A little warning fine wire wool

[Chisteve]

Was cleaning up an Axe head today had to grind the poll with my 9 inch grinder with a flap wheel on it producing lots of sparks

I’ve been storing a roll of super fine wire wool under a near by 10 mm ply shelf near my work bench for ease of use, so cleaned the axe head and didn’t think anything of it.

After this put my Versaflo air fed mask on as some other dusty works to do.

After about an hour or so just happed to notice the wire wool was smouldering and had almost burnt through the ply shelf melting a plastic storage container on top

Luckily managed to pull it out and dump outside and put it out with water but close to going up in flames

There was a strong smell of burning in my workshop but I hadn’t noticed with the air fed mask

Lucky really

Should of moved the wire wool before as noticed some small burn marks whilst grinding with small grinder before

 

[Bingy man]

A very close near miss ,and a lesson to all of us . From your description it sounds like the w/wool probably ignited and very slowly smouldered away -a very dangerous event as it can take hours to produce an actual flame but by then it’s often too late as the temperature has built up significantly. Glad you noticed it in time . If you haven’t already done so then it’s time for a couple of fire extinguishers and some smoke alarms..

 

[Sideways]

I forget exactly how it happened but I've also had wire wool catch from a spark. You get little glowing orange blobs of melting wool. Quite a surprise the first time you see it.
Glad you dodged the bullet

 

[Chris Harris]

Some years ago I went to a demonstration where a fire officer showed how to start a fire by just touching the ends of a small battery to a ball of wire wool. Very impressive!

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I invigilated exams. We were supplied with a "blue bag" which contained everything deemed necessary to run the exam which included spare batteries for clocks, and paper clips all of which were left loose in the bottom of the bag. This was in a college that imposed every H&S regulation known to man. I pointed out the potential danger to the exam officer (a very clever lady who had a first from Cambridge in about 1960) and she thanked me and said no one had noticed before.