• January Turning Challenge: Thin-Stemmed Something! (click here for details)
  • Conversations are now Direct Messages (click here for details)
  • Congratulations to Alan Weinberg for "Elm Burl Bowl" being selected as Turning of the Week for January 27, 2025 (click here for details)
  • Welcome new registering member. Your username must be your real First and Last name (for example: John Doe). "Screen names" and "handles" are not allowed and your registration will be deleted if you don't use your real name. Also, do not use all caps nor all lower case.

Has this ever happened to you?

Joined
Mar 31, 2008
Messages
39
Likes
1
Location
Brecksville OH between Cleveland and Akron
Website
www.muniart.org
Has this ever happened to you?

Was turning blackwood and tried sanding with steel wool. Was not very effective however so I set the steel wool down on my wood table. Next day basically 20 hours later I was doing another turning and noticed the steel wool and picked it up to put it away. The underside was red with fire and had burned a small hole in the table. There was no smoke for some reason and I did not smell it. This was a whole pad of steel wool.. Comments?
 
[FONT=&quot]Difficult to know exactly what you did, but most steel wool has a light coat of oil to keep it from rusting. If you generate enough friction-induced heat, you can start the oil coating to smoldering or start a fire. Steel wool is an excellent material, if misused, to burn down your shop or home. I usually wash off the oil with a fast evaporating solvent prior to using it on any work that might suffer from the oil. In the past I have burned off the oil by touching a flame to the steel wool. This method still leaves a bit of oil residue, and can also generate enough heat to melt very fine steel wool strands leaving tiny spheres of steel, which will produce scratches in wood, or in a finish.
Any time I use a piece of steel wool, I will put it into a tin can or metal bowl as a safety precaution, and never allow steel wool to be placed or stored near a grinder as the sparks will set it on fire, or start it smoldering.[/FONT]
 
I had some steel wool burst into a very quick hot flame, almost like a flashbulb. It had been on my workbench and I was grinding some metal with a disc grinder. Since then I've tried to reproduce the accident and can't get the wool to catch fire. I don't know what the difference was. Had a cleaned something with a solvent or was this wool dry with no oil. Wish I knew. Now I'm very carefull around steel wool. I've never been able to heat it up with friction. I've polished who knows how much metal with the stuff.
 
I haven't had steel wool catch fire, but I do have a related comment.

I've avoided using steel wool on wooden bowls because long ago I had a bowl ruined from it's use. Seems the strands of steel were impregnated into the wood and later rusted and made the surface look bad.

Anyone else had similar results?

Or, should I reconsider and use steel wool in an alternate method?

otis of cologne
 
Sanding with steel wool is like turning with a crow bar as we'd say DownUnder. Dunno what your term would be.

Yes, strands catch in splinters and voids and will rust, and be a PITA to pick out.

That said, I do use 0000 to cut back n/c sanding sealer, and live with the task of picking out if necessary.

But generally, there are better low-overhead sanding methods and materials out there.
 
Steel Wool

IIRC the Liberon brand of steel wool is promoted as not having any oil in it. This might mitigate the possible fire hazard. And whatever you do, don't try using steel wool on finials. (DAMHIKT)
 
IIRC the Liberon brand of steel wool is promoted as not having any oil in it. This might mitigate the possible fire hazard. And whatever you do, don't try using steel wool on finials. (DAMHIKT)

Time to stop and think. The oil on the wool is an artifact of the production process left to retard corrosion - slow burn - and is of a non-polymerizing "mineral" type. The oil that came with didn't ignite the wool. Curing oils are exothermic, but non-curing oils are not. If they were, would the product be on the shelf?

Ignition came from some other source. Doubt it was friction, though I would never try to use wool on a rotating piece for another reason. Danger of catching and shredding is too great. Not to mention it defeats the purpose of the wool, which is to scrape the surface with sharp edges, making a nearly planed-quality surface. If you ever struck steel with a piece of chert http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chert , you may have noticed a spark. My choice for ignition source.

Steel wool ignites and flashes pretty well, the fuel having good access to air all around. Not as good a flash as the magnesium wire one student prankster loaded in the candle snuffer at chapel one day, but pretty well. They never did catch that kid....
 
I am posative the sourse of flaming was the friction on the wood, I pressed very hard to the point that I remember being slighly burned by the wool. Also for us lay men kindly explain exothermic?

You're a woodworker, not a "layman," and you'll want to know that exothermic reactions, a term which you may easily look up, are the cause of spontaneous ignition of oily rags.

You'll also want to know some of the information contained here http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/fplr/fplr1464.pdf on the ignition temperature of wood, and presumably wood dust. Without searching out the data for you, I'll just say that wood and the extractives in it will ignite at much lower temperatures than steel, especially when that steel is no longer wool, but nearly solid, which is why it's conducting the heat through to your fingers. Though I can't say with complete confidence what the temperature of the steel in contact with the wood might have been, the lack of burns on your fingers means it was <150F on your side. That would require a >300 degree rise on the other to ignite the wood.

NB : Children can be scalded within a minute at 140F, so make sure your hot water heater is set at <120. Get a dishwasher with a heater rod built in for sterilization.
 
They never did catch that kid....[/QUOTE]


MM - I just wonder who that "kid" was.......?????????????????

Hugh
 
I quit using the steel wool years ago, and switched to the synthetic ones. They are much better, and don't leave pieces that can rust out later. When I was applying oil with the steel wool, or the synthetic, I would treat it as I would rags, lay it out flat on the concrete floor until dry, then throw away.
robo hippy
 
Back
Top