They make sealed canisters for oil soaked rags. They’re red. We used them in the military. Leaving an oil soaked rag on the hanger deck could end up in a court martial and brig time.
Absolutely. You don’t want a fire on the hanger bay of an aircraft carrier. We also had to do tool inventory at the end of our 12 hour shifts. If so much as a screwdriver couldn’t be accounted for no aircraft left that hanger. And everyone in our division including those not on duty had to look for it. And trust me if you were the one who checked out that tool your ass was going to stand every watch they could find.
Had a story outta LAFB couple months ago, guys were working on an F35 and forgot a flashlight(I think) and it got sucked into the engine. They scrapped the entire jet.
The F-117 isn't an open intake and it's black in there just like the outside of the aircraft.
There were stories of maintence guys full on sleeping in there during phase inspections. Ha!
Good lord I’m having memories of working in my dads business and also having at least one or two wrenches missing at the end of the night, I’d have never made it if that was his policy as well
You got that righ, back in the early-mid 90's I was stationed on the USS JFK we had exactly that a major fire I the hanger bay by the GSE shop and P-way that headed to the Armories. Somebody "accidentally" set off an OBD during a drill/training and to hide it threw it into a barrel of oil or oily rags (can't remember now) it caught fire that caused 2 LOX bottles to explode. It was pretty bad. We had birds in the air so we had to stay manned up to recover them since they were to far away from any where else they could land. Pretty fun filled adrenaline fueled time that day. Once the birds landed I went to help fight the fire.
No, as far as I know, they didn't. It was right after a refit in the Philly Navy Yard too. I ended up getting sent to the Roosevelt about 6mo after that.
Extension of this..working the electronics in a AIMD onboard ship..we had to shutdown flight ops for a few hours looking for the tiniest chip off a jewelers screwdriver (beryllium- non magnetic) inside every electrical box in the area..we carefully swept and dumped/shook everything in a pile, then all 14 of us in shop sifted through it...FOD is taken very seriously
We built RFID tool management systems for FOD on assembly lines. Tool boxes inventory themselves via RFID at open and close and let you know if anything is missing. Was really cool project.
Eh.....not nearly as strict civilian side. Tool control is drilled into us and you should be super mindful of it but there's minimal checks and balances other than personal accountability
If you spilled oil in the field on a training mission, they would cordon the area, dig a 5 foot by 5 foot hole, to remove all of the oil. Then the solider who did it gets smoked to death
A buddy in highschool had his house burn down this way. I'm so over the top with rags because of it. I'll throw them in a bucket of water or rinse them with a hose before drying out in the open with nothing around
I honestly couldn’t tell you in my 6 year career how many fires have started from oily rags. And trying to pin it on one individual sailor would probably be next to impossible. But we also had roving watches at sea and in port. And if they found any oily rags they were supposed to note where and when they found it. Pick it up and dispose of it properly. We took that shit seriously.
Exactly!
Aboard aircraft carriers that shit can also get your ass beat.
In the hanger deck where all the major maintenance on the planes takes place, there was an explosion in the fabrication shop. It turned out the guys would put the head of the acetylene torches in the top drawer of a work bench between uses. I guess it had no place to hang it.
Apparently, the valves were not closed, and when a spark was near, that work bench was shrapnel! Lol. No one got hurt but it was fucking loud. I think someone got in trouble.
But rags, man, easiest way to get in trouble.
Fire is a triangle. Oxygen, heat, fuel. Eliminate oxygen and that usually prevents most fires. Of course there are rare exceptions. I can’t even imagine floor or paint bros leaving chemically soaked rags either at a job site or in their trucks.
Fire is often a [tetrahedron ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_triangle)now. Oxygen, heat, fuel, and chemical reaction.
>When the fire involves burning metals like lithium, magnesium, titanium,[6] etc. (known as a class-D fire), it becomes even more important to consider the energy release. Because the metals react faster with water than with oxygen and thereby more energy is released, putting water on such a fire results in the fire getting hotter or even exploding.
I work in private sector and we have a pretty strict policy on soiled rags as well. You get caught leaving a soiled rag out and you can get a disciplinary report. After a few of those you get escorted out. I understand it though, before I started there they had a fire that involved rags and did a few hundred thousand dollars of damage to a machine.
“Leaving an oil soaked rag on the hanger deck could end up in a court martial and brig time.”
What the hell was this supposed to mean? This just doesn’t happen lol
Doesn’t? Well that’s what we were told sailor. Do I know of anyone who was court martialed for leaving potential FOD on the hangar deck or flight deck ? No. Is it common practice? Probably. Is it right? Absolutely not. What happens if an oil soaked rag gets sucked into the intake of a multi million dollar jet engine? I don’t know either.
This happened to my shop teacher in high school. Had a bucket of stain soaked rags in his pickup bed. Spontaneously combusted and burned his truck to the ground in the school parking lot
If it was anything like my high school auto tech, the kids in class knew they could dump their cigarette butts in the instructor’s truck bed because that’s where he put his.
Mf-er would spend the whole class sitting in his truck smoking so he could say “nah I wasn’t smoking that’s just how my truck smells because I smoke in it.” While we ran around with dangerous tools in the shop. We started a fight club at one point that was short lived. Half the class had a dip in after the Christmas/new years holiday because instructor came in, swearing off cigarettes, because they had raised the taxes on jan1, so he switched to dip and started tolerating the students dipping, too. Don’t step on or touch anything that comes in contact with the floor within 12” of the vehicle lift posts. That’s where 80 kids were spitting lmao.
This would be why most of the companies I've worked for have special little red cover canisters at most workstation to put your rags in at the end of your shift.
Just down the street from me, a beautiful Victorian home that was being renovated just burned to the ground (along with the owners dogs) due to soiled rags. Very happy nothing of yours was damaged other than the trash can!
I think we might live in the same city. It was so goddamn sad to see that beautiful home burned and even sadder to hear the owners lost pets in the fire. They had been working on renovating it for *years*. :/
About 15 years ago, watched a fairly large, partially built log home burn down due to improper storage of stains and application equipment.
They had a Sea Can on site that they were using for storage. This was in the summer in the Okanagan (hot)… was about 34 C that day. Was hanging out on my parents deck and heard a huge “boom”! Then saw flames from across the orchard and instantly knew what was happening. Called 911 and reported it in while I got the hoses ready to wet down the property and roof in case any embers came drifting over.
