Lighting fires with petrol.

I once had a neighbour call the fire brigade to my bonfire 😳

Didn’t use petrol though 🙄 , just one of those metal bins with a few holes in the sides and a drop of waste paraffin chucked on to get rid of it (no more than 150ml or so)

Really needed some Wagner playing ! – dramatic, though safe IMO. I think our neighbour called them up mostly to stop me having any fire fun rather than prevent a disaster. Had burned down to totally wimpy levels by the time the fire engine arrived

My brother in law wanted to burn a load of old wood. We drilled many holes into an oil drum to make it into a brazier, loaded it up and I put about half a cup of petrol in it cos that’s what we had. The cylindrical nature of the drum contained the resulting explosion quite nicely and it shot little splinters of wood and debris quite a long way into the air.

Learned a bit about contained explosions that day.

My favoured way:

Pile up your rubbish, put a concrete block on top. Tie a bit of string to the block, tie the oter end of it to something like a tree, fence or similar object around 30 metres away. Before tying it, slip on a piece of waterpipe approx 6 inches long. Now tape a large rocket to the pipe.

Put an open basin on top of the concrete block and pour in a gallon of petrol, although as yours is free you might want to use 3 and fill the basin to the brim. Splash some more around the basin/pile.
Light the rocket. 😯

Of course, as others have mentioned, petrol is rubbish at actually getting a fire going so drop a few firelighters in the mix too.

Do it in someone elses garden, drink beer to hydrate during the ‘work’.

Bit of encouragement is good for burning green material, 3 fresh cut trees and their stumps burnt up on site this week with the help of something absorbent and a few litres of red diesel. You’ll never burn a green stack with your 2 sticks and pocket of fluff, if you’re lucky you might burn off the foliage.

I’ve heard tyres burn well too…

Like a good burn up, have built fires as big as the house (would have gone bigger, but the tractor couldn’t lift it higher)

Bedmaker do you have a video of this procedure?

On a similar note I saw a video many years ago of a man using liquid oxygen to light his barbecue. A cup of the stuff got his barbecue up to temperature in about 2 seconds, but it did use up half a bag of charcoal in the process.

I’ve got 2 old sleepers in my garden (railway, not cold-war), absolutely stinking of creosote but pretty dry wood

I reckon they’ll go lovely – anybody got any dead sheep/cows to get rid of ?

Some years back I had a Saturday job in a plumbers merchant. One day a very hysterical, camp looking and sounding hairdresser came through our doors.
He had a plumbing problem and needed a plumber right away.
The experienced old boys just kept their hands in their pockets and said nowt.
But a young new in the trade plumber offered to help. Anyway he went off to evaluate the job, and took it on.
For hours this guy kept coming and going, buying bits and tools and the job was tallying up.
This went on for hours, and you could see him wearing down.
Then he finally exclaimed that he could sort it, and just needed to heat up a pipe to bend it and off he went – again.
Some time later the doors fly open again. In walks this black faced bloke with smoke still plumeing from where his eyebrows once were. And the front of his once spotless overalls were now full of burn holes and still smouldering.
WE asked what had happened.
Well he said, I needed to heat up that pipe, so I got a bucket and filled it up with petrol. At that point we all just fell about

Us ex. Boy Scouts know that rubbing two Girl Guides together is a sure way to keep warm!

Seriously though, using any accelerant to light a fire is just lame…and very non manly. Even BBQs should be lit by starting with a small fire and using a charcoal chimney to heat the coals.

Seriously though, using any accelerant to light a fire is just lame…and very non manly.

QFT and timber – if you get the fire hot enough green wood will burn. Pallets are amazing for getting a fire going once it’s lit but as has been said birch bark is amazing for tinder.

Re the rite of passage thing, I was suggesting that learning to do it safely was the thing that mattered.

It appears you haven’t actually yet gone through that rite of passage then.

but if green wood is all you have lifer there is nothing to get that heat in to it, apart from red diesel for example, pallets would have done, but we didn’t have them, just a field, digger, dumper and a couple of willow trees and an alder to burn, pretty wet trees as things go.

old fence posts on the other hand are just a few degrees away from spontaneous combustion – perfect kindling for the fire at home.

I once tried lighting a fire by chucking a tin of WD40 on it. The fire exploded and disappeared completely 🙂 (I was only about 10 though).

old fence posts on the other hand are just a few degrees away from spontaneous combustion – perfect kindling for the fire at home.

Yup I have a few waiting to cut and split. Mind the old railway sleepers I had were bloody good they went with some great heat but you had to get the coal on first as there was not embers.

but if green wood is all you have lifer there is nothing to get that heat in to it, apart from red diesel for example

Someone else who wasn’t a scout under the tutelage of an old school scoutmaster. You can always find enough tinder to get a fire going sufficiently enough to burn green wood.

If you don’t, you don’t have a fire. And if you don’t have a fire, you don’t cook. And finally if you don’t cook, your patrol doesn’t eat…….simple as.

Which was kinda tough, but you certainly learnt how to get a fire going with whatever was available.

You can always find enough tinder to get a fire going sufficiently enough to burn green wood

Not sure that’s always true – often, but always. And there’s not much point combing the countryside looking for dry wood when there’s a can of diesel right next to you.. 🙂

We sometimes have big and i’m mean big fires at work in winter normally burning green wet willow. Best way is to start small and when it’s going gradually build it up.

Once your got a good fire going it will burn through most things.

Personally I think it singles out those who missed out learning survival skills in the scouts.

I learned all those skills but they’re far outweighed by the need to get a fire started ASAP. My survival skills taught me to keep a small sealed container of highly flammable liquids in every camping kit just in case it’s pouring with rain and you can’t get one going from natural stuff.

The trick to petrol is not leaving it more than about 10 seconds before lighting it (vapour buildup makes for an explosive event) and not using stupid amounts of it, 50ml is enough to get a decent sized fire going quickly and easily and saves finding dry tinder. Any more and you’re being stupid and asking for an explosion.

My survival skills tell me not to do any more than is necessary and not to waste time fannying around trying to be a “real man” 🙂 Use what you have to hand.

A petrol leaf blower can also help 🙂

My survival skills taught me to keep a small sealed container of highly flammable liquids in every camping kit just in case it’s pouring with rain and you can’t get one going from natural stuff.

You’ve got crap survival skills if you can’t get a fire going in the pouring rain without petrol.

How often do you want to start a fire in the pouring rain btw ?

I used petrol to start a BBQ like this…

…and inadvertently got the air/petrol spot on 14:1 launching the charcoal onto the garage roof.

Back in