you an idea of a dust explosions' potential.


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## goldstar31 (Aug 24, 2018)

As has been said earlier, a mixture of of aluminium turnings and literally rust will ignite to form what became German( in my case) incendiary bombs during WW2.  I was a youngster with a former sapper father who was one of the blacksmiths in the coal mines who were not called up for military service. The only way to kill the beasts is to cool then down with a very fine spray of water or when there was no water to dig out turfs to literally smother them. After being machine gunned by a Heinkel 111K, it dropped 8 high explosives and 'breadbaskets' of incendiaries. One bomb was on a time fuse- as I know to my cost!

Another source of fire is an exotherm-as the name suggests. It can happen with oily rags, paint , resins and even grass cuttings.  One of my family, his father was John Dobson the architect for Newcastle upon Tyne Railway Station- and a relative of the real Alice in Wonderland was killed by stored bird excrement- or fertiliser and he could only be recognised by the keys in what was left of his trousers. Common or garden( ?) dried urine will explode.

Incidentally, I'm deaf from working on relegated British ammunition. On a happier note a former Halifax bomber pilot known as 'Blaster Bates' did a recorded after dinner speech called 'A Shower of Sh1t over Cheshire' when someone blew up a farmers septic tank.   Simply enjoy. the many UTubes!!!!!!!


Norm


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## Cymro77 (Aug 24, 2018)

Fascinating stuff!  Thanks y'all for sharing your often hard earned wisdom!


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## deverett (Aug 24, 2018)

I remember as a young lad still at school, we could buy magnesium ribbon from the local chemist.  It was great fun to ignite it and see the bright white flame!  The ribbon (from memory) was about 12" long and because of the cost to us lads, we never thought about trying to extinguish it.

Dave
The Emerald Isle


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## XD351 (Aug 24, 2018)

Krutch said:


> Ya don't wear frayed jeans when welding either. I did when working on a hay rake and both legs got lit up. Looked like the dancer in the PI doing the candle dance. No real damage to me as I caught on pretty quick. My dad thought it was funny.



Or roll the legs up to shorten them ! 
I was up a ladder  oxy cutting  something off the side of the building where i worked and next thing i know is someone is hosing me ! I though it was a joke until they  told me i was on fire ! I used to roll up the legs of my overalls because they were too long and this created a catch point for hot sparks !
At the same company i used to operate a big linisher for polishing rollers , it used to catch fire all the time as the steel dust would ignite from the hot sparks coming off the linishing belt . The hardchrome tanks used to bang every so often and the big tank went bang one day and put a bulge in the tin roof !


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## Cogsy (Aug 24, 2018)

XD351 said:


> I was up a ladder  oxy cutting  something off the side of the building where i worked



This brought back a memory. Our shift supervisor was up in a man cage on forklift to oxy cut a ladder off the wall. The oxy set was on the ground and got showered in sparks as he was cutting, unnoticed by him of course. In short order the acetylene hose burned through and ignited and we had a nasty fire and explosion potential, so we all turned and began to run instinctively, including the forklift driver who had jumped from his machine. So my poor supervisor was suspended in cage with no way down over a flaming acetylene set! Luckily for him, I realised his driver had bailed and I returned to fight the fire, eventually smothering it with my leather gloves. We laughed about it later but it was scary at the time.


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## Tigercat200 (Aug 25, 2018)

A friend of mine was an aircraft mechanic since before World War II.  When the permanent press work clothes came out his wife bought him a couple of sets.  They worked fine until the day he was welding on  steel tube airplane with an oxy-acetylene torch.  It popped, as they do and he saw a spark hit his leg and he brushed it off as soon as it hit.  There was a hole melted in the pants.  He shut down the torch, went home, changed into jeans and a cotton shirt, and never wore permapress again.  The possibilities of what could have happened were frightening.

There's been mention of dust explosions.  Back in the late 70s I was on a rescue squad.  We had to have a helicopter put us on the roof of a grain elevator that blew up so we could go down to retrieve the injured.  A scary day.  Fortunately, elevator explosions are less frequent than they were when I was a boy in Illinois.  A grain elevator is a dangerous environment for many reasons.  