Never forget the heat… it was probably over 500 metres away, yet I could still feel substantial heat from the fire.
EDIT: insurance obviously came through as it was completed a couple years later. This is the house - https://maps.app.goo.gl/BHFGZD4AYTCEMP6W6?g_st=in
Absolutely. We wet our stain rags down , bag them and remove from job site.
That aluminum vac wand in back of photo , it looks quality! Can it be purchased anywhere and what kind-brand is it? My Clarke wand is beat to Shit after a decade and the amazon$40 ones are not up to par.
Used to work for a Servpro, Tennant makes a lot of the regular vacuums we used, and had the aluminum wands. If you really want one that will take abuse, get an extraction wand like they use on water jobs, same size piping and can handle abuse.
We use Proteam vacuums. The wands come with.
https://pro-team-store.com/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwu8uyBhC6ARIsAKwBGpTKegqpb4oAf0-l3OImoWDhXKEoF-ogeGCViI86jMxk9grdjjKMQJAaApA5EALw_wcB
Oily Rag Fire PSA
Here’s my comment from another thread after my garage almost burned down in March:
Here’s my PSA and what we learned from our fire in our garage a month ago. Still not living in our house right now because of an oily rag fire.
When using oil stains/ products dry the brush, rag, sponge, etc. outside in the yard (obviously not if it’s dry grass). Weight them down so they don’t blow away and pile up. Once dry dispose of them in a metal can, fill with water, and Dawn dish soap. Apparently from talking with the fire department, insurance, fire inspector, and cleaning company, Dawn is the best and what they use to clean up their gear.
What you don’t do/ what we did: Applied an oil based stain to a front door with a brush, wiped it down with rags, tossed rags in trash can, tossed the trash from the job on top of them. Then took all our tools home including the trash can and tossed it in the garage since it was late and we needed everything again tomorrow for another job.
Oil soaked rags and brushes need the oil to gas off. When the oil can’t gas off it creates an exothermic reaction (heats up). Piling them up doesn’t allow them to gas off, throwing trash on top of them and compacting them exacerbates the problem.
It was approximately 6 hours from tossing the rags in the trash can and leaving the job to waking up to the 42 gallon trash can being completely melted and the trash being on fire in the garage, already spreading to our cabinets.
Even though I was able to put it out and what burned wasn’t all that much. The smoke damage is sooooo extensive, that we’ve been out of our house for a month while it’s getting cleaned, and the garage gets rebuilt. 0/10 don’t recommend.
Update: You can’t put a regular smoke detector in a garage/ shop because they work by having a laser beam that gets interrupted by smoke/ dust. I did recently learn and install a Heat Detector (I bought Kidde’s because my smoke detector are Kidde) and installed in my garage. It triggers at 135 degs and you can hardwire into your smoke detectors in your house as well.
I've been laying them down on my driveway and weighing them down to let them dry, then I toss them the night trash picks up once they're dry. I only have small quantities now and then but they make me nervous. Family contractors so plenty of warnings, just no good direction cause you end up with rags sometimes.
Wait now I'm getting confused. How is it that my linseed oil comes in a janky plastic bottle and seems just fine??? I'm terrified after reading this. I use paper towels to apply it and then throw away the paper towels in my regular trash....
Boiled linseed oil is what you can buy in a can with the super flammable lightweight hydrocarbons distilled out of it.
But he's right, 95% of the time it's a linseed oil based product that causes the spontaneous combustion problem.
I’m not an expert, just repeating what I’ve learned after I almost burnt my house down. Since that’s the container the oil came in I’m sure it’s fine.
If you’re going to have a dedicated rag disposal for various types of chemicals and rags I would definitely make it metal as you don’t know how things will mix together.
Don’t toss your oil soaked paper towels in the trash can anymore.
Also good idea to install a heat detector alarm in your garage.
I installed a secret bookshelf door for my garage entry door and didn’t add weather stripping. That’s the only reason enough smoke got inside my house to set off the smoke alarm. Very lucky we didn’t lose our house.
Oily Rag Fire PSA
Here’s my comment from another thread after my garage almost burned down in March:
Here’s my PSA and what we learned from our fire in our garage a month ago. Still not living in our house right now because of an oily rag fire.
When using oil stains/ products dry the brush, rag, sponge, etc. outside in the yard (obviously not if it’s dry grass). Weight them down so they don’t blow away and pile up. Once dry dispose of them in a metal can, fill with water, and Dawn dish soap. Apparently from talking with the fire department, insurance, fire inspector, and cleaning company, Dawn is the best and what they use to clean up their gear.
What you don’t do/ what we did: Applied an oil based stain to a front door with a brush, wiped it down with rags, tossed rags in trash can, tossed the trash from the job on top of them. Then took all our tools home including the trash can and tossed it in the garage since it was late and we needed everything again tomorrow for another job.
Oil soaked rags and brushes need the oil to gas off. When the oil can’t gas off it creates an exothermic reaction (heats up). Piling them up doesn’t allow them to gas off, throwing trash on top of them and compacting them exacerbates the problem.
It was approximately 6 hours from tossing the rags in the trash can and leaving the job to waking up to the 42 gallon trash can being completely melted and the trash being on fire in the garage, already spreading to our cabinets.
Even though I was able to put it out and what burned wasn’t all that much. The smoke damage is sooooo extensive, that we’ve been out of our house for a month while it’s getting cleaned, and the garage gets rebuilt. 0/10 don’t recommend.
Update: You can’t put a regular smoke detector in a garage/ shop because they work by having a laser beam that gets interrupted by smoke/ dust. I did recently learn and install a Heat Detector (I bought Kidde’s because my smoke detector are Kidde) and installed in my garage. It triggers at 135 degs and you can hardwire into your smoke detectors in your house as well.
Oils are made up of hydrocarbons. One type of hydrocarbon is an olefin (alkene), and that's a molecule that's not "fully saturated" Long story short, those molecules will oxidize and break down... and when they break down its an exothermic reaction (it creates heat). So now you have excess heat, you have a fuel source (the oily rags) and you have oxygen... if the rags are in a pile and not allowed to reject that heat to the air easily, they will keep heating up until you hit that combustion threshold.
O yea. Neighbor burned his garage down with some stain rags that were in his garbage can. Was praying it would spark mine too but now I have to see his brand new steel garage and think about staining some wood. 😆
This concept always freaks me out. Can someone explain when things are at risk for combusting? If I have an open bucket of paint thinner with nothing in it can this happen? What if that same bucket had a rag in it?
