A sign that every blacksmith should have in their shop and wherever they do demos should always be

"If any part of my shop OR myself is on fire, please let me know, it is not part of the demo, and just because you see it, doesnt mean that I see it."

No wonder they put Farmer Phil waaaaaaay out in the ocean on an island surrounded by a whole lot of water!

I caught myself on fire forge welding at a demo once---folks were trying to tell me about it and I finally had to say "I know I'm on fire but I want to get this weld first" (or words to that effect---very sweaty/salty/dirty tunic wasn't going to do more than smoulder a bit.)

Ha, ha, ha Thomas. You're welcome to come visit anytime. The island just might be big enough for the two of us (for a brief period of time). Boy blacksmiths can be hard core for sure! Talk about getting heated up over your work. What a picture it makes: smoldering and flaming blacksmiths. Wow!

Especially since this "boy" was around 35-40 years old! The stuff I did as a kid I'll keep quiet as I'm flabbergasted that I'm still alive, unmutilated and have my sight and hearing! I think a lot of us became blacksmiths to play with fire and avoid going to jail for arson!

I may have to come visit; but I keep hoping the Socorro Magma Bubble will do something local so I can get my volcano fix without travelling...(I know you just want me to visit so you can ask that I pack my suitcases and carryon with stuff and just borrow clothes when I get there---back in the pre-airline security days I once had a 90# carry-on full of scrap metal as they did not weigh the carry-ons but did the checked baggage. Poor little thing was never quite the same...I ran across a fronteir scrap pile up in the mountains of CO and couldn't let all the great stuff go to waste...)

I'm flabbergasted that I'm still alive)

and while the criminal stautue of limitations may have expired I'm not so sure the civil one has :p

Thomas, I guess we think alike, but opposite. I want to keep secret the mis-deeds I've done as an "adult." Otherwise I'd share about the time when I was 19 and traveling from Oregon back to NH for Christmas. Stopped in NYC to drop off a friend in Brooklyn. It was a cold winter. When I went to leave the next morning my little old VW bug's oil was thicker than snot and the engine could not turn over. Well I think how can I warm this up? So I siphon a little gas out of it into a tuna can and crawl under the bug light it up and start heating up the oil pan. Of course there's so much crusted old oil crud all over the place it starts to get real smoky. I guess I was quite a sight legs sticking out of the VW billowing smoke all over the place. Numerous New Yorkers were heard to say many various phrases of alarm and expletives. One old guy was a real treat. Boy he let me have it like no body's business. He was poetry in motion New Yorker style. Anyway, I got the bug started and the heck out of there. It was so cold that winter I ran into the same problem in NH, but this time I didn't dare the gasoline approach. We pushed that bug all over Nashua to jump start it. Took many block of over and over efforts. My brother and I were late getting back to our folks to celebrate Christmas. I got a little "heated up" myself and slammed my door. It was so cold the glass shattered. Had to drive back to Merrimack without a window in below zero weather. Guess I got mine come-up-ins.

How to you know I wanted you to bring stuff to Hawaii when you come? I just came back from NH with two blowers, a 70 lb anvil, a few hammers and tongs. You bet you better bring some steel and machinery. How about a power hammer?!

Phil,
I think I found my Twin brother, separated at birth. Does NI3, Lead Azide; and Charcoal, sulfur, and saltpeter mean anything to you? Then there is gun cotton, cordite and primacord.

I had an incident are accident while welding on a slag pot at a steel mill two of us were fixing cracks in the pots which were 6 inches thick and as much as 10 feet long .They had to be beveled out to be welded back up so for time sake two of us would weld one from each end and meet in the middle wait for the other to be done the use a needle scaler to remove the slag.We were using 18 inch flux core wire in a mig running 280 amps.As we all know from working with hot metal if it burns for a few seconds ok if more look for fire.My partner was finished and waiting for me to finish my bead when I felt a burn in my side that lasted and kept getting hotter at which time I had thought I was on fire so I stopped welding and yelled fire running out of the pot.As I ran out I felt something pull out of my side and heard my partner say O man I got you.Not knowing what he meant I looked around to find out when he finished he threw he gun over his leg and pierced me in the side with the red hot wire portruding out of his gun.It burnt its way in not bleeding a bit but still required a trip to the hospital in which I became the poster boy for stupid welding accidents.So I guess would be the mouse in Irnsrgn's experience.