You all be safe out there.


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## Anatol (Aug 25, 2018)

Thanks everyone for an informative (and scary) thread.


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## Timehunter (Aug 27, 2018)

One of the best kindling pieces for starting a fire is part of an 8" big fluffy old used polishing pad from a bench grinder type polisher.
I had repaired one and had it sitting on the floor way back under the workbench.
Was mig welding and I guess a bb landed on it.
When I finished I kept smelling something smoldering-burning smell. 
Found it.
Danged if I didn't do it again a couple days later after I thought I had covered it up enough.
After that it was put on the other side of the shop.


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## Chiptosser (Aug 27, 2018)

I know that experience!   Damd spark grabbers.


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## MRA (Sep 2, 2018)

Tigercat200 said:


> ...he saw a spark hit his leg and he brushed it off as soon as it hit.  There was a hole melted in the pants.



I set my groovy nylon (?) steel-toe trainers on fire at work the other day with the plasma cutter - concentrating too hard on trying to keep a straight line.  Leather and heavy cotton for me from now on   And we don't do anything hot for the last hour before home time, just in case something starts to smoulder...


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## Gordon (Sep 2, 2018)

My dad was doing some welding at home after he retired. He had never done much welding before that. He came running in the house and told my mother "I know why Gordon wears cotton socks instead of these nylon socks"


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## railfancwb (Nov 20, 2019)

Naiveambition said:


> Does the powdered alum. and rust  pertain to swarf.?  Like fine metal dust laying around could be combustible? Or does this apply to airborne particles?
> Had no idea about grain explosions and was raised in a farm community. As a boy I worked my share of dusty days on the farm, and with cows the added methane mix.   lol    Gotta respect the farmers a little more now



Have heard of a situation where aluminum dust had accumulated at a grinding wheel and was set afire by someone later grinding steel at that wheel.


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## railfancwb (Nov 20, 2019)

railfancwb said:


> Have heard of a situation where aluminum dust had accumulated at a grinding wheel and was set afire by someone later grinding steel at that wheel.



Stacked square bales which have gotten wet can spontaneously combust. Opening one which is almost there lets the smoke out before it turns to flame.


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## Dubi (Nov 21, 2019)

railfancwb said:


> Have heard of a situation where aluminum dust had accumulated at a grinding wheel and was set afire by someone later grinding steel at that wheel.


Very interesting post. That is a new one to me. The question is, why would somebody be grinding aluminium on a wheel?

The only fire which I know about and was non work related was in the UK some 50 years ago. Where somebody used a 9 volt battery in contact with wire wool. 

That set off a nice fire and destroyed a factory, the arsonist might have got away with it if was not for the Fire Investigator finding the remains of the battery!


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## Rickus (Nov 21, 2019)

Yes!  Similar to silos filled with grain, you can get to a point where the dust and air have the right mix and a spark will ignite it.  Happened while I was active duty in the Air Force.  We had a belt sander close to a grinding wheel and an individual was grinding a tool when the fire erupted.  Later investigation reported this was what happened.  Aluminum dust collected around the base and lower pulley of the belt sander due to improper cleaning/maintenance, which was located directly behind the grinder.  At that time no one knew aluminum would ignite and new safety protocols were instituted.  Belt sanders and grinding wheels had to be at least 36" apart and thoroughly cleaned on a weekly basis.  Glad this was brought up as I had forgotten this incident...
Now the stacked square bales is a new one to me.  I do believe that requires further research.  Not to prove you wrong, but to understand what happens and avoid it.  There is only one of me and my house which I prefer not to damage or lose!!!


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## mcostello (Nov 21, 2019)

Wet hay will combust, barn fires were more common back then. A guy I worked with had put up loose hay in the barn. Went up a while later and it had begun to smolder. He grabbed a fork and started throwing it out on the ground and it was catching fire as fast as He could throw it out.