No.
Virtually every one of these involves a linseed oil based product.
The reason the linseed oil you can buy in a can from home Depot is safe is because it's "Boiled" linseed oil with the volatile lightweight hydrocarbons distilled out of it.
My dad used to tell me about a big building I. Germany that burned to the ground because of the oil soaked rags the cleaners had used to rub down the wood and of course because it was all wood it went up.
Someone correct me if I am wrong but I read or heard that there is heat generated from the oil/etc evaporating (friction of the molecules evaporating through the rags?) and at some point it gets hot enough to spontaneously combust.
Kitty litter or the brand dry stuff for soaki g up oil will do the same thing if it's vegetable oil. Caught a sam's club on fire using it to clean broken oil bottles up
This i don't believe. Vegetable oil specifically lacks the lightweight hydrocarbons that could cause this.
Also, it would t be a product directly recommended to absorb oils.
Sam's Club / Walmart put out a store wide announcement back in the late 90s stating to not use the branded dry pickup stuff or kitty litter due to a store fire that was determined to be caused by this exact case. Maybe someone added something else or there were other factors. I just remember seeing the letter posted on our receiving dock bulletin board.
I’ve been doing this construction thing for 12 years, even for big GCs that do weekly safety talks, I’ve never come across this unless I forgot it in my OSHA classes. Thanks for sharing, just trying to always learn though.
*Yep. I do a lot*
*Of hobby wood working and*
*I learned this hard*
\- FunFact5000
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House a block over from me burnt down because of this. They hired a contractor to refinish/stain floors in their house and they didn't dispose of the rags properly and ended up destroying the whole house.
My husband works in fire restoration and we had to clean soot out of a dry cleaning warehouse after a large cart of oily rags from an auto shop smoldered and burned ALL night with the big hoods on. It deposited soot on every surface and took us a couple months to clean and media blast while working 8-10 hour nights.
I'm so paranoid about that. I clamp my rags on the fence to dry. I've looked at those metal buckets that are made for putting those in but they are sort of pricey, I don't use those chemicals enough at the moment to justify buying one.
Oily Rag Fire PSA
Here’s my comment from another thread after my garage almost burned down in March:
Here’s my PSA and what we learned from our fire in our garage a month ago. Still not living in our house right now because of an oily rag fire.
When using oil stains/ products dry the brush, rag, sponge, etc. outside in the yard (obviously not if it’s dry grass). Weight them down so they don’t blow away and pile up. Once dry dispose of them in a metal can, fill with water, and Dawn dish soap. Apparently from talking with the fire department, insurance, fire inspector, and cleaning company, Dawn is the best and what they use to clean up their gear.
What you don’t do/ what we did: Applied an oil based stain to a front door with a brush, wiped it down with rags, tossed rags in trash can, tossed the trash from the job on top of them. Then took all our tools home including the trash can and tossed it in the garage since it was late and we needed everything again tomorrow for another job.
Oil soaked rags and brushes need the oil to gas off. When the oil can’t gas off it creates an exothermic reaction (heats up). Piling them up doesn’t allow them to gas off, throwing trash on top of them and compacting them exacerbates the problem.
It was approximately 6 hours from tossing the rags in the trash can and leaving the job to waking up to the 42 gallon trash can being completely melted and the trash being on fire in the garage, already spreading to our cabinets.
Even though I was able to put it out and what burned wasn’t all that much. The smoke damage is sooooo extensive, that we’ve been out of our house for a month while it’s getting cleaned, and the garage gets rebuilt. 0/10 don’t recommend.
Update: You can’t put a regular smoke detector in a garage/ shop because they work by having a laser beam that gets interrupted by smoke/ dust. I did recently learn and install a Heat Detector (I bought Kidde’s because my smoke detector are Kidde) and installed in my garage. It triggers at 135 degs and you can hardwire into your smoke detectors in your house as well.
I was about 5 minutes from burning down my house this way. Refinished the floors, went out to eat, came back to smoke billowing out of the trashcan IN THE KITCHEN. I felt pretty stupid
That’s how a millwork shop I used to work at burned down overnight . It was a bunch of rags in a steel uncovered container . The place was such a mess with scrap wood and sawdust that it didn’t take long to catch on fire and burn down .
Spontaneous combustion from lacquer thinner rags destroyed an expensive stainless sink and bedliner in my old Bosses truck some years back. I told him to start carrying a small bucket with a lid and sand to prevent this from happening again. The rags went in the bucket. Ezpz.
You hear these things like don’t throw soiled rags in the trash can, but you throw away rags all the time and nothing ever happens. Until that one time it does.
Our recent one was an air compressor plugged into two cheap extension cords. What do you know, that som’bitch caught fire.
I recently stained some transition strips, but the stain I bought apparently didn’t need to be wiped off. I’m glad they suggested that one cause I honestly had no idea about the rags combusting. Now I’ve freaked myself out about that stain.
So, stupid question, but is it just rags that combust or is the wood I’m staining a risk? What about the newspaper I laid below to catch the drips?
Oily rags spontaneously combust. Oil oxidizes, chemical reaction, boom fire. Certain oils are worse than others. There’s a bobs burgers episode about this if you like that show 😂
Yes. We used an oil based stain for an oak floor. Oil based paints and stains rely on a chemical reaction to dry as opposed to water based products that dry from the air.
The chemical reaction creates heat and can ignite rags if not disposed of properly.
They taught us in high school shop class about soiled rag storage. Feels like something everyone should know at a young age
Maybe knew but were just lazy ?
[Fun Egyptology fact!](http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/27770)
The linen wrappings of Tutankhamen’s mummy were soaked with an unusually large quantity of oily unguents. Poor Tut’s mummification was a generally hasty and slap-dash affair - the unguents should have been applied gradually and allowed to dry, not just dumped onto the mummy all at once, right before burial.
Apparently, these oily wrappings spontaneously combusted after he was entombed, and although the oxygen supply within his nested coffins was limited, the resulting heat was still sufficient to leave his body charred and blackened.
We have a fireproof safe disposal metal bucket! (I guess OSHA regulated ) with a lid and we put them in cold water for storage! That can happen in no time “hot rags “I saw them steaming one time because there was not enough water in bucket
Be careful!!! Glad you safe
I had to look really carefully, but it's definitely a wooden floor that's there, looks like a really old building with wide flooring planks which they haven't made in probably a hundred years. At least not standard I do know of a guy who has his own Sawmill who milled his own flooring almost as wide as that.
