What close calls have you had?

[DR. P. Proteus]

There used to be carpet in the room with the stove and my kid was real small so I had a fence around the stove. One evening we were all headed out, I guess in a rush, I just had banked up the stove. When I came back I saw a burn hole the size of silver dollar in the rug about ten feet from the stove. I suppose some hot coals got stuck to my boot and got flicked onto the carpet when I stepped over the fence.

When I was kid we had the big fireplace going. There was a big ornate mantel above it and it was painted, one time the flames just roared out and set fire to the painted mantel. There was a lot of coats of paint on that mantel. The fire was put out quick enough and we finished stripping the rest of the paint and found the mantel made of solid tiger oak which was pretty cool. Then my mom made us strip the rest of the house and my sister ended up setting fire to the third floor with a propane torch. All the woodwork in the house was made of tiger oak.

In the early season I find I come home and want to get a fire going real quick but don't warm the chimney enough and really make a mess.

One time I had sucked up some ash with my shop vac and noticed it did make any dust so I tried to clean the chimney with it. I was doing GREAT for about 2 minutes then looked behind me to see the house was filled with black black BLACK soot.

Oh yeah and then one time I burnt my pecker on the damn thing, it went " sizzle" like slice of bacon. I had just gotten out of the shower, had a towel wrapped around my waist and was getting dressed by the stove. I went to hang up my boots on the hooks behind it and the towel fell off.

 

[AGoodSteward]

When I was a kid my dad banked up the stove before we went to bed. We woke to the smoke alarm. The top of the stove was a 2'x3' sheet of steel. It had gotten so hot you could see the logs inside through the steel.
Couldn't get close to it from the heat coming off. We just sat and watched it until it cooled down.

 

[jrider]

I had a girl friend tell me she was late once....a few days later she flowed on though

 

[firefighter938]

Burned peckers-late girlfriends and this thread is only 3 posts deep.

 

[sirbuildalot]

Oh yeah and then one time I burnt my pecker on the damn thing, it went " sizzle" like slice of bacon.

Hurts just reading!!!


For me, I was bucking a trees with my brother that were taken down by a tornado a few years ago. One oak was still connected to the root ball that was half buried. I worked my way from the top of the tree after delimbing it. Once I was about 15 feet from the rootball, the whole 20"ish diameter tree shot up in an instant. Like if you stepped on a rake head. Luckily I wasn't standing over it. If I had been I'd of been sent like a slingshot who knows how far. Think I needed a change of pants after that. Now I cut the rootball off first.

 

[svk]

Had our old fuel oil stove flood out and get away from us in the old hunting cabin. The vent pipe was aluminum and it melted sort of like a soda can in a fire where it gets all thin and wavy. Had the stove shut off by then and amazingly the remnants of the pipe didn't collapse under it's own weight. I replaced it with galvanized pipe.

Forgot the sauna stove air vent open. Came in and the sauna thermometer was buried well past the 285 degrees maximum, the stove was red hot, and the 15 gallon water reservoir on the back of the stove was at a rolling boil.

In the old farm house forgot the air vent open and woke up to the smoke alarm and burned paint smell. The entire metal pipe into the masonry chimney was red hot. It was painful to get close to the stove to turn it down but better than losing the house.

I was screwing around with a camp stove in my parent's basement in elementary school. Darn thing flooded and sprayed white gas all over the work bench. Not being quite aware of how volatile that stuff was I tried to light the stove again and had about a 2'x2' indoor campfire for several seconds.

I wasn't there but when I was in HS many of the kids went to one kid's cabin for senior skip day. That would have been fine but they ended up burning the sauna down and the fire department and sheriff rolled up to find a couple dozen drunk kids. A couple of my buddies swam to escape (this being early May in MN meaning the lake had only thawed a few weeks before so that water was COLD). The three of them made it out clear and everyone else got illegal consumption tickets.

