[Closed] Close shaves with petrol? Fess up

Fuel air bombs (Thermobaric bombs): An accident waiting to happen...
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we used to go to a rusty old water tower in some woods, used to have a walk way inside halfway up. We would light a fire on the floor under the walkway and from the outside standing on the domed roof throw milk bottles filled with petrol onto the walkway through the top hatch. The petrol would form an aerosol type spray before hitting the fire. A friend had to explain to his mother why he had lost is eyebrows and most of his fringe. Made a great bang and fireball though 😳

I remember my dad lighting a bonfire in a steel bin on a warm muggy summer afternoon. He put a bit of petrol on it and then standing about 8ft away ficked a match towards the bin, cue exploding petrol vapours 3ft from bin and singed eyebrows!

I, er, know someone who tried to light a woodburner with about an egg cup full of petrol. He won't try that again...

Similar bonfire type story but with a smallish pile of garden waste........wouldn't light so I gave it a dash of petrol, stood well back and threw a lit match........the small pile exploded and I lost a lot of body hair on one side.
It turns out the petrol I had been using was my mates high octane race fuel for his TT bike. I did wonder why the lawn mower was revving so high and used three tanks to do the lawm......he wasn't best pleased as it was about £70 quid a gallon. Oooops.

My mate had also nearly burnt down the rented house we were in following a similar incident with coal fire. We had to replace a rather burnt carpet!

I'm always amazed that people will use enough fuel to move a ton and half of metal 40 miles to try and light a few bits of wood and then be surprised by the fact there's 'quite a big bang'.

I once sucked a mouthfull through a blocked carburettor on my motorbike.

Not petrol but I pulled the hose off a gas tap in a science class when the bunsen burner was lit 8)

A jet of flame shot out from the gas tap and I tried to blow it out which then set the periodic table of the elements poster on fire 8)

As a drunken teenager I had a moment of clarity when realising I was holding a half full petrol can, surrounded by a ring of burning grass from where we'd been dicking about lighting it.

I remember one time I was having a bonfire as kid, when things weren't burning as well as I expected, so I went to the shed and got the lawn-mower petrol can to slosh a bit of petrol on. Was quite impressed, surprised and terrified at the rate the flames shot up from the bonfire to the can.
Can't remember what happened next, but I imagine it involved and imaginatively unconvincing excuse as to why the petrol can was now a charred lump.

Yep guilty although not the one who got too close.

We were lighting the burns pit (getting rid of all the gash including the toilet bags as Afghan doesn't tend to have running toilets). We were using phosphorous pen flares to light it, after firing two into the pit and nowt happening my oppo decided to use a match, lighting a bit of paper and placing it on. Cue explosion & him being covered with yesterdays digested meals. Being the good egg that I am, I had already taken cover before said incident. One experience as a kid was enough to spark the memories and take the proper precautions.

Nope but picked up a few people who've lit BBQs and bonfires with petrol, they seem suprised that we cab guess what they did when we see them.

De-coking my two-stroke exhaust. Pour petrol down the exhaust(off the bike obviously) and light it, and get rid of those pesky carbon deposits...

Knocked me clean off my feet onto my ar*e...!

All I have is my recollection of my Art teacher (circa 1988) coming into school without his beard one day after bonfire night...

I once siphoned petrol out of a tank (that we owned) as a kid, got some in my mouth. The effect was impossible to describe really in terms of taste, but I was belching petrol for a few days and I stank of it all over.

My brother in law stripped wood panelling out of his bathroom and we made a brazier out of an oil drum to burn it all. I put maybe a couple of tablespoons of petrol in it and tossed in a match.. well my natural prudence served me well since even that much when contained in our giant mortar was enough to blast splinters a good 20ft in the air with a powerful whump.

A guy I knew at sixth form tried making napalm in the bathroom sink while his parents were away. Sugar and petrol mixed in the sink, put a small amount on the window sill and lit it, needless to say the whole lot went up, fortunately only needed a new bathroom not re-constructive surgery.

Played with a can of petrol in my dad's garage when I was a young teenager.

Made a little puddle on the floor then lit it and watched in horror as the flames chased straight back to the open petrol can!

Fortunately it had some kind of [i]anti-massive explosion[/i] insert in the cap, so when I ran back in and poured a bucket of water from the fish pond over it I wasn't horribly killed.

Makes me want to burn shit this does.

Lobbed an old deodorant can onto a bonfire and ran. BOOM! Et voila, no fire, not even embers.

Got hold of some detonators from a train once, split the case open and emptied the gunpower out. Makes quite a flash and scorches woodwork, as I found out subsequently.

"I am the god of hellfire and I bring you.... two policemen and a massive bollocking!"

As above really. Teenager - Made a small bonfire.... poured petrol on... stood downwind but about 5ft back... lit match...lost eyebrows....explain to mother what exactly had happened.

Not petrol but...

As a teenager living on the windswept ayrshire coast building bonfires on the beach made for good entertainment of a summer evening.

We used to look around the shore for "interesting" stuff to put on the fire - old aerosol cans etc. One night we found a butane tank. Confident that it was pretty much empty and it might make a bit of a bang at most we stuck it on the bonfire but retired to a "safe" distance just in case.

The resulting explosion blew the bonfire out and scattered hot embers all over the beach. How we avoided getting burnt as fire rained from the sky I'll never know. We promptly scarpered the distant sounds of sirens in our ears.

After that sticking stuff on the bonfire didn't seem that interesting anymore

Guess it wasn't [i]that[/i] empty

Yep.

Having a less than succesful bonfire I sprinkled (Thank god I didn't chuck it on!!!)petrol around the base then lit it.