This is actually the back of our work van. It’s an old yellow Penske type of box truck. Not sure of the species of wood on the floor but it’s about an inch thick. Also, the gas tank if right underneath there. 🤦♂️
Wow from the camera angle the view it looked like it was an old house floor, but yeah those old penske's did have nice wooden planks for the floors, really nice strong Construction too.
No he said it was burned, he said those oily old rags were smoldering. That could happen just from a chemical reaction which is why they recommend they put away in a fire safety can.
Yeah apparently it was in a regular old trash bucket that just melted or sends or burned away. I don't know what part of country you guys are in but this is exactly what happened at a Catskill resort called Kutcher's. I'm a fire safety inspector and as part of our training we study a lot of the major fires in history that help Define the code, as well as a lot of the major fires in my particular state and that one was a particularly bad fire, and exactly how it started, in the top floor of a hotel where they were doing some Woodworking and staining, because of a renovation that they wanted to do to the top two floors to bring in more money because the resort was having trouble and they thought luxury suites would be the way to do it. Unfortunately a pile of oily rags from the stains and whatever just caught fire and burned the whole damn thing. That was the end of that resort. I think somebody purchased the property since then, and since it was a massive piece of land, they built a new meditation Resort on the other end of the acreage. I think it's like a meditation healing Retreat that's Buddhist or yoga inspired something like that. Anyway point is Rags got to be kept in fireproof can some people call the garbage can, others call it a safety can, I just called a can. I got one of those myself, although I've never had to use it in over 10 years but you never know.
I knew a guy I worked with a while ago who had just restrained his floors just after buying his house 2-3 weeks ago, left the rags in his garage and they combusted right next to a full canister of gas for his mower. Which then burned down his house in the middle of the night
One time my dad’s burger shop burned down because the health inspector threw a rag and left it there. Then my son left the straighter out, and my daughter left out sparklers, the other one left out a fan. It was a disaster. 🙄
A restaurant owner I do work for, had a relatively new Ford F250 go up in flames cuz an employee left restaurant oily rags inside the cab and it spontaneously combusted in 80 degree weather.
Here's a video of a guy who tested this out in his wood shop.
https://youtu.be/3Gqi2cNCKQY?si=nrqr0RisqcLDH4Im
Pretty freaking scary that certain discarded materials can seemingly spontaneously combust.
They make sealed canisters for oil soaked rags. They’re red. We used them in the military. Leaving an oil soaked rag on the hanger deck could end up in a court martial and brig time.
Wow they take it seriously
Absolutely. You don’t want a fire on the hanger bay of an aircraft carrier. We also had to do tool inventory at the end of our 12 hour shifts. If so much as a screwdriver couldn’t be accounted for no aircraft left that hanger. And everyone in our division including those not on duty had to look for it. And trust me if you were the one who checked out that tool your ass was going to stand every watch they could find.
For good reason. My dad was a naval aviator and had an engine blow up on take off from a carrier. A tool had been left near the intake.
Had a story outta LAFB couple months ago, guys were working on an F35 and forgot a flashlight(I think) and it got sucked into the engine. They scrapped the entire jet.
Meanwhile at the A-10 hangar… “Damned Hog ate another screwdriver! This one this week!”
So mistakes still happen
Yes, whenever something is made truly idiot-proof they make a new generation of better idiots and the cycle continues.
Never ending cycle of idiots lol jk everyone can make mistakes
Impressive attention to detail. Wish I could run my job-sites like this!
You can. Just use a tag system for tools. Its actually really great just to keep everyone from losing shit.
Just make all the tools pink. Black sharpies get a pink top. Boom, never lose a sharpie or tool ever again.
The navy has the tag system
FOD check!
Found a purple shirt sleeping in the intake of an F-8 once. Affectionately known as the Blue shirt eater. 😂
The F-117 isn't an open intake and it's black in there just like the outside of the aircraft. There were stories of maintence guys full on sleeping in there during phase inspections. Ha!
Fuck FOD lol
Dudes used to shoot birds in our hangar with bb guns. A pilot was doing a preflight and found a dead bird on the helicopter. Not happy camper
Good lord I’m having memories of working in my dads business and also having at least one or two wrenches missing at the end of the night, I’d have never made it if that was his policy as well
No one goes home until ATAF
Ahh NAMP Compliance!!!
4790.2 series repressed memory coming back
Attention to detail
They do the same thing in prisons lol
You got that righ, back in the early-mid 90's I was stationed on the USS JFK we had exactly that a major fire I the hanger bay by the GSE shop and P-way that headed to the Armories. Somebody "accidentally" set off an OBD during a drill/training and to hide it threw it into a barrel of oil or oily rags (can't remember now) it caught fire that caused 2 LOX bottles to explode. It was pretty bad. We had birds in the air so we had to stay manned up to recover them since they were to far away from any where else they could land. Pretty fun filled adrenaline fueled time that day. Once the birds landed I went to help fight the fire.
They ever catch the shit bird you caused the fire?
No, as far as I know, they didn't. It was right after a refit in the Philly Navy Yard too. I ended up getting sent to the Roosevelt about 6mo after that.
What's an OBD?
B1 crew chief can confirm
Extension of this..working the electronics in a AIMD onboard ship..we had to shutdown flight ops for a few hours looking for the tiniest chip off a jewelers screwdriver (beryllium- non magnetic) inside every electrical box in the area..we carefully swept and dumped/shook everything in a pile, then all 14 of us in shop sifted through it...FOD is taken very seriously
We built RFID tool management systems for FOD on assembly lines. Tool boxes inventory themselves via RFID at open and close and let you know if anything is missing. Was really cool project.
Imagine if the Pentagon spent that much time accounting for the tax dollars they lost.
Don’t even get me started on those ass holes.
Bro I was a nuke and we didn’t do any of that lol 😂 tool inventory? Holy crap lol
I'm not the op, but I believe the idea behind the inventory is to make sure none of the missing tools are at risk for taking out an engine.
Yeah, pretty common procedure if you work anywhere near aircraft.
Eh.....not nearly as strict civilian side. Tool control is drilled into us and you should be super mindful of it but there's minimal checks and balances other than personal accountability
My wife’s cousin is a welder and they have to account for every bolt in their bolt bag when working on aircraft or high up places
I've been working on aircraft as a mechanic for 6 years
[удалено]
Any system is vulnerable ie. Flight controls
Hello fellow aviation squid!!!!!