Mouse Little John. It has a ring to it!

It was just a phase Habu, just a phase. Yep, that's some of the stuff! We better help look after Ten Hammers too!

Oh, Oh. I gave my folks (Grammie and Grandpa) IFI's link to Little Mikey's first hook so they could share in the glow of his success. Never thought they'd then have access to stuff such as this thread. My goose may be cooked. Is there a statute of limitations with parents for stuff like this? I may need to consult Ice Czar on this.

Well not by accident; but...I have now lived in my house 4 years and have never mowed the lot. We just burn the weeds off each winter. Common in these parts and as my house is stucco and surrounded on 3 sides by fire breaks, roads and a large field that is bare dirt. Usually not much of a problem.

This year I had 8' weeds over the leach bed and a slight wind to propagate it. Very impressive; but annoying in that it would not spread sideways so I have a series of tracks through the weeds and have to go back and get the areas in between.

I also did my side yard, lower weeds but more tumbleweeds; watered around the trees and the electrical transformer then did it in batches starting at the down wind part, (wind less than 5 mph---a rareity in these parts)

I would never confess to knowing anything about those nasty chemical stuff even the stuff that's purple when wet...

I won't say how....or at least not right now, I've burned up three shirts two hats, pair of shoes, and my left eye-brow. These all had to with gasoline, home made concoctions. All whith one of my friends. We both lost shoes and shirts in the past. Bored home by ourselves, the internet and the right items. I've learned though. Haven't caused anything to go "boom" in a while.

my grandmas dog...she wouldnt stop jumping throuhg the firework fountain.

well just a second ago i dumped a garbage can o sawdust on the fire and woof burned my arm to death
well i guess i leared my lesson.......:o

I have never lit anything with a forge fire, excepting grass from coal falling out of the forge or a hot cut piece.
I did manage to light a 30 ft. tall rotten oak tree with a brush pile fire. 400 ft from the nearest water supply. We spent 5 hrs putting that one out!
Another time someone put an old PVC cement can (half full) in our burn pile. It blew a pin sized hole in the side of the can, shooting a 2 ft. flame out of the side. Unfortunately, the pressure inside the can built up faster than the flame released it. The result...boooooooooooooooooof! It blew little pieces of burning cement all over the yard, including the trampoline. The trampoline is now retired.
Now that I said I have never burned anything with a forge fire, I will probably burn the barn down tomorrow. Untill then I will remain,

The kidsmith,
Dave Custer

Very entertaining thread.......apparently no serious injuries or deaths have occurred, so luck must be in abundance out there. All I can contribute is one small incident where my work table got set on fire from welding. It has a wood frame under the plate steel. A stool was under the edge of the table, the sparks caught the cushion on fire, and the cushion set the framework on fire. Didn't notice it until the flames came up over the edge of the table and I stood there trying to comprehend how in heck the plate steel was burning. By the time I realized what was going on, the wood was burning pretty well. Had to completely dismantle the table and turn the frame upside down to extinguish it. Replaced one 2x4 support and reassembled it. Not a very productive day all said and done.

No real fire issues but my body looks like a road map from welding and torch burns. I was up on a jenie lift once welding a 12" water pipe. A Miller 250 bobcat with 100' leads I made just for this job. I was welding a release valve on top of the pipe. Had the root weld finished and was starting the cap weld. I couldent get behind the valve so I had my 7018 bent at a 90% angle to weld the backside. Well I was leaned up and across the pipe when the genie lift shifted with me. The bent 7018 went around the valve and the crook went down inside my helmit I head a sizzle, smelled burnt hide and fell back in the lift. I was dazed for a bit when my prep man said "Dude, your heads burnt bad " The rod(fresh off the weld) had sizzled a line starting just above one eyebrow, across my hairline, ending back on my scalp...Dang that hurt:D

I know a smith who burned down his shop. He was trying to oil quench a blade in a plastic bucket with too little oil for the job so he had it tilted and the oil caught on fire and melted through the bucket and ran over the floor and burnt the place up.

