We all grew up hearing about the danger of oily rags. It was linseed
oil they were talking about, not motor oil. Now that I (hopefully)
will be rubbing oil on teak for the rest of my natural life, I expect
to producing a lot of these little incendiary bombs.

How much of a danger are these left over rags? Is it something that
happens just once in a blue moon when a bunch are left in the corner
of a shop for a long time in hot weather? If the phone rings and I
forget to take one to the dumpster, is it "Good by" boat? If I do
toss them in the dumpster, am I at risk of starting a big fire in my
favorite marina or boatyard.

Is there an approved way of storing or disposing of linseed oil rags?

Inquiring mind wants to know.

--

Roger Long

Rog,
Storing them in a mason jar with an inch or two of linseed in the jar
to keep the rag from drying out, and with the cap screwed on works
well... The rag heats from slow oxidation of the millions of
microscopic crevices of just barely dampened fibers with the oil
(surface area phenomena) deep inside the folds of the cloth with the
R-value of the cloth storing the temperature rise, driving the
process... That won't happen with a sloppy wet rag in an O2 limited
environment...

denny

Roger Long wrote:
We all grew up hearing about the danger of oily rags. It was linseed
oil they were talking about, not motor oil. Now that I (hopefully)
will be rubbing oil on teak for the rest of my natural life, I expect
to producing a lot of these little incendiary bombs.

How much of a danger are these left over rags? Is it something that
happens just once in a blue moon when a bunch are left in the corner
of a shop for a long time in hot weather? If the phone rings and I
forget to take one to the dumpster, is it "Good by" boat? If I do
toss them in the dumpster, am I at risk of starting a big fire in my
favorite marina or boatyard.

Is there an approved way of storing or disposing of linseed oil rags?

Inquiring mind wants to know.



I always heard...metal drum.
A 45 gallon might be a bit much for most handymen, but a metal 5 gallon
pail with cover would be a nice size to have for temporary storage
before disposal.

On Wed, 10 May 2006 18:03:43 +0000, Roger Long wrote:

We all grew up hearing about the danger of oily rags. It was linseed
oil they were talking about, not motor oil. Now that I (hopefully) will
be rubbing oil on teak for the rest of my natural life, I expect to
producing a lot of these little incendiary bombs.

How much of a danger are these left over rags? Is it something that
happens just once in a blue moon when a bunch are left in the corner of
a shop for a long time in hot weather? If the phone rings and I forget
to take one to the dumpster, is it "Good by" boat? If I do toss them in
the dumpster, am I at risk of starting a big fire in my favorite marina
or boatyard.

Is there an approved way of storing or disposing of linseed oil rags?

Inquiring mind wants to know.

It's definitely a danger. Standard practice is to store them in a metal
container with an airtight lid. Personally, I never store them aboard,
and I'm very careful to account for all the rags and paper towels anyone
else could be using.

Matt O.

In article ,
"Roger Long" wrote:

We all grew up hearing about the danger of oily rags. It was linseed
oil they were talking about, not motor oil. Now that I (hopefully)
will be rubbing oil on teak for the rest of my natural life, I expect
to producing a lot of these little incendiary bombs.

How much of a danger are these left over rags? Is it something that
happens just once in a blue moon when a bunch are left in the corner
of a shop for a long time in hot weather? If the phone rings and I
forget to take one to the dumpster, is it "Good by" boat? If I do
toss them in the dumpster, am I at risk of starting a big fire in my
favorite marina or boatyard.

Is there an approved way of storing or disposing of linseed oil rags?

Inquiring mind wants to know.

From a chemist's point of view, it is a danger, but not a significant
one in most circumstances. Spontainious Combustion can, and does, occure
with oily rags, stacked in a pile, with little or no airflow, where heat
can build up, due to chemical breakdown of the adsorbing material, by
properties in the oils adsorbed. It is a fairly rare occurance, mostly
due to folks having been told, many times, of the possibilities, and
keeping things cleaned up. Flashpoint Temps for most oils are fairly
high and the required heat buildup doesn't happen, but if conditions are
right, Yea it can be a BIG Deal.....

Me a NitroOrganic Chemist, in a past life.......

Spontaneous combustion is real and can be a big problem. It can occur
without the material being volatile.

My experience with spontaneous combustion occured when we had our
hardwood floors refinished. We had just moved into the house and had a
garage full of cardboard boxes, some full of things, and others broken
down and stacked. The people who were refinishing the floors placed the
sanding dust in a bag in a garbage can in the garage. My wife was in
the family room and smelled smoke. When I went into the garage it was
filled with smoke. Fortunately I was there when it occured and was able
to get the can out of the garage and get the fire extinguished. The
only loss was the garbage can.