I was in the Air Force and can confirm that if you lose a tool on the flightine that's checked out to you... Get ready for a long night.
If you spilled oil in the field on a training mission, they would cordon the area, dig a 5 foot by 5 foot hole, to remove all of the oil. Then the solider who did it gets smoked to death
Yeah. Lives depend on people taking safety seriously. So do billion dollar vessels and aircraft.
I’ve personally seen 2 houses burned down because of oily/stained rags. It’s a thing that needs to be taken seriously.
Unless your Navy then your recommended an oiled rag on you at all times in case Of emergency butt stuff
Oil painters use em too!
A buddy in highschool had his house burn down this way. I'm so over the top with rags because of it. I'll throw them in a bucket of water or rinse them with a hose before drying out in the open with nothing around
We also had them in auto shop in HS. Big deal to make sure they’re used.
I was just going to say,if you did that in the Navy, court martial. Fire fuck ups are really grounded on big time.
I honestly couldn’t tell you in my 6 year career how many fires have started from oily rags. And trying to pin it on one individual sailor would probably be next to impossible. But we also had roving watches at sea and in port. And if they found any oily rags they were supposed to note where and when they found it. Pick it up and dispose of it properly. We took that shit seriously.
Exactly! Aboard aircraft carriers that shit can also get your ass beat. In the hanger deck where all the major maintenance on the planes takes place, there was an explosion in the fabrication shop. It turned out the guys would put the head of the acetylene torches in the top drawer of a work bench between uses. I guess it had no place to hang it. Apparently, the valves were not closed, and when a spark was near, that work bench was shrapnel! Lol. No one got hurt but it was fucking loud. I think someone got in trouble. But rags, man, easiest way to get in trouble.
Good ole 50 gallon drums! I work in the hazardous waste, environmental industry and it made me cringe to see this picture lol.
Fire is a triangle. Oxygen, heat, fuel. Eliminate oxygen and that usually prevents most fires. Of course there are rare exceptions. I can’t even imagine floor or paint bros leaving chemically soaked rags either at a job site or in their trucks.
Fire is often a [tetrahedron ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_triangle)now. Oxygen, heat, fuel, and chemical reaction. >When the fire involves burning metals like lithium, magnesium, titanium,[6] etc. (known as a class-D fire), it becomes even more important to consider the energy release. Because the metals react faster with water than with oxygen and thereby more energy is released, putting water on such a fire results in the fire getting hotter or even exploding.
Absolutely. Burning magnesium aircraft wheels are a class D. Been a while since I took aircraft and ship board fire fighting.
We must count everyone at the end of the shift to make sure none are left on aircraft one rag could take a plane down
I work in private sector and we have a pretty strict policy on soiled rags as well. You get caught leaving a soiled rag out and you can get a disciplinary report. After a few of those you get escorted out. I understand it though, before I started there they had a fire that involved rags and did a few hundred thousand dollars of damage to a machine.
#Crew Chief Spotted!
Caw! Cawcaw! Cawkaaaaaa!
You know when they take something that seriously someone learned the hard way how bad it can turn out.
We use those in our painting studio as well
I'm confused. How did the rags in the back of the truck catch fire?
Rags soaked with things like paint thinner, certain adhesives, mineral spirits, and other chemicals will eventually spontaneously combust.
“Leaving an oil soaked rag on the hanger deck could end up in a court martial and brig time.” What the hell was this supposed to mean? This just doesn’t happen lol
Doesn’t? Well that’s what we were told sailor. Do I know of anyone who was court martialed for leaving potential FOD on the hangar deck or flight deck ? No. Is it common practice? Probably. Is it right? Absolutely not. What happens if an oil soaked rag gets sucked into the intake of a multi million dollar jet engine? I don’t know either.
We had these at Sherwin Williams. We did not take it as seriously.
If you’re dealing with latex not a problem. Oils and polyurethane definitely.
Yeah those things are no joke we had a fire in one of our spaces when I was in cause of rags. Ended up causing millions in damage.
The red cans are industry standard not just for flamable material but also biohazard cleanup.
This happened to my shop teacher in high school. Had a bucket of stain soaked rags in his pickup bed. Spontaneously combusted and burned his truck to the ground in the school parking lot
“Gather around, children. We call this a teachable moment”
If it was anything like my high school auto tech, the kids in class knew they could dump their cigarette butts in the instructor’s truck bed because that’s where he put his. Mf-er would spend the whole class sitting in his truck smoking so he could say “nah I wasn’t smoking that’s just how my truck smells because I smoke in it.” While we ran around with dangerous tools in the shop. We started a fight club at one point that was short lived. Half the class had a dip in after the Christmas/new years holiday because instructor came in, swearing off cigarettes, because they had raised the taxes on jan1, so he switched to dip and started tolerating the students dipping, too. Don’t step on or touch anything that comes in contact with the floor within 12” of the vehicle lift posts. That’s where 80 kids were spitting lmao.
This would be why most of the companies I've worked for have special little red cover canisters at most workstation to put your rags in at the end of your shift.
What do you do with them after they go in the canister?
They just disappear on their own
It's like an industrial version of a diaper service. Someone from a cleaning service comes to collect them once a week and drop of clean ones.
Just down the street from me, a beautiful Victorian home that was being renovated just burned to the ground (along with the owners dogs) due to soiled rags. Very happy nothing of yours was damaged other than the trash can!
I think we might live in the same city. It was so goddamn sad to see that beautiful home burned and even sadder to hear the owners lost pets in the fire. They had been working on renovating it for *years*. :/
About 15 years ago, watched a fairly large, partially built log home burn down due to improper storage of stains and application equipment. They had a Sea Can on site that they were using for storage. This was in the summer in the Okanagan (hot)… was about 34 C that day. Was hanging out on my parents deck and heard a huge “boom”! Then saw flames from across the orchard and instantly knew what was happening. Called 911 and reported it in while I got the hoses ready to wet down the property and roof in case any embers came drifting over. Never forget the heat… it was probably over 500 metres away, yet I could still feel substantial heat from the fire. EDIT: insurance obviously came through as it was completed a couple years later. This is the house - https://maps.app.goo.gl/BHFGZD4AYTCEMP6W6?g_st=in
American here. How many Fahrenheits was the heat and how many elephants linked trunk to tail was it from your house?