He had just finished restoring a blacker triphammer too that was ruined in the fire.

I take this as a cautionary tale myself!

Well, when I was 7, a friend and I torched about 3 acres of grassland in a suburb north of Pittsburgh Pa. This was back about 45 years ago. Due to trauma, I don't remember very much. Or is that selective amnesia?

Bob Brashear

When my shop wasno done while i was workin in the front yard i caught the grass on fire quite often . I caught a rag on fire in my shop the other day when i was using the hot cut the the metal landed on the rag . Here about a month ago I was liting the forge and was putting coal on the burning paper and it was just smoking then it caught up super fast and burned a eye borrow , and one side od my hair on my head (which had just got cut and had jel in it ).

...“What have you all lit on fire on accident?”...
Oh, I know – necromancy is kind of “unnatural” but the “mouse-story” for example cannot be told often enough – and nevertheless I believe that there is no given timeframe for learning and making experiences like that one I will talk about – happening many decades ago to an “innocent” boy:
I spent my youth in an area with a lot of gravel pits around. After “harvesting” the gravel those places were left by the companies, leaving big holes several to many hundred meters wide and 10 to 20 ms deep behind. The population used them to get rid of their trash, the idea of recycling and correct disposal of different kinds of worn out consumer goods hat not taken place yet...

Maybe one can imagine, how interesting these spots must have been in the eyes of a young, technically interested fellow, finding everything from furniture of every kind, old fridges, lamps, every kind of house interior and tools, old cars, toys, bikes... It was a paradise full of adventures and treasures, waiting to be explored – just by me...
Me and a friend of mine saw a partly damaged car on top of a big pile of cans, metal-pieces, old furniture... This object waited for us to be further explored, under all circumstances, so we opened one of the still working cars back-doors to get in. What we found, was a big wasps-nest inside and 100s of really angry wasps, driving us away immediately. As real heroes we “had” to fight back and remebbered, that smoke is sometimes used to get rid of unwanted insects. The decision was clear: some pieces of old newspaper on the cars floor,  a nearby found old slipper on top: “...this will be veeryy smoky, for sure...”  so we thought... Setting the newspaper on fire, closing the door and waiting for the wasps to leave the car. But the flames inside got bigger very fast – seats on fire, roof on fire, then the outside of the car, the painting – everything on fire. Before we realized what and how it happened, the flames were exorbitant high and we had to flee away a long distance because of the enormous heat produced, climbed up the to the pits top and looked down from the rim to our failed project. My friend and I saw our former bright future come to an end: jail, working in a coal mine without light and fresh air, something like that... We stood kind of paralyzed on the upper rim of this gravel pit, in a safe distance from the fireplace, hoping for a miracle and not really an idea what to do next...

A worker in one of the other gravel pits nearby had seen the enormous amount of black smoke and drove over with his really big bulldozer. He saw us standing, frightened and not knowing what to do, obviously had an idea, what might have happened and used a lot of “nice words”, better not heard/seen on a family-friendly site. Our fearful explanation – that we “only” wanted to get rid of these wasps, seemed to appease him a little bit, he grumbled something I could not understand, climbed back in his vehicle, took up one full load of gravel from the ground with his monstrous bulldozer, let it fall down the pit and covered car and whole area around totally with this one load, so that fire and smoke were gone within a split second. No car, no fire, no traces left... It was incredible, we could not believe it, were so happy and thanked our savior profusely. He didn’t talk a lot, grumbled something again, and drove away with his bulldozer back to his working area where he came from, leavin’ us alone with our guilty conscience.