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## goldstar31 (Nov 21, 2019)

All this hay stuff is  so boring.  Heath fires are put out by smothering the fires as are another way to extinguishing incendiary bombs by dropping a turf on top of them.
But think of it rationally, the Germans dropped incendiary bombs which were  principally rust from their factories mixed with ground up British bombers which had ironically dropped incendiary bombs on them and we collected German bombers and increased the intensity to create firestorms on such places as Hamburg and Dresden. To keep the pot boiling so to speak, the US Airforce bombed by day and the Royal Air Force bombed the fires.  It all became rather nasty because german people were ignited in the same way as those in concentration camps were burned in the ovens- by them. So we killed the perpetrators and somebody  else thought it 'What a good idea' and crematoriums were invented.

It makes a change from the good people in Yorkshire singing 'On Ilkley Mor'bat 'at' where my daughter removes teeth and when time comes will organise my demise but not 'for the ducks to  eat up t'worms and for the rest of you to be cannibals and eat me- eventually.

I'm afraid that's the way it is. 

Norman


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## pkastagehand (Nov 21, 2019)

I once worked for an impact trauma research lab.  I was milling a mount to hold 9 accelerometers to be able to track multiaxis and angular accelerations.  It was with magnesium to keep the mass down.  Chips had gotten all over the work so I bent over and blew to clear them off the workpiece. One chip went up and stuck to the high watt incandescent bulb in the work light, caught fire and dropped to the table and ignited those chips.  Obviously should have used a different light or had a clear cover to keep bulb away from direct contact.  I smothered what went on the floor but couldn't do much about the mill table with T-slots so it just burned out.  Lesson learned. 

Saved the rest of the chips from the project and bagged them up for starting campfires with wet wood.  Worked!

Paul


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## awake (Nov 21, 2019)

Someone mentioned wire wool and a 9v battery - I've not had that, but more than once I've made the mistake of leaving a pad of fine steel wool that I've used on cleaning up a project on the work table ... and later doing some welding nearby. It is an interesting thing to watch steel wool burn!


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## Cogsy (Nov 21, 2019)

goldstar31 said:


> All this hay stuff is  so boring.  Heath fires are put out by smothering the fires as are another way to extinguishing incendiary bombs by dropping a turf on top of them.
> But think of it rationally, the Germans dropped incendiary bombs which were  principally rust from their factories mixed with ground up British bombers



Dropping turf on the burning magnesium alloy part of an incendiary bomb will work to extinguish it if the air can be blocked enough, but it will not put out a thermite fire (rust and aluminium oxide) as it supplies its own oxygen from the aluminium oxide. In the incendiary bombs used in WW2 the small thermite charge was just used to ignite the magnesium alloy.


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## goldstar31 (Nov 23, 2019)

Cogsy said:


> Dropping turf on the burning magnesium alloy part of an incendiary bomb will work to extinguish it if the air can be blocked enough, but it will not put out a thermite fire (rust and aluminium oxide) as it supplies its own oxygen from the aluminium oxide. In the incendiary bombs used in WW2 the small thermite charge was just used to ignite the magnesium alloy.



There seems to be some misunderstanding here. My memory is that magnesium is used to start the exotherm of the intimate  and larger mixture of aluminium and iron oxide( rust). My first encounter was at the outbreak of WW2 when we, as frightened little school children of the age of 9 had to watch a Civil Defence member extinguish a standard RAF 4lb incendiary device but worse still go though a 'poison gas' filed air raid  shelter wearing our gas masks. It turned out to be tear gas and my father who was in the  local gas decontamination squad went into typical Atkinson merriment! That was 80 years ago and whilst I still have my little home made Boy Scout axe that I dug live and partly burnt  German incendiaries out for souvenirs along with shrapnel and anti aircraft nose cones, my memory may be at fault.
 Wiki whatsit more or less agrees with the fact that thermite, the main ingredient of bombs is a mixture of -as I said earlier. I don't have  access anymore to such things but I spent two years in uniform- oddly part in a Royal Observer Corps 'battle dress and then a Royal Air Force one- at  where the Royal Airforce Museum is at Colindale- not Hendon and , laughingly, where the RAF Bomber Command Association  has its HQ-- in MY bloody office!