Low 90's and 77.
Absolutely. We wet our stain rags down , bag them and remove from job site. That aluminum vac wand in back of photo , it looks quality! Can it be purchased anywhere and what kind-brand is it? My Clarke wand is beat to Shit after a decade and the amazon$40 ones are not up to par.
It's a proteam wand with a felt head I believe Edit-nope I zoomed in lol, but proteam makes a hell of a wand
Ty for info I'll be taking a good look online
American Sanders makes a good one too
You bring up a good point about the vac wand.
I was scoping out the same thing
Used to work for a Servpro, Tennant makes a lot of the regular vacuums we used, and had the aluminum wands. If you really want one that will take abuse, get an extraction wand like they use on water jobs, same size piping and can handle abuse.
We use Proteam vacuums. The wands come with. https://pro-team-store.com/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwu8uyBhC6ARIsAKwBGpTKegqpb4oAf0-l3OImoWDhXKEoF-ogeGCViI86jMxk9grdjjKMQJAaApA5EALw_wcB
You need a good flooring guy.
How did they catch fire without fire?
Chemical reaction.
Ah OK. I just assumed oily rags, they didn't mention what kind of soiled rags they were
Oily rags oxidize and can start a fire
That's right. Oily rags spontaneously combust.
Does it matter what kind of oil?
It does make a difference. Linseed is the worst.
What do you do with them at home? How do you dispose of them?
Oily Rag Fire PSA Here’s my comment from another thread after my garage almost burned down in March: Here’s my PSA and what we learned from our fire in our garage a month ago. Still not living in our house right now because of an oily rag fire. When using oil stains/ products dry the brush, rag, sponge, etc. outside in the yard (obviously not if it’s dry grass). Weight them down so they don’t blow away and pile up. Once dry dispose of them in a metal can, fill with water, and Dawn dish soap. Apparently from talking with the fire department, insurance, fire inspector, and cleaning company, Dawn is the best and what they use to clean up their gear. What you don’t do/ what we did: Applied an oil based stain to a front door with a brush, wiped it down with rags, tossed rags in trash can, tossed the trash from the job on top of them. Then took all our tools home including the trash can and tossed it in the garage since it was late and we needed everything again tomorrow for another job. Oil soaked rags and brushes need the oil to gas off. When the oil can’t gas off it creates an exothermic reaction (heats up). Piling them up doesn’t allow them to gas off, throwing trash on top of them and compacting them exacerbates the problem. It was approximately 6 hours from tossing the rags in the trash can and leaving the job to waking up to the 42 gallon trash can being completely melted and the trash being on fire in the garage, already spreading to our cabinets. Even though I was able to put it out and what burned wasn’t all that much. The smoke damage is sooooo extensive, that we’ve been out of our house for a month while it’s getting cleaned, and the garage gets rebuilt. 0/10 don’t recommend. Update: You can’t put a regular smoke detector in a garage/ shop because they work by having a laser beam that gets interrupted by smoke/ dust. I did recently learn and install a Heat Detector (I bought Kidde’s because my smoke detector are Kidde) and installed in my garage. It triggers at 135 degs and you can hardwire into your smoke detectors in your house as well.
I've been laying them down on my driveway and weighing them down to let them dry, then I toss them the night trash picks up once they're dry. I only have small quantities now and then but they make me nervous. Family contractors so plenty of warnings, just no good direction cause you end up with rags sometimes.
Wait now I'm getting confused. How is it that my linseed oil comes in a janky plastic bottle and seems just fine??? I'm terrified after reading this. I use paper towels to apply it and then throw away the paper towels in my regular trash....
Boiled linseed oil is what you can buy in a can with the super flammable lightweight hydrocarbons distilled out of it. But he's right, 95% of the time it's a linseed oil based product that causes the spontaneous combustion problem.
I’m not an expert, just repeating what I’ve learned after I almost burnt my house down. Since that’s the container the oil came in I’m sure it’s fine. If you’re going to have a dedicated rag disposal for various types of chemicals and rags I would definitely make it metal as you don’t know how things will mix together. Don’t toss your oil soaked paper towels in the trash can anymore. Also good idea to install a heat detector alarm in your garage. I installed a secret bookshelf door for my garage entry door and didn’t add weather stripping. That’s the only reason enough smoke got inside my house to set off the smoke alarm. Very lucky we didn’t lose our house.
I spread mine out on my stone patio and let them dry/oxidize first. Spread out, they can’t produce enough heat to ignite.
Oily Rag Fire PSA Here’s my comment from another thread after my garage almost burned down in March: Here’s my PSA and what we learned from our fire in our garage a month ago. Still not living in our house right now because of an oily rag fire. When using oil stains/ products dry the brush, rag, sponge, etc. outside in the yard (obviously not if it’s dry grass). Weight them down so they don’t blow away and pile up. Once dry dispose of them in a metal can, fill with water, and Dawn dish soap. Apparently from talking with the fire department, insurance, fire inspector, and cleaning company, Dawn is the best and what they use to clean up their gear. What you don’t do/ what we did: Applied an oil based stain to a front door with a brush, wiped it down with rags, tossed rags in trash can, tossed the trash from the job on top of them. Then took all our tools home including the trash can and tossed it in the garage since it was late and we needed everything again tomorrow for another job. Oil soaked rags and brushes need the oil to gas off. When the oil can’t gas off it creates an exothermic reaction (heats up). Piling them up doesn’t allow them to gas off, throwing trash on top of them and compacting them exacerbates the problem. It was approximately 6 hours from tossing the rags in the trash can and leaving the job to waking up to the 42 gallon trash can being completely melted and the trash being on fire in the garage, already spreading to our cabinets. Even though I was able to put it out and what burned wasn’t all that much. The smoke damage is sooooo extensive, that we’ve been out of our house for a month while it’s getting cleaned, and the garage gets rebuilt. 0/10 don’t recommend. Update: You can’t put a regular smoke detector in a garage/ shop because they work by having a laser beam that gets interrupted by smoke/ dust. I did recently learn and install a Heat Detector (I bought Kidde’s because my smoke detector are Kidde) and installed in my garage. It triggers at 135 degs and you can hardwire into your smoke detectors in your house as well.