 

[DR. P. Proteus]

Had out old fuel oil stove flood out and get away from us in the old hunting cabin. The vent pipe was aluminum and it melted sort of like a soda can in a fire where it gets all thin and wavy. Had the stove shut off by then and amazingly the remnants of the pipe didn't collapse under it's own weight. I replaced it with galvanized pipe.

Forgot the sauna stove air vent open. Came in and the sauna thermometer was buried well past the 285 degrees maximum, the stove was red hot, and the 15 gallon water reservoir on the back of the stove was at a rolling boil.

In the old farm house forgot the air vent open and woke up to the smoke alarm and burned paint smell. The entire metal pipe into the masonry chimney was red hot. It was painful to get close to the stove to turn it down but better than losing the house.

I was screwing around with a camp stove in my parent's basement in elementary school. Darn thing flooded and sprayed white gas all over the work bench. Not being quite aware of how volatile that stuff was I tried to light the stove again and had about a 2'x2' indoor campfire for several seconds.

I wasn't there but when I was in HS many of the kids went to one kid's cabin for senior skip day. That would have been fine but they ended up burning the sauna down and the fire department and sheriff rolled up to find a couple dozen drunk kids. A couple of my buddies swam to escape (this being early May in MN meaning the lake had only thawed a few weeks before so that water was COLD). The three of them made it out clear and everyone else got illegal consumption tickets.

Exactly what is white gas?

 

[Gypo Logger]

Exactly what is white gas?

Naptha.

 

[old guy]

Coleman fuel

 

[Gypo Logger]

Camp fuel

 

[Wood Doctor]

A recent close call -- I was grinding off the side of a Stihl clutch cover. It created a bunch of metal filings on the bench that I should have swept off. The next time I used the grinder I was working on steel. The sparks from grinding the steel set fire to the filings from the Stihl's clutch cover like a magnesium torch. It didn't last long but it scared the pee out of me.

 

[dave_dj1]

A very long time ago, 1978, I had a brand new Chevy pickup, was cutting small stuff so I could make a place to turn the truck around. I would cut them and then grab them to keep them from falling on my truck. One was a bit heavier and taller than I thought and i twisted as I caught it , the Jonsered 630 came right across my left leg, I could feel the pain. There was snow on and I didn't know whether to stand there or run. Luckily for me I had a pair of Sears lined jeans on, the BRIGHT RED nylon liner shredded and stopped the chain, I only had two cat like scratches across my leg. That was as close as I have come.

One time when we were young at deer camp we had what was called a stove pipe stove, cast bottom, tin sides and top. My buddy loaded the stove at bedtime, we woke up during the night to a cherry red stove where you could look in and see the wood stacked inside it. Made for a long night, we still talk about that night.
I try to be pretty safe.

 

[LoveStihlQuality]

20 years fire department. More than my wife will ever know. The few she had to know when I got transported to hospital.

Sent from my SM-N900P using Tapatalk

 

[Odog]

Back in 2002 in montana when i was young and dumb and I first got married to the now ex-wife, we lived in a 1 bedroom 1960s model trailer house with my newborn daughter. I found an old blaze king wood stove insert that I mickey moused into a free standing stove by laying a piece of cement board and some tile over the carpet then setting the insert on that. Well the ex decided that the air was too dry in that place so she would set a coffee can full of water on the stove and let the steam humidify the air. This worked great until she put some orange peels in the water to add a good smell and it boiled dry one night. I woke to the smoke alarm blaring and a coffee can sized column of smoke bellowing off the top of the stove. I Had to open all the doors and windows in the trailer to get the smoke out, letting the
-15* cold in. The ex and my daughter spent the rest of the night in the bathroom cuddled up to the little Electric heater while I got rid of the can and tried to clean out the smoke smell.