So it's a sentimental journey in January to visit the bomb section of the Museum as part of my visit to United Grand Lodge, dinner, a trip too the home of the Battle of the Beams- X-Gerat at Alexandra Palace where the Model Engineering Exhibition is being held. How boring all this compared to- my days- as boss of the Signals billet!  No, ironically I was an Admin wonder in a Technical Wing of the RAF and lived part of my life in a Doodle Bugged pre-War building.
Well, I'm now disabled and can run on thermite welded railway lines at a vastly discounted price and the confusion of cheap(er) accommodation in a vastly expensive London is sorted. Hurrah for being a former  accountant .
So I CAN afford the time to have a sentimental journey, to walk again where three of my comrades were burned to death in  a crash on the Queen's Birthday 21st April 1949.

I don't think that I have forgotten much but we will see. Incendiary bombs are but part of it.

Norman


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## MachineTom (Nov 23, 2019)

As a kid I used to return deposit bottles to the deli for change. Then go to the hardware store and buy 000 steel wool pads. Then wrap a small candle in paper, then wrap the steel wool around. When dark bend a coat hanger around the steel wool and light it off. Then swing it around, the sparks and all were flying all over, clumps of flame.

Ahh, to be 10 years old again.


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## Cogsy (Nov 23, 2019)

goldstar31 said:


> There seems to be some misunderstanding here. My memory is that magnesium is used to start the exotherm of the intimate  and larger mixture of aluminium and iron oxide( rust).



Thermite is a mixture of rust and aluminum (I said aluminium oxide earlier but that's not correct), Because of the oxygen in the ferric oxide (rust) the reaction can self sustain without external oxygen including under water. It's also a quite a fast reaction (and really cool to watch) that burns hot enough to separate water into its components and burn the hydrogen in the right circumstances (burning water is another cool thing to see). Unconstrained, a thermite reaction will be over in seconds and result in a spray of small, extremely hot particles, spread over the immediate area. 

Magnesium alloy takes quite a bit of heat to ignite, especially in big chunks rather than ribbon form, so in the incendiary bombs they used thermite as a trigger to ignite the big chunk of magnesium alloy, which would then burn hot and long (maybe 15 minutes) with a view to heating up the surrounding environment enough to get a large fire going. I don't know how they ignited the thermite though - that stuff is also reasonably difficult to light (we use magnesium ribbon as a fuse). The magnesium reaction does require external oxygen, so can be smothered with dirt. However it also burns hot enough to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen, so spraying water onto it would literally be adding fuel to the fire, which is why the dirt/turf would have been the preferred method.


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## goldstar31 (Nov 24, 2019)

Cogsy said:


> Thermite is a mixture of rust and aluminum (I said aluminium oxide earlier but that's not correct), Because of the oxygen in the ferric oxide (rust) the reaction can self sustain without external oxygen including under water.



Thank you, I now agree! It fits in with my childhood memories.
In practice then, the Air Raid Wardens were issued with stirrup pumps and galvanised pails to tackle the things.
There ws TWO settings for the  hose end. One would  direct a jet of water and was used for normal fires whilst the other created a fine spray  which effectively cooled the exotherm down and stopped the reaction. However, as Cogsy rightly asserts  a jet of water would cause an explosion scattering still burning magnesium and thermite  even further onto roofs Later, there were explosive devices in side to pierce roofing tiles.

I made brief(?) reference to Alexandra Palace. It had been the scene of early TV which shut down with most things  when war was declared. It was replaced with a jamming system of German radio beams which could guide attacking bombers along a line to the target. Unfortunately, secrecy of the device created the Blitz on Coventry with erroneous loss of life. Our visitors to merely  picked up the church between Cullercoats and Tynemouth and they then followed the river.  But, but we had the sort of replica of Sydney Harbour Bridge across theTyne at Newcastle. Of course, it was bombed repeatedly but missed. I recall a Ju88 having a go.
But further up the Tyne was a smaller but identical bridge and it was mistaken for the 'real thing', hence my experiences.