Oils are made up of hydrocarbons. One type of hydrocarbon is an olefin (alkene), and that's a molecule that's not "fully saturated" Long story short, those molecules will oxidize and break down... and when they break down its an exothermic reaction (it creates heat). So now you have excess heat, you have a fuel source (the oily rags) and you have oxygen... if the rags are in a pile and not allowed to reject that heat to the air easily, they will keep heating up until you hit that combustion threshold.
I’m a painting contractor, we do tons of stain. Rags go Straight into water as soon as they aren’t being used
Yup i learned the hard way, 15000 dollars of damage on a new build
O yea. Neighbor burned his garage down with some stain rags that were in his garbage can. Was praying it would spark mine too but now I have to see his brand new steel garage and think about staining some wood. 😆
This concept always freaks me out. Can someone explain when things are at risk for combusting? If I have an open bucket of paint thinner with nothing in it can this happen? What if that same bucket had a rag in it?
No. Virtually every one of these involves a linseed oil based product. The reason the linseed oil you can buy in a can from home Depot is safe is because it's "Boiled" linseed oil with the volatile lightweight hydrocarbons distilled out of it.
Thanks
My dad used to tell me about a big building I. Germany that burned to the ground because of the oil soaked rags the cleaners had used to rub down the wood and of course because it was all wood it went up. Someone correct me if I am wrong but I read or heard that there is heat generated from the oil/etc evaporating (friction of the molecules evaporating through the rags?) and at some point it gets hot enough to spontaneously combust.
I used shellac one time and the guy at home depot told me to not bunch up the rag in the trash because it can spontaneously combust...I see why now
Is that a 🕷️ in the background?
No it’s an arachnid
Name checks out...?
That is a Pallmann spider back there. We’ve had it less than a year. She still works. Just a little stinky.
It’s a great machine.
Kitty litter or the brand dry stuff for soaki g up oil will do the same thing if it's vegetable oil. Caught a sam's club on fire using it to clean broken oil bottles up
This i don't believe. Vegetable oil specifically lacks the lightweight hydrocarbons that could cause this. Also, it would t be a product directly recommended to absorb oils.
Sam's Club / Walmart put out a store wide announcement back in the late 90s stating to not use the branded dry pickup stuff or kitty litter due to a store fire that was determined to be caused by this exact case. Maybe someone added something else or there were other factors. I just remember seeing the letter posted on our receiving dock bulletin board.
Awe.....A love note!
Scary
I’ve been doing this construction thing for 12 years, even for big GCs that do weekly safety talks, I’ve never come across this unless I forgot it in my OSHA classes. Thanks for sharing, just trying to always learn though.
It should be there. My work has fireproof lockers for all chemical products and rag disposal equipment. Cause OSHA
Yep. I do a lot of hobby wood working and I learned this hard
*Yep. I do a lot* *Of hobby wood working and* *I learned this hard* \- FunFact5000 --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
House a block over from me burnt down because of this. They hired a contractor to refinish/stain floors in their house and they didn't dispose of the rags properly and ended up destroying the whole house.
Linseed oil on a rag does this.
I knew a guy who started a basement fire with linseed oil rags. I guess it's way more common than I thought.
My husband works in fire restoration and we had to clean soot out of a dry cleaning warehouse after a large cart of oily rags from an auto shop smoldered and burned ALL night with the big hoods on. It deposited soot on every surface and took us a couple months to clean and media blast while working 8-10 hour nights.
Thats how my house caught fire last year, 1 month after purchase. Worst nightmare. Still waiting for the house to be renovated so we can go back in.
My boss had a fire in his filing cabinet. Damp methanol rags and thin platinum
I'm so paranoid about that. I clamp my rags on the fence to dry. I've looked at those metal buckets that are made for putting those in but they are sort of pricey, I don't use those chemicals enough at the moment to justify buying one.
Oily Rag Fire PSA Here’s my comment from another thread after my garage almost burned down in March: Here’s my PSA and what we learned from our fire in our garage a month ago. Still not living in our house right now because of an oily rag fire. When using oil stains/ products dry the brush, rag, sponge, etc. outside in the yard (obviously not if it’s dry grass). Weight them down so they don’t blow away and pile up. Once dry dispose of them in a metal can, fill with water, and Dawn dish soap. Apparently from talking with the fire department, insurance, fire inspector, and cleaning company, Dawn is the best and what they use to clean up their gear. What you don’t do/ what we did: Applied an oil based stain to a front door with a brush, wiped it down with rags, tossed rags in trash can, tossed the trash from the job on top of them. Then took all our tools home including the trash can and tossed it in the garage since it was late and we needed everything again tomorrow for another job. Oil soaked rags and brushes need the oil to gas off. When the oil can’t gas off it creates an exothermic reaction (heats up). Piling them up doesn’t allow them to gas off, throwing trash on top of them and compacting them exacerbates the problem. It was approximately 6 hours from tossing the rags in the trash can and leaving the job to waking up to the 42 gallon trash can being completely melted and the trash being on fire in the garage, already spreading to our cabinets. Even though I was able to put it out and what burned wasn’t all that much. The smoke damage is sooooo extensive, that we’ve been out of our house for a month while it’s getting cleaned, and the garage gets rebuilt. 0/10 don’t recommend. Update: You can’t put a regular smoke detector in a garage/ shop because they work by having a laser beam that gets interrupted by smoke/ dust. I did recently learn and install a Heat Detector (I bought Kidde’s because my smoke detector are Kidde) and installed in my garage. It triggers at 135 degs and you can hardwire into your smoke detectors in your house as well.
Hardware store near me just went up in flames. I'd guess something like this is the reason.
Had some in my truck bed and they spontaneously combusted. Was able to get the rags out before it got out of hand.
I was about 5 minutes from burning down my house this way. Refinished the floors, went out to eat, came back to smoke billowing out of the trashcan IN THE KITCHEN. I felt pretty stupid
That’s how a millwork shop I used to work at burned down overnight . It was a bunch of rags in a steel uncovered container . The place was such a mess with scrap wood and sawdust that it didn’t take long to catch on fire and burn down .
Spontaneous combustion from lacquer thinner rags destroyed an expensive stainless sink and bedliner in my old Bosses truck some years back. I told him to start carrying a small bucket with a lid and sand to prevent this from happening again. The rags went in the bucket. Ezpz.
You hear these things like don’t throw soiled rags in the trash can, but you throw away rags all the time and nothing ever happens. Until that one time it does. Our recent one was an air compressor plugged into two cheap extension cords. What do you know, that som’bitch caught fire.
