Advice in British Woodworking Mag Fire Risk
I am currently enjoying the Aug/Sept copy of British Woodworking magazine and I have to say reading the different articles kept my interest. One or two jumped out to me because in the headers or titles they used the name ‘Pitch Pine’. I worked with pitch pine for three decades almost weekly in some measure, but I want to talk about one brief article by Anthony Griffith first because of an inherent danger surrounding Linseed Oil as finish and as a lubricant too. This actually came up on my blog here and I addressed it here because of the dangers. I thought that this YouTube video clearly showed the dangers.
In the article, Graham describes ramming a rag filled with sawdust or shavings into a void cut into a piece of wood and charging the rag with linseed oil to a damp level rather than soaking. This item is then used to lubricate plane soles that might stick to the longleaf pine surface being planed. This is not a safe item in the woodshop. Later in the article he says shavings are best and Boiled Linseed Oil (BLO) is better than raw. Both raw and boiled versions will spontaneously combust and this practice is indeed highly dangerous. Light machine oil produces the same results and the rag-in-the-can method I have used for 50 years has proven dependable with no risk of adverse fire risk.
Safety First. I work for the US Park Service and we just had a bulletin come out describing the dangers of Linseed Oil. As a woodworker I already knew the dangers of oil finishes, but the incident happened with a tree crew. After a long week of cutting trees they use a rag to wipe their tools down with Linseed Oil. They did everything right and even laid the rag out flat, outside, and on a flat surface. Just like they always did. Problem was, the table, with a plywood top, had accumulated enough oil over time that the rag still caught fire and nearly burned down there facility. It just proves that even when you do everything right, you still might have an accident.
I always ball my oil rags up and through them away, its just that I through them into a burn barrel so if they burst into flames it doesn’t matter. Still haven’t had one catch fire yet, even balled up. But, when it does it can burn away safely in the barrel.
How can responsible editors of a WW magazine let such a well documented safety risk slip by?
Let’s not blame them too much, most of them are editors not woodworkers. Actually, they are advertising exec’s too. If the numbers didn’t crunch, I doubt they’d look for a job as a woodworker.