Rory's Tip Of The Week-Avoiding Fire In the Workshop

When I was about 12 or 13 years old, one of my favorite antique shops to visit was on the outskirts of a tiny Missouri town.  It was in a huge old wooden barn on the owners property.  The mammoth roofing beams of the barn were made of solid walnut.  The barn siding was attached with square nails.  Inside that barn were some of the best american oak pieces I have ever seen, to this day.  Round oak tables with carved lion heads and claw feet, curved glass china cabinets with serpentine fronts, huge roll top desks, and set after set of carved chairs were all common staple items there.  In those days, turn-of-the-century oak was a hot commodity (pardon the pun) and inside this old barn was some of the best in the country...........And then one summer day, it all burned down. There was nothing left.  All was lost inside and out.  Once that old wooden barn caught fire there was no stopping it.  And like a lot of fires it was due to one careless mistake by the owner that could have easily been prevented, if he just would have followed this one piece of advice I am going to give you. 
The cause of the fire was determined to be from the spontaneous combustion of some paper towels, that were soaked with old paint remover.  The owner had been out in the barn stripping a piece of furniture on a cool summer morning.  As he was wiping off the remover with the paper towels, he simply tossed them on the floor, so he could throw them away later, all at once.  Stripping furniture was not new to him.  He had had done this hundreds of times.  He had a system and it worked fine for him until that one particular day.  When he was almost done with the stripping he became sidetracked and left the paper towels where he had thrown them.  Later on in the day the weather warmed up.  By the afternoon it was hot outside.  The direction of the the light from the sun changed and it started to shine inside the barn window.  It is believed that at some point the sun managed to shine through the barn window and into a large mirror not far from the pile of paper towels.  That is all it took.  It was over in a single afternoon.

So here is my simple tip of the week, to keep this from happening in your workshop.  Do like I do.  Keep a metal bucket handy, about half full of water.  As you discard old paper towels and rags, throw them in the bucket of water, and let them soak until they are ready for your trash pickup.  Also, be especially careful with old steel wool.  Steel wool is what they sometimes teach boyscouts to make campfires with.  When  steel wool is contaminated with something like mineral spirits or paint thinner it makes an easily ignitible combination.  So, also throw your old used steel wool in the bucket when you are done with it too.

Periodically I will take a stick and push all the flammables down into the water to make sure they all are completely soaked with water.  Follow this procedure any time you are using products such as stains, shellac, laquer, polyurethane, paint strippers, linseed oil, mineral spirits and thinners, or anything else that is a potential fire hazard. We are seeing the first signs of warm weather right now, so this tip becomes even more important in the upcoming months.  Be safe! Rory

Note: In the future I will be putting various condensed tips on the sidebar that may be of help to you as well as writing occasional full posts like this one.  I am here to help you.  Feel free to comment or send me questions. Keep up the good work.  Rory