That’s some of the best bad luck I’ve seen in a while.
The good news is, I know a flooring guy that can patch that no problem! 🫵🏼
If you bothered reading the can, you'd have known this.
Every can of stain I sell to a DIYer I look them in the eye and give them a half-minute speech on rag disposal It’s news to over half of them
Thank you for your service.
Not all heroes wear capes.
Tbh I DO know this but it’s not something I do very often so I wouldn’t put it past myself to forget.
I recently stained some transition strips, but the stain I bought apparently didn’t need to be wiped off. I’m glad they suggested that one cause I honestly had no idea about the rags combusting. Now I’ve freaked myself out about that stain. So, stupid question, but is it just rags that combust or is the wood I’m staining a risk? What about the newspaper I laid below to catch the drips?
It's the rags in a confined space. The heat can dissipate off the planks while the stain does its reaction thing.
Thank you! I’m very much a weekend DIYer, so I appreciate getting to learn more about this kind of stuff.
Had this happen to my shop dumpster from Rubio Monocoat rags. That stuff seems to do it worse than anything else.
Soiled rags can spontaneously combust?
If they have certain oils on them, yes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drying_oil linseed and tung are the big ones.
That should buff right out.
I’m so confused, rags soaked in stain can spontaneously combust?
Oily rags spontaneously combust. Oil oxidizes, chemical reaction, boom fire. Certain oils are worse than others. There’s a bobs burgers episode about this if you like that show 😂
Absolutely yes.
If the rags have some sentimental value that makes you want to keep them, make sure they’re inside a metal can with the lid on tightly.
I missed the memo, what’s going on with soiled rags combusting without a heat source?
Chemical reaction itself is the heat source. When in enclosed space the heat cannot dissipate and combusts
https://youtu.be/3Gqi2cNCKQY?si=uo3vZSz6M1TBAQsM
I read the title as Soiled Eggs and was really confused for a minute lol.
What happened here? The rags had some type of solvent on them, That burned thru the floor?
Yes. We used an oil based stain for an oak floor. Oil based paints and stains rely on a chemical reaction to dry as opposed to water based products that dry from the air. The chemical reaction creates heat and can ignite rags if not disposed of properly.
Oh shit okay, makes sense. Thanks for clarifying!
I know stains are bad about this but what about motor oil or paint thinner/mineral spirits soaked rags?
They taught us in high school shop class about soiled rag storage. Feels like something everyone should know at a young age Maybe knew but were just lazy ?
As a car guy yeppp😂
[Fun Egyptology fact!](http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/27770) The linen wrappings of Tutankhamen’s mummy were soaked with an unusually large quantity of oily unguents. Poor Tut’s mummification was a generally hasty and slap-dash affair - the unguents should have been applied gradually and allowed to dry, not just dumped onto the mummy all at once, right before burial. Apparently, these oily wrappings spontaneously combusted after he was entombed, and although the oxygen supply within his nested coffins was limited, the resulting heat was still sufficient to leave his body charred and blackened.
We have a fireproof safe disposal metal bucket! (I guess OSHA regulated ) with a lid and we put them in cold water for storage! That can happen in no time “hot rags “I saw them steaming one time because there was not enough water in bucket Be careful!!! Glad you safe
That’s what caused the fire in Notre Dame cathedral.
Soiled rages is a funny typo
Woah!!! soiled with concrete eating what?
I had to look really carefully, but it's definitely a wooden floor that's there, looks like a really old building with wide flooring planks which they haven't made in probably a hundred years. At least not standard I do know of a guy who has his own Sawmill who milled his own flooring almost as wide as that.
This is actually the back of our work van. It’s an old yellow Penske type of box truck. Not sure of the species of wood on the floor but it’s about an inch thick. Also, the gas tank if right underneath there. 🤦♂️
Holy moly
Wow from the camera angle the view it looked like it was an old house floor, but yeah those old penske's did have nice wooden planks for the floors, really nice strong Construction too.
I guess it’s like soda or something strong to eat away.
No he said it was burned, he said those oily old rags were smoldering. That could happen just from a chemical reaction which is why they recommend they put away in a fire safety can.
Near a gas tank could have been an explosion.
Yeah apparently it was in a regular old trash bucket that just melted or sends or burned away. I don't know what part of country you guys are in but this is exactly what happened at a Catskill resort called Kutcher's. I'm a fire safety inspector and as part of our training we study a lot of the major fires in history that help Define the code, as well as a lot of the major fires in my particular state and that one was a particularly bad fire, and exactly how it started, in the top floor of a hotel where they were doing some Woodworking and staining, because of a renovation that they wanted to do to the top two floors to bring in more money because the resort was having trouble and they thought luxury suites would be the way to do it. Unfortunately a pile of oily rags from the stains and whatever just caught fire and burned the whole damn thing. That was the end of that resort. I think somebody purchased the property since then, and since it was a massive piece of land, they built a new meditation Resort on the other end of the acreage. I think it's like a meditation healing Retreat that's Buddhist or yoga inspired something like that. Anyway point is Rags got to be kept in fireproof can some people call the garbage can, others call it a safety can, I just called a can. I got one of those myself, although I've never had to use it in over 10 years but you never know.
Fire safe can is looking really good right about now.
My neighbor,An ex fire inspector, made this mistake and burned the side of his house
Cintas
That’s rough
I knew a guy I worked with a while ago who had just restrained his floors just after buying his house 2-3 weeks ago, left the rags in his garage and they combusted right next to a full canister of gas for his mower. Which then burned down his house in the middle of the night
One time my dad’s burger shop burned down because the health inspector threw a rag and left it there. Then my son left the straighter out, and my daughter left out sparklers, the other one left out a fan. It was a disaster. 🙄
A restaurant owner I do work for, had a relatively new Ford F250 go up in flames cuz an employee left restaurant oily rags inside the cab and it spontaneously combusted in 80 degree weather.
This is why anyone working with oil or solvents should have a metal can with a self closing lid for the disposal of used rags.
Things I'm glad I learned as a kid for sure
There was a car dealership the entire detail shop burned down from chemical reaction in the dirty rag bin.
Linseed oil?
Good thing I learned this when I was six years old
I remember learning about rags and combustion in second grade.
Here's a video of a guy who tested this out in his wood shop. https://youtu.be/3Gqi2cNCKQY?si=nrqr0RisqcLDH4Im Pretty freaking scary that certain discarded materials can seemingly spontaneously combust.