Oh Mr. Frosty - Your reaction makes me grin too... Apropos "Alps": Not only in my country, but all over "good old europe" exist many historical interesting sites. As an idea I can offer you the "Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps", an unesco world heritage, https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1363 . On the right side top on you can find my country and further on other european countries with their spots of interest.

And Irondragon, you're welcome. I try to be careful bringing up old topics, because some people seem to get angry about this behaviour. But personally I like to read recent threads, even most of them, although in many cases the pics are lost and what remains is the verbal expression.

In my eyes is a good part of these conversations neither obsolete nor less acccurate than the actual ones. In the very opposite I find many of even long time gone participants highly interesting and in their lines I often seem to feel their nearly urgent wish to help, to protect and prevent critical mistakes, to educate those with less experience. And exacly this highly respectable behaviour will in my opinion never become outdated.

More so is our common interest one with a very long history, and even nowadays exist many ancient, but still valid procedures and rules.

One term I couldn't think of last time I posted is "Confirmation Bias", which is one way we tend to see what we expect instead of what's there.

Recent archeology, methods, equipment, labs. etc. is constantly discovering "new" things and interpreting old findings with new eyes, minds and instruments. Just the memes and tropes have been evolving since before "recorded history," call that "deliberately recorded." Humans have been recording history in many forms since before verbal language. 

I don't study the subjects but I do pursue them in a lay fashion. When do we call humans human? Homonids have been making tools and writing much earlier than Neanderthal, Australopithicus fossils contemporary (kind of) to Lucy have been found with tools and tally sticks, some with different types of "tally" marks on the same stick. 

Western Europe is probably the best explored, studied and recorded area on Earth, though China may have more and better data but they don't share well.

More on point, what works works but we're always looking for, "better, faster, cheaper," whatever we do. The "traditionalist" does it because it's how s/he learned and "innovators" are always looking and experimenting. I try to aim for a balance so I can advance but have a working fall back when new falls short. 

The last post in this thread was years before I joined the Forum but I have an incident or two to share. Imagine THAT eh?

One of my earliest "near things" would've been in the late 50s, we'd just moved into a house on a commercial acre in line with the main runway of Van Nuys Airport. The yard had already been fenced with chain link which is a wonderful filter for tumble weeds. Almost the entire yard was filled chest deep in the things so Dad collected and piled them all in the center of the yard and on a calm day lit it. A cone maybe 30' or so in diameter and half again as high went up in a second or two. WHOOSH, make your clothes smoke 50' away, send flames a couple hundred feet in the air and out. 

I spent probably the next 10 years sneaking tumble weeds and making versions on a quest for another super torch event. Happily none of my fire play got away from me. 

There was the ant colony incident on the same property. Red ants had taken over a black ant colony out past the pool, friends and I spent a lot of time trying to eradicate them without using the insecticide Dad kept by the gallon. It was just too potent and would kill the workers without penetrating the nest so a new entryway would open a couple yards away. 

Wellllll, one of us came up with an idea to get badness to the whole hive. SUGAR! Poisoning sugar didn't work but one of my friend's father shot black powder and Dad reloaded so we gradually made off with a couple lbs of each. Mixed with 5lbs. of powdered sugar and we had an ant highway hauling explosive sugar into the hive. It took us a few weeks to get it all in the hive so when we put out the last maybe 2tbsp pile where we always put it, lighting the gunpowder trial "fuse" lit the ant train.

We expected to see smoke shooting from the ground but NOT from "vents" in a 40' circle, shooting flaming ants and other stuff. Worse there were flaming vents a long way away and we spent quite a while running around stomping grass fires. 

While we didn't get caught in the act, I still got in trouble because you could smell burnt powder and ants for quite a while. My chore load tripled for at least a week! The red ant colony was gone though!

In the early 60s I was messing around in the back yard (new place) behind the garage. I had an "empty" gallon can I'd put a little gasoline in and screwed on the cap. I'd punched a nail hole in the cap from inside and my thought was to light the hole and cook over it. Bright kid eh?

Welllll, I clearly remember hitting the back of the garage with my back and stuff landing on me. Leaves, twigs, etc. THEN getting jerked to my feet and slapped around by Dad. (putting me out less than gently) The can had of course exploded and had the seam been on the other side of the can I would've gotten hit by it rather than just a fireball.

Lesson learned. Use  a  fuse!