I have often wandered what could have occured.

Me wrote:
In article ,
"Roger Long" wrote:


We all grew up hearing about the danger of oily rags. It was linseed
oil they were talking about, not motor oil. Now that I (hopefully)
will be rubbing oil on teak for the rest of my natural life, I expect
to producing a lot of these little incendiary bombs.

How much of a danger are these left over rags? Is it something that
happens just once in a blue moon when a bunch are left in the corner
of a shop for a long time in hot weather? If the phone rings and I
forget to take one to the dumpster, is it "Good by" boat? If I do
toss them in the dumpster, am I at risk of starting a big fire in my
favorite marina or boatyard.

Is there an approved way of storing or disposing of linseed oil rags?

Inquiring mind wants to know.


From a chemist's point of view, it is a danger, but not a significant
one in most circumstances. Spontainious Combustion can, and does, occure
with oily rags, stacked in a pile, with little or no airflow, where heat
can build up, due to chemical breakdown of the adsorbing material, by
properties in the oils adsorbed. It is a fairly rare occurance, mostly
due to folks having been told, many times, of the possibilities, and
keeping things cleaned up. Flashpoint Temps for most oils are fairly
high and the required heat buildup doesn't happen, but if conditions are
right, Yea it can be a BIG Deal.....

Me a NitroOrganic Chemist, in a past life.......

Spontaneous combustion is one danger ... even a compost pile can self
ignite as my grandad showed me many years ago.

"Roger Long" wrote in message
...
We all grew up hearing about the danger of oily rags. It was linseed oil
they were talking about, not motor oil. Now that I (hopefully) will be
rubbing oil on teak for the rest of my natural life, I expect to producing
a lot of these little incendiary bombs.

How much of a danger are these left over rags? Is it something that
happens just once in a blue moon when a bunch are left in the corner of a
shop for a long time in hot weather? If the phone rings and I forget to
take one to the dumpster, is it "Good by" boat? If I do toss them in the
dumpster, am I at risk of starting a big fire in my favorite marina or
boatyard.

Is there an approved way of storing or disposing of linseed oil rags?

Inquiring mind wants to know.

--

Roger Long




Engineers can get very dangerous when roused, especialy when called 'oily
rags'

Roger Long wrote:
We all grew up hearing about the danger of oily rags. It was linseed
oil they were talking about, not motor oil. Now that I (hopefully)
will be rubbing oil on teak for the rest of my natural life, I expect
to producing a lot of these little incendiary bombs.

How much of a danger are these left over rags? Is it something that
happens just once in a blue moon when a bunch are left in the corner
of a shop for a long time in hot weather? If the phone rings and I
forget to take one to the dumpster, is it "Good by" boat? If I do
toss them in the dumpster, am I at risk of starting a big fire in my
favorite marina or boatyard.

Is there an approved way of storing or disposing of linseed oil rags?

Inquiring mind wants to know.

I was working on re-finishing a table and tossed the rag on the
workbench, the next day funny smell from garage and found that
that rag and started burning the bench, the rag and bench was too
hot to touch and you can still see the burn markes today.
Of course it did not help that I was in TX in the
summer time and the garage gets to be like 150+ ................
Now when done with rags I throw them outside inside this metal
container.

Roger Long wrote:
We all grew up hearing about the danger of oily rags. It was linseed
oil they were talking about, not motor oil. Now that I (hopefully)
will be rubbing oil on teak for the rest of my natural life, I expect
to producing a lot of these little incendiary bombs.

How much of a danger are these left over rags?
...

I found this link, which include (about a third of the way down) a
good discussion of the issue.

http://www.woodworkersjournal.com/ez.../webreview.cfm

The oils that are dangerous are "drying oils," in particular nut oils
such as Linseed, Walnut, and Tung, while non-drying, such as canola,
corn, peanut, motor oil, etc. do not spontaneously combust.

One claim was that pure tung oil oxidizes so slowly that it is not a
danger, but that some "tung oil finishes" are mostly linseed, and thus
are extremely dangerous.

Personally, I've avoided even having linseed on the boat, having seen
the results of spontaneous combustion a few times. My previous boat
had a lot of gorgeous teak in the cockpit (seats, grate, etc) and I
went through the various stages of oiling and various finishes.
Finally, I settled on washing once a season with Washing Soda, which
restores the natural look for a few weeks, and otherwise letting it
turn grey.

My current boat has not an inch of wood on the exterior.