What have you set fire to whilst welding?

[hotrodder]

I think theres a lesson in there somewhere....flammable fluids and welding dont mix too well.

Tom.

Indeed, the release of phosgene (used as a chemical weapon during WW1) is possible with some solvents! Brake cleaner in the UK is generally 'free of chlorinated hydrocarbons' but it's worth checking and allowing time for solvents to evaporate before striking an arc regardless

Seen some scary one's but thankfully never managed anything more than a little smouldering/tiny flame- all car related.

 

[pedrobedro]

A pile of sweet wrappers stuffed under a car rear seat by kids who were not supposed to eat in the car. The seat was well alight and I ripped the squab out and threw it onto the lawn. Overalls when I was arcair burning at a foundry I worked in smoothing after burning heads off castings. They issued us with fireproof Nomex after that one.

 

[kev234]

A motorcycle engine that was on a bench not quite far enough away whilst I was repairing my gazebo poles in my lunch hour. Worst part was my mate put it out with a powder extinguisher which made a right mess.

 

[dannyweld]

mainly rags with cellulose tinners that i leave on the bench, set fire to my wollen jumper once, have welded right next to bearings and the greese/oil has flamed, could hardly call it a fire, the insulation around the earth clamp burnt off about a month ago.

 

[Justme]

Totaled the back end of a mini once. The old type with the fuel tank mounted in the boot. Was welding in a small patch when WOOOOF. When I say back end I mean every thing from the front screen back. Was one I had bought to do up & sell. Bought another one that was a scrapper for all the bits needed to fix it up, added a respray & sold it for more profit that I was planning on making as it looked so good.

Left me with a few mental scars, but luckily no physical ones. For years every time I welded I could smell petrol even when working on stuff that could not have any. Was not until I bought a new face mask & the smell stopped did I realise I was not going mad but that when hot the mask was giving of the petrol smell it had picked up in the fire.

Justme

 

[Wozzaaah]

Was welding in a small patch when WOOOOF.

What's that Lassie? There's a fire in the back of the mini?

Me personally, the usual rags and paper under the bench
Mk3 Escort seatbelt - couldn't work out what the strange noise I'd just heard was, it was the reel retracting as the belt burnt through .

The worst one I've (almost) seen is when a mate had to remove a petrol tank to weld above it, the fuel was drained into a plastic bucket which was placed on the floor next to the car. All of a sudden my boss runs past me nearly knocking me over as he'd spotted the fire and the bucket melting!
That was a real wake-up call!

 

[NTwoO]

I had two cases of mutilation in the past 7 years. The first was whilst melting metal with a gas torch. Concentrating on something else, I moved the gas flame over my thumb. Fortunately I stood right next to a tap and could quench my thumb within seconds. The thumb remained under the tap for a few minutes and I came out with a crispy blister, but with almost no liquid outflow and the thumb healed within a few days. The tip of cooling it as soon as possible does work!

A few months ago I fixed an exhaust of a car. Removing it was a bit of a pig and the car would've been dumped within 6 weeks due to MOT expiration. It was temporary transport for my destitute sister in-law. Since my MIG was already sold, I decided to do a quick repair with my TIG. With long sleeves and a T-shirt, I received a metal dollop of about 1cm3 in my arm pit. It burned a scorch mark the size of my thumb nail and left a number of other minor burns on the way down. All went well for a week and then I received a bacterial blood infection from the wound that set me out of action for three days (sleeping 16-18 hours a day). It was hell.

On of the worst fire cases I know of is a neighbour of ours that was the same age as I. He was practising for a Darwin award from birth and was never the sharpest tool in the shed. He also looked as if God was distracted when he was created. His family moved away when he was 6 and the next we saw of him, he had a 250cc two stroke Yamaha road bike. He rode himself into the hospital for something like 3 months by riding through a ditch on his back wheel with only a pair of shorts and a T-shirt on. This guy was also not the most co-ordinated, let me add. In the end he decided to weld a petrol tank. Unfortunately he is no longer with us.

 

[asmeix6g]

what have i set fire to? ill name a few of the major ones....
myself, the QE2, LINPAC carboard packaging manufacturers, the MS Zuiderdam, someones garden! ermmmm apart from that just the usual stuff.. tins of paint, rags, blueprints etc etc

 

[Iain Westland]

thats got to be a hell of an interesting CV

 

[chunkytfg]

Well as a relative newbie i have only managed to set fire to a bit of carpet so far and it was in the garage.