There used to be a big sand wash running down from the foothills towards a local floor control reservoir. It didn't rain often but when it did we could get a couple inches an hour for a little while so flood control was a BIG DEAL. Anyway, the wash was the perfect place for kids to play with fire, explosives, ride motorcycles, horses, play war, hunt rats with pellet rifles and stuff that wasn't "criminal behavior" in the day. Well, not usually.

We used to "pop" old aerosol cans, paint and starting fluid being the best. Old Wesson bottles with something flammable in them were cool too. The best though were party balloons filled with oxy acet. We'd fill them in Dad's shop, hot foot it to the wash and using string with a little oil on it light them. 1 standard party balloon = about 1/2 cu foot and would make a sharp crack that'd rattle windows for a couple blocks.

The best igniter was an extension cord, car battery and bridge. We started lighting multiples in series. "Shave and a hair cut" got a writeup in the papers and mention on the news! Woo HOO! We laid low for a while and moved to our next idea, a methane filled balloon lifting an oxy acet balloon with a fuse, string and light oil again, it worked. That was very cool, window rattling bangs from a thousand feet in the air. We timed them and triangulated with home built theodolites. 

Then one day while rummaging at one of our favorite stores, an Army Navy surplus where you could find genuine war surplus, My sporterized 8mm German Mauser came from one. We discovered a crate filled with neoprene weather balloons!  Sure, they were a whole dollar but they were 10' balloons!!! So we bought a couple and started collecting stuff. 

I'd salvaged an old refrigerator compressor and while nobody was around we connected it to the gas range and pressurized a tank about the size of a 20lb. propane tank with methane till the pump stalled. Mother, Dad and my little Sister were going somewhere the next weekend and Mom, my grandmother pretty much stayed with her housework and ignored us. 

We loaded Dad's welding set in the trunk with the methane tank and headed for the wash. We figured dinner time was perfect for max effect so about 10 minutes to six we cut it loose and lit the fuse when the end passed the ignition crew. We'd changed from using kite string to using undyed wool yarn because it burns to ash without sparks or burning embers. We applied the oil by simply letting the yard run through an oily rag. 
 

Like I say, we KNEW how high it would get before going off, we'd timed a bunch of small balloons after all. A 1' methane party balloon lifting a 1' oxy acet party balloon lifted a little better than 1.5' / sec.  So, we KNEW a 10' methane balloon would lift a 10' oxy acet balloon 1.5' / sec. No? AND 10x the balloon = 10x the bang. No?

Shows how good we were at math eh? In short, NO on both counts. Neoprene balloons are lighter than the old party balloons per size. so the volume of oxy acet in a party balloon is not enough to counter the balloon's weight so they hung. A 10' oxy acet balloon has considerable lift and it was actually hard to hold the methane balloon down while we got everything rigged to go. 

When we released it our tracking team tracked it as having about 25 '/sec climb and the down draft of the air slowed the fuse. All toll the balloons were at close to 5,000' at ignition.

10x the bang? Wrong math, the balloon had 1,000x the volume not taking into account how much it had stretched before we ran Dad's welding tanks dry.

The BANG rattled windows 20 miles away and was clearly heard 40 miles though some heard it around 50. Happily the winds aloft had carried it away from the city and it went off over the foothills so we only broke a couple / few hundred windows. The compression wave showed on radars so the location in 3D was easily computed and included in the papers. 

That evening after dinner Dad said, "Did you see this Butch?" showing me the headlines. "No Dad but I heard it." Trying real hard to melt into the couch as the story came on the evening news. The tracking information meant it simply could NOT have been natural and lack of debris eliminated an accident. The event was under investigation by the FBI and others, perps being sought.

"What do you think will happen WHEN they're caught, Butch?" I bet they'll be in trouble, Dad"

"Yes, big trouble. Did you  know the FBI doesn't recognize being a minor as an excuse? Even a 16yro will go to prison when they catch them." He let the words hang while I sweated. "Think WHOEVER did this learned anything. . . Butch?" "Oh I'm SURE nothing like this will ever happen again, Dad!" . . . "That's good Butch, you KNOW what would happen if your Mother thought you were involved, don't you?" 

Boy did I! If she so much as suspected I'd be sitting at a desk being questioned by police, with her right beside me making sure I fessed it all. 

I'd lit myself on fire so many times welding before taking metal shop 1 in jr. high, I was one of the few who didn't freak out. When I smelled cotton smoke, I'd feel for the warm place and slap it out without bothering to lift the shield. Stopped running the bead but that's about it.