WWWWOOOOOOMPPPH!!! The flames exploded about 3 feet in the air and scared thne shit out of me, luckily only burnt my eyebrows.

Other half leant out of the window and said "You've got it going then!"

Stuff should be left to the professionals.

Glitchy posting before I'm finished nonsense

Well, I'm known as "mr pyro" to my mates 😳

A full catalogue of fiery annecdotes and singeworthy stories

[i]Well, I'm known as "mr pyro"[/i]

[i]and[/i] "mr doublepost"

😉

and "mr doublepost"

Computer keeps posting before I have finished typing. For some reason, one of the keys seems to shortcut to "send post" 🙁

My mum spent 11 days in intensive care after lighting a damp bonfire with petrol.
The 40ft fireball was most impressive.

She still says it makes her look 10 years younger.

When i worked in a steelworks the foreman droped a 5 litre can of turps on the wooden floor,i said as a joke just chuck a match on it and it will evaporate like meths does on your hand, he did, it didnt evaporate, large fire, with him standing in the middle of it, flames burning his boots and trousers, luckily fire hose near by, squirted water on to the flames and a river of fire then flowed down the workshop,quickly followed by me with a dry powder extinguisher.

We both learnt that water on a fuel fire spreads very quickly.

Yep also had a mispent youth building bonfires on the beach.......the best fun was aerosol cans just like richmtb. No matter how empty always guaranteed an explosion!
Our best moment was a half full can of lighter fuel!! Same result raining fire and no trace of the bonfire! Once you have done that everything else is tame.
We also made Molotov cocktails and practised throwing them into disused WWII sentry boxes! Hours of fun.

fortunately only needed a new bathroom

Lol!

"Err.. mum...?"

Not petrol but I pulled the hose off a gas tap in a science class when the bunsen burner was lit

On a cold winter's day our chemistry teacher Mr Larkham used to light [i]all[/i] the gas taps to heat the lab up.

It was like walking into the intro to Apocalypse Now.

Knew a thick lad in Widnes twenty years ago who tried to help a bonfire along and welded his nylon tracksuit to his front.

Sadly his bollocks remained in full working order and he was able to breed.

I'm always amazed that people will use enough fuel to move a ton and half of metal 40 miles to try and light a few bits of wood and then be surprised by the fact there's 'quite a big bang'.

^^^^^ this

deleted double post

Do we get less posts per page now? Used to be 40, now 34 or so.

Inflation I suppose.

They did it to get poster's stats up and increase the number of Big Hitters.

It's basically the same as how A level resuilts get better year on year.

There was a TV show in the early 90s that built a cannon to compare the relative explosive power if gunpowder and petrol, firing a can of lager. As you do.

First, one teaspoon gunpowder. Can plops gently out the end with about as much force as a dry w**k.

Second, one teaspoon petrol. Clean over the next door field.

Cannae find it on YouTube. The lad who helped build the cannon used to live in Tod.

Put about a pint of petrol on as yet unlit bonfire. Then went down the garden to get the stick with burning rag on the end of it and walked back towards bonfire, cue Backdraft, fire running along the ground moment and the bonfire lighting with a large woomph.

Failed to learn from that and a few months later disintegrated a huge pile of embers and ash with a small camping gas cylinder. The 20ft wide fireball that incinerated the apple tree was spectacular, not so spectacular was leaping fences to put out fires started in neighbours gardens by the now very well lit embers.

I have mainly been a good boy since then.........

I'm so glad its not just me who has had a major fire incident.
Set a large mound of tarmac on fire with John Siddalls dads lawn mower fuel . I have no idea why .

Set the Scouts camp bonfire alight , possibly a good 5 hours before they wanted it lit , but it was always too hot for proper jacket pots anyway..

Set myself on fire and had to be blue lighted to hospital after pouring alot of 2 stroke 'Nitro' fuel from a RC car onto a fire that wasnt quite 'out' . Cue big fire ball and me doing a good impression of the Renault F1 refuelling man from 1999. Had to have gauze mesh taped to my head , burnt pretty much everything nipples upwards .

Flooded my Saab 900 T16s after hotwiring it having lost the keys and guessing wrongly which wires to twist together . took out plugs and cranked engine over , resulting in a petrol fountain that sprayed about 10ft into the air . My mate Dec and I both hit the ground expecting the 'woomph' as the vapours rolled down in a boiling clound inside a certain multi story car park in Woking . Would have been a tricky one to explain away that .

On a still winters night after trying unsucessfully to get a large pile of very wet garden waste to light, I decided on the petrol from the lawn mower. I poured the petrol over the pile, then realised I had left the matches in the shed, went back to the shed then decided some lit paper would be the safest way to start the burn. So went into the house to get a couple of sheets of news paper. Once back at the pile of waste, I lit the paper and threw it on from a safe distance and then walked down the garden towards the house.

At this point the fire caught as did the vapour from the petrol, which had flowed down the garden to where I was standing. From the explosion I reccon it was about a foot deep, luckilly for me it mostly went up with a loud WHOOP. I just about shat myself and my missus wet her self laughing at me jumping a few feet in the air.

NYE wild camping in Brecon when it was snowing, so available wood supply a bit wet. Being very drunk and holding a petrol can which is on fire is highly amusing, as is the resultant "scorched earth" fallout when a discus style throw of said petrol can becomes preferable to imminent explosion.

Aged 10, set my mates garage on fire, on the first occasion I was allowed to play at theirs. Ironically that was because they had the rep of being the local naughty kids. I wasn't invited back 😥

One morning years ago I got out of the shower and realised I had run out of deodorant. So on the way to work I stpped at the local Spar and bought a can of Right Guard. Back in my car I gave my armpits a generous squirt.

And then lit a cigarette.

There was a mighty flash and I could smell singed hair for days....