Couple of years ago haveing carpet in my garage while i worked on my bikes was a luxary but now i'm not quite so sure!!

 

[NTwoO]

Indeed, interesting CV material. Each job ending with a huge fire. You should go into the fire works business!

 

[jwt873]

I once used a set of mechanic's gloves that I had nearby instead of my regular welding gloves that were at the far end of the shop.

The fronts of the gloves were some sort of synthetic leather.. The backs were made of a nylon/cotton material. While I was doing a quick weld job, I looked down at my hand and saw the back of the glove was on fire. I managed to pat it out and pull the glove off before I burned myself.

I'll be using my all leather gloves from now on

 

[nellway]

I set fire to my wife's car - I was rebuilding the front end and cutting out all the rust with a grinder - left it over night and forgot the next morning to vacuum out all the swarf from the bulkhead. Gaily welding away when i realised that the swarf was burning like a sparkler.

Very pretty i thought. Oh, I think I'd better get an extinguisher....

 

[malcolm]

I set fire to an Aston Martin once. It was quite embarrassing. A good concentrated aim of grinding sparks will get things going nicely. It cost me money and afterwards the car wasn't so great as it could have been.

My big learn from that (apart from learning not to protect things with bed sheets, and also not to have anything even more flammable behind those bed sheets, and being careful where those sparks were going) was that the cable tie fitted to fire extinguishers to prevent accidental removal of the pin is very tricky to remove when you are in a hurry.

I watched the fire spread to the point of damaging things while trying all sorts of things to get that plastic tie out. It was a strong one, and pulling hard didn't work.

Nowadays the tie comes out before the extinguisher is placed in the garage. Whip pin out and spray if other means of tackling fire prove ineffective.

 

[dannyweld]

nearly thought i would have to have a go with one of my fire extinguishers for the first time last friday. i had a 1 metre cable connected to an electric golf trolley battery, 12v 24ah. i was using the battery to see if a soleniod was working. i turn my back for i minute and didnt i leave the bared end positive and negitive touching. next thing i know the smell of burning rubber as the insulation from the cable and the battery bag smoke up and melt away. all was needed was a bit of newspaper or dirty rag and theirs your fire.

 

[penfold]

I set fire to the hem of my jeans while wielding the gas axe once; i didn't notice at first as I had them rolled down the outside of my clompy steel toecap boots... What's that funny smell? OHSH*TI'MONFIREAARRGGGHH - cue an improvised raindance to beat it out then a speedy 40 yard dash to the nearest tap...

That'll learn me to wear proper welding overalls.

 

[Alzax3]

I hadn't been working there long when the boss asked me to sort out the twisted sides of a tipping farm trailer (in the days before I knew how to drive a tractor) (big Zetor with lots of frightening looking levers!) I asked him to park it out on the yard, he said 'no I'll put it back here by the workshop, near the power supply - save you running an extension'. Thing is he parked it next to the newly built and filled two-storey open sided hay-store.........

I had scarcely started into the bent angle with the nine inch angle grinder when I turned round to see tongues of flame leaping up the face of the bales of hay and straw - didn't take long to realise that the slow filled buckets I could draw from the tap weren't going to help much and it was time to call in the fire brigade. Took them 25 minutes to get there, there wasn't much left of the hay-store except charred uprights, and the workshop was in a bit of a state as the heat had burst all the paint cans which had been in rows on a shelf along one side (messy stuff, gloss paint) the trailer wasn't too healthy either, though the tractor only suffered melted rear lights.

Good point was that the boss actually remembered that it was his idea to have me work on it in a daft place so I didn't lose my job!

 

[Grunty24]

My foot

 

[the snooper]

part from the usual overalls shirts and alike the interior of a car but only slightly 1 petrol pipe as i welded through it went through another plastic petrol pipe but no fire it just sealed both ends shut and sort of blew a bike petrol tank out of shape i had welded them before but was in a rush so didnt clean it out aswell so dont skimp on the cleaning
oh yeh hair, socks, weld in the ear a horrible dull pain and has anyone had weld on a tooth that is painfull i dont recomend it

 

[Grunty24]

I accidentally put a soldering iron (a hot one) in my ear once - and did no damage at all!!