Frosty The Lucky.

Very interesting stories and deep insight, Mr. Frosty...seems we had more than one similar interest in our "wild days". Had a lot to with thermal energy to a various degree and in varying applications, so one could easy find a relation to the later on developing passion for pounding and forming hot steel.

Good everything turned out well, I will not go further now, in particular taking in account the very different circumstances nowadays, there might be given unfavorable examples for the younger generation in today's society.

Too true, kids today have their own ways to apply for a Darwin Award without my help. I'm frankly amazed I have all my parts and they're functional. Knees not so much but I spent too many years abusing them to expect otherwise.

Frosty The Lucky.

I managed to catch a few things ablaze.  

#1 was when I was welding in a new rear body panel in a mustang.  I elected to gas weld it, that way I wouldn't have to gut the interior. (no sparks as opposed to all the fireflies from a MiG)  The procedure is to weld a little, then, peck a little with hammer, to reduce warpage of the sheet metal.  So, I completed about an inch of weld, and as I was pecking, I caught a flash out of the corner of my eye. I looked over and saw my foot ablaze.  I was a young buck in the 80's, and was wearing tennis shoes. Shoes made of Nylon, rayon, dacron, or some blend thereof. I stomped the fire out with my other foot.  Now a days, I wear 100% Cotton, 100% Wool, or 100% leather.  Synthetics are very bad where fire is involved.

 #2 S-10 Blazer. Drivers door striker. Notorious for cracking, and breaking out the "B" pillar.  I was welding in a new piece, when I noticed smoke.  Apparently, a MIG spark had gotten into a batch of sound deadening material, the pillar acted like a chimney and drew air to feed the fire. Burned the headliner out of the vehicle.  

 #3 Not me, but some folks I know, one of which I'm now married to. They were coon hunting. Dogs chased a raccoon into a dead hollow tree. They got the bright idea to smoke him out. built a fire at the base of the tree, which acted like a super sucker flue. drew the flames up the trunk, and out the top. Coon, bailed out of the top of the tree, with his fur ablaze. running through the woods, late fall, hasn't rained in a month and half.  Managed to set fire to about 100 acres. Never got the coon. 

#4 Years ago we raised game fowl. One evening in the dead of winter we were in the barn exercising some roosters. had a heater going. Courtney was wearing "parachute pants", standing next to the heater, managed to catch herself alight.  She also, no longer wears synthetics. 

Just a couple from the past.  

Ok, one more story:

The summer in my home is relative hot. So I wear shorts in my free time. But - sudden idea - I still have to separate this piece of I-Beam, why not now?  I usually take my bigsized anglegrinder for this task. Of course, a 2 kW grinder with a new 230 mm disk produces a lot of sparks. I was in a hurry, so I decided to cut the piece without the usually involved leather-apron...one cut only...easy task...The sparks bounced on my pants, but: who cares? I felt it, getting hotter every second, but: "two more inches, and I'm done." My wife, coming around the corner, yelling to me: "You're on fire!", but, as you all know, I had to finish the cut under all circumstances - "women are whiny!" After laying the grinder aside and feeling the pain, I tapped, clapped and tried to dampen the flames, with little to no success, on the very opposite: These **** shorts, made out of what wild synthetics ever, showed a behaviour like molten cheese, produced long strings wherever I touched them and my upper leg on the right side suffered a lot, especially afterwards, when I tried to separate the molten plastic fragments from the burnt skin...I count this under the experiences you only make one time to change your behaviour...

By the way, Mr. Frosty: induced by your story regarding unintentionally roasted red ants I remember eating them as food in cambodia as a garnish (to roasted beef for example). They taste not bad, but the locals recommend limited consumption, they seem to work like a kind of digestive. These cambodian red, smallsized ants are a real plague everywhere, so I enjoyed their consumption as a kind of revenge.

Oh BROTHER don't I know that one, got the scars! Fortunately not so bad but I learned the hard way to not wear synthetics around any kind of hot work. It's become a pretty standard warning here on Iforge. 

Frosty The Lucky.

 

On 11/13/2025 at 3:04 AM, Frosty said:

and where alps were in Australia.

There is actually a mountain range in northern Victoria, near our only (half-decent) snow fields called the Australian Alps!

I've been very lucky so far (touch wood!) and only singed a large hole in a synthetic shirt when I backed into a piece of leaf spring I was normalising in my vise. I now where cotton drill work shirts when I'm forging.