...Thinking twice (minimum) before acting once has “burned in” in my brain since then...

Good story, glad it turned out okay. Did either of you get stung? 

Think about it, in a few thousand years those trash filled pits will be archeologist's treasure troves. Most of what we "know" about our ancestors comes from their middens.

I know I used to love digging around old dump sites, heck the left front fender and front bumper on my old 1959 Chevy pickup came from an abandoned mate in an illegal dumpsite.

How are things going down under?

Frosty The Lucky.

How true! When I think about it nowadays, I am very grateful for our luck, for turning out a bad idea well and for meeting the guy with his behaviour: not talking too much, but acting, if required. A style, I really appreciate, the older I get, especially because one can find the very opposite easy enough...

Just yesterday I had a conversation with a guy, who told me about some really bad experiences he made in the past and that he nevertheless did not obey but in the opposite even had learned something for his future. I believe this is a relly good and healthy way of thinking.

And yes, I sometimes have the funny imagination of future archeologists turning around one of these found pieces, we left behind, having no idea, what's it for and developing wildest ideas about its former use...especially because the purpose, it was created for long time ago, doesn't exist any longer and is gone and forgotten... 

To answer your questions, we were young, "fast as lightning" and therefore didn't get stung. And: no cangaroos here, but a lot of capricorns and marmots in the alps... *g*

ARGH!! ANOTHER head slapping moment! I misread your location. Good dig, I was actually scowling at my monitor wondering about marmots and where alps were in Australia. That's good though, I need a good head slapping and laugh in the morning.

Any good paleo archeological sites near you?

Seeing as learning from our mistakes is so important, one of the skill sets people really need to learn is "Failure analysis" and how not to take failure personally. We're all ignorant but that can be cured. No comment on folk who insist they're not.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

First of all firefly, I want to thank you for reviving this old thread. It was before my time on the forum so I didn't see it. I enjoyed all the stories and got to see some names that are no longer with us or no longer log on. Two in particular who are deceased and truly missed as I considered them as a friend. Thomas Powers and Glenn Conner, I miss them every time I log on and may they Rest in Peace as they done good.

Now to my funny story about fire in the shop. My wife and I bought an older used 4 burner propane gas kiln, when we were still in business. I didn't know much about propane kilns or forges at the time and figured she could use it to fire her pottery and I could temper steel in it, seeing that I was not allowed to use the 2 electric kilns for that.

So I hooked it up to one of the propane tanks after cleaning all 4 burners. I didn't know it needed a regulator to control the flame. I figured I could light it off by making a long coat hanger wire piece, with a small eye on the end and piece of rag soaked in lighter fluid to reach the bottom of the kiln where the burners were through the floor. I still had to lean over the open top to reach the burners. I think y'all see where this is going by now.

Anyway I lit the rag, turned on the propane bottle on and leaned over and stuck the lighter in and that was when I found out one cannot dodge or out run a propane fire ball. It took several months for my hair, eye brows, eye lashes and mustache to grow back in and the bad sunburned look to go away.

Fortunately it didn't do any more damage than that to me or set the whole shop on fire. I did take a big hit to my pride though, took my wife several years to stop reminding me about that every time I light her propane forge we built. I still like the coal and charcoal forges.

I can’t control the wind. All I can do is adjust my sails. ~Semper Paratus~ USCG 1964-1970

Irondragon, that reminds me. 

When i was in Saudi for Desert Storm we were advanced party before the tanks and stuff got there. We had a shower with a 55 gallon drum on top of for water and in that was and immersion heater. anyone who has been in the military should know the old diesel fed heaters where you start the drip and try and catch it with the flaming cup. Our XO was with us and he was lightng it and was taking him a while and the fumes, again as those who have used them knows, built up and lit. The "blast" knocked him back a bit but he reacted and stepped back some, fell off the shower and landed on his back. He just had the wind knocked out but laid there like a fish gasping for air. So of course we all laughed at him.