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## lkrestorer (Nov 24, 2019)

A circumstance that may be a bit closer to home for most people is dealing with small alkaline batteries that have outlived their usefulness. These are listed as items that are acceptable to simply throw in the general trash. In my small home shop there is always aluminum and steel particles and swarf along with paper , cloth and whatever else becomes trash in the receptacle waiting to get full enough to dispose of. Occasionally I have a battery to throw away. Now, go back to the earlier entries above that talk about fires being started with batteries and metal. I make a habit of securely covering the terminals with electrical tape (any type of tape will do - I'm an old electrician) so that whatever "juice" is left in the battery can't start a fire. I even do this in our house waste even though there is little chance of contacting metal (oops, watch out for the aluminum foil!)


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## skyline1 (Nov 25, 2019)

ikrestorer


lkrestorer said:


> I make a habit of securely covering the terminals with electrical tape (any type of tape will do - I'm an old electrician) so that whatever "juice" is left in the battery can't start a fire. I even do this in our house waste even though there is little chance of contacting metal (oops, watch out for the aluminum foil!)


 
A sensible precaution as although domestic alkaline batteries  especially exhausted ones do not generally have sufficient current capacity to present a major fire risk, in some unusual situations they could.

Who knows what they could come into contact with in the general waste and you might accidentally throw out a "live" one further increasing the risk.
In our area we are lucky enough to have separate recycling facilities for them which helps in this respect.

Rechargeable batteries are quite a different matter especially the very high power LiPO ones used to power model aircraft, drones and the like.
Heed the many warnings on them carefully, If abused (and sometimes even if not) they can ignite, spontaneously re-ignite and even explode with considerable force.

I recently met someone who had actually burnt his house down whilst recharging model aircraft batteries.

Apparently the fire brigade had told him that the only way to deal with them was to contain them and let them burn themselves out as they simply reignite until they run out of fuel

I could not guarantee this as fact but an Internet search for "exploding LiPO batteries will reveal some pretty scary video footage

These should definitely NOT be disposed of with domestic waste and I think it is now an offence to do so in the U.K.


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## lkrestorer (Nov 25, 2019)

Yes, the rechargeable batteries definitely need to be recycled/disposed of properly. It is illegal for them to be thrown into common trash in the U.S. also. They are somewhat scary in the ways that they react.

My lesson with the alkaline batteries was seeing a 9-volt battery fall into some steel shavings. It didn't cause any damage but there was a small but exciting display of sparks and it got very hot before the metal burned away and it put itself out.

There are many 'common' ways that we can hurt ourselves and our surroundings. Please be careful.


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## lkrestorer (Nov 25, 2019)

cwkelley75 started this post with a story about him making 'titanium bone screws'.  I'm proud / disappointed / scared / anxious (pick your favorite) to say that on December 9th I will be getting some of them installed in my left shoulder along with a collection of various other metal and plastic parts. I'll be a bit wobbly for a while but I hope to get back into the shop for some rehabilitation after the first of the year.

Enjoy your health when you have it.


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## Dubi (Nov 25, 2019)

lkrestorer said:


> cwkelley75 started this post with a story about him making 'titanium bone screws'.  I'm proud / disappointed / scared / anxious (pick your favorite) to say that on December 9th I will be getting some of them installed in my left shoulder along with a collection of various other metal and plastic parts. I'll be a bit wobbly for a while but I hope to get back into the shop for some rehabilitation after the first of the year.
> 
> Enjoy your health when you have it.


Every best wish for a safe operation and speedy recovery.


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## teeleevs (Sep 13, 2020)

The power hacksaw or metal bandsaw is the place to find alloy and steel powder all ready to ignite 
Ted from down under


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