 

[alleyyooper]

As a 3 year old child my wife was playing at the burn barrel as the folks were working on the house they were building. She got a stick inside of a can that had a bit of roofing tar in it got it afire and some super hot tar dripped on her bare foot.
To this day she fears getting burnt so with out old Southernaire add on wood furnace she had a pot holder laying along The wall she used when I was at work (night shift) to open the door and add wood. That furnace had the crappiest set up for grates so the easy way to take ashes out was to let it burn down and use a round shovel and dig them out and into a ash pail. I had did that early one Saturday morning and rebuilt the fire. We were up stairs eating dinner and I said does any one else smell a rag burning or some odd smell. They did so I go down stairs and go in the furnace room and there is that smoldering hot pad. I had set the hot shovel end on it and in a couple hours had got that pad smoldering. It went in the furnace and a set of vice grips were given to clamp on the door handle after that. Don't think she ever did use them think she decided I do the door with my bare hands so should be OK for her. NOPE she had went to the garage and got a spare set of welding gloves I had to use and kept them in another room so I would not see them.

Al

 

[firefighter938]

20 years fire department. More than my wife will ever know. The few she had to know when I got transported to hospital.

Sent from my SM-N900P using Tapatalk

I hear you brother. Last time I called my wife from the back of an ambulance before they loaded me up with fentanyl. Didn't want to be loopy for that phone call. Stay safe.

 

[tnflatbed]

I had a buddy that had a landscape business that every now then would put me on a big tree. He would provide the manpower to load and deal with the brush and all did was drop it and buck it and I keep the wood. Works out good for both of us. This one time we are in this high end lake community and I am already committed to the backcut on an oak that's probably 40" dbh. This thing has a ton of widow makers as 75% of the crown is dead so I have the guys watching the top not really paying attention that some old nosey soup for brains has just walked into the kill zone. Luckily I looked up and got him the heck out of there but it would have drove him like a piling if I had ran the saw for another 30-45 secs

 

[cumminstinkerer]

two summers ago was doing some clearing with a buddy, bunch of big oaks, he cuts into one on the back cut and ants had been in it damn top falls but hangs up about ten feet up from the hinge, pinched his saw, so he comes over and gets me to come help get him out, the top is laying over toward the down hill side, I do a little test cut on this spire that's ten foot tall with top still hanging to it, all seems good no load against it so I start in, that big ole oak, bout 20 inches through starts to go over the way we want, he grabs his saw and runs and i head uphill. All of a sudden I get hit in the head, saw goes flying and down I go with a huge smack on my side, I heard ribs break, then the damn thing bounces up and back down on me again. Buddy runs over and tries to lift it off, crazy but first instinct, he then grabs my saw cuz its still running right close by and starts cutting to get me out, somehow while he was cutting i wiggled out, no clue to this day how. Laid there a long time til I could sorta breath, then walked back up that hill, got in my truck (79 dodge power wagon with a 4 speed) and him in his and drove the seven miles home....Ouch. finally went to the hospital after my fiancé (now wife) got home. I had broken six ribs, four on one side two on the other, punctured one lung, which collapsed but reinflated itself, bruised both lungs, lacerated my spleen, lacerated both kidneys, bruised both kidneys, and bruised both adrenal glands. I spent two nights in the hospital but walked in and spent most of the two days walking around the place. None of the staff could believe I was alive let alone walking, 48 hours after I went in there I walked out. Boys I tell ya that was a long painful couple months after that, I still have troubles with the ribs hurting when the weather changes Hope ya'll at least learn to never trust them trees to do what you think they will, that sucker jumped uphill and towards the stump end.

 

[pdqdl]

Exactly what is white gas?

Coleman fuel. Once upon a time, you could buy it at a gas pump, much like kerosene. I was a bit young, but I can remember that only a few stations had a pump for it. You had to know your way around the town, 'cause it wasn't that common. I never knew why it was ever popular enough to have at the pump.

Way back in the day...

 

[pdqdl]

Just exactly what kind of close calls are we calling for in this thread? Nearly burned the house down, or life threatening, or what? It is a firewood forum, you know.

It is a miracle that I am still alive, but I haven't been too close to burning the house down. I did set some wet wood on top of the stove once, just to get it dried off. That got a little bit exciting for a while.