But my brother and his best mate were not so lucky first year out of high school. My brother was into (and still is) archery and this was a little while after RobinHood Prince of Thieves had come out. They had the bright idea of shooting a flaming arrow over a bucket of fuel to set it on fire. Despite the fact that they were playing with fire and fuel, they figured they were being safe because they floated a little amount of fuel over water in the bucket, figuring that would make it easier to put out. Well, the stunt worked just the way they wanted...until they needed to put it out. His mate worked for a lifting chain and sling manufacturer and was still in his work gear and boots, so he went and kicked the bucket over, expecting the water to do its job. Overall, it did help in putting the fire out, but the immediate reaction was to cause the fuel and fire to splash in an unexpected way, landing on and quickly melting through the elastic side of his workboot. His mother was a force to be reckoned with, so she didn't find out until his 21st birthday that he was taking regular, but clandestine, visits to the doctor for a month or so after the incident to have his burn dressings changed!

A few years back when i was still an auto tech, we had a Mercedes come in the shop needing intake gaskets. The kid that got the job started taking it apart. Had the fuel rail pulled so of course a bit of fuel lekaed out. There was a zip tie holding a wiring harness to the fuel rail. Rather than reach over the 3' his tool box was away and grab the dikes on top of it he decided to use one of those pocket butane torches to burn through the zip tie. Well, we all know what happens when you mix gas and flame. 

Our head tech was out on a test drive and about doubled over laughing at me from the look on my face as he came back and i was standing outside the shop letting the halon clear from the fire extinguishers.  The kid that did it, packed up his tool box and was not seen again. 

That reminds me of one of our "working" foremen who accuse me publicly, well in the break room with the entire crew there. That I'd better stop making him look a fool, or else. The entire breakroom went quiet There are laws about making threats at work. However, before the head guy could make it around the corner from offices I replied. 

Freddy (not his real name) Nobody can MAKE you look a fool all they can do is point it out. His face was red and the veins really starting to pop when the Superintendent entered the doorway behind him and escorted him to his office for a chat. I asked for and was granted a transfer to one of the other crews. 

Ahhh, Jono, I'm surprised any of us survive the teens. Your story reminds me of one where a couple kids from my high school tried something similar with gasoline and a fire arrow. There was always construction where we lived and there was a shallow pit not far off. It'd rained recently so fire danger was low and the pit had a few inches in the bottom. Sooooo, the boys (girls never seemed to do this kind of thing) poured a gallon or two of gas on the water then walked back a hundred feet and shot a fire arrow into the pit. After waiting 15-20 minutes for the gas to spread on the water. 

Can you say FAE, Fuel Air Explosion?

Of course, being 15 or so they'd told a bunch of people so there were plenty of witnesses to the fireball that easily reached where they were standing and made a cool flame ring that reached a few hundred feet in the air. They were pretty well singed even smoked a little, some of the kids watching were knocked down and definitely frightened. We ALL ran like the grownups were after us!

My cohorts and I did the balloon trick at least a year later. 

You know when I think back on high school we were one crazy dangerous bunch of teens but for the most part none of us wanted to damage or hurt anybody. JUST do cool LOUD stuff. A couple of us got hospital time and stitches but I don't recall any of us getting killed. Outside of car wrecks and similar that is.

Frosty The Lucky.

Billy, you reminded me of yet another set ablaze scenario.   I was working in a mechanic shop. Had a relatively new Chevy pickup come in for head gaskets. As I was putting it together, I was down to hooking up the fuel and return lines. I got them threaded on, then went to lunch.  Came back, hooked up the battery, and fired it up. It lit right off, and ran perfectly for about 15 seconds, then, WHOOF!! It lit right off alright. Did no damage as I had it extinguished quickly. But a big mess of soda to clean up.  I'd forgotten to tighten the fuel, and return lines when I got back from lunch. 

Then, a couple years later different shop. Guy had a Jeep cherokee on the frame rack. Making a pull on the left rear rail next to the gas tank.  Was heating the rail, and WHOOF!!  I thought he'd melted the plastic gas tank. Either way, he was pretty well singed. I put the fire out while everyone was running 'round looking for a water hose.  Come to find out, some yahoo had replaced the fuel filter, but didn't remove the old one, which still had fuel in it. It got hot, and boiled out.   No major damage, but lots of singed hair, and a red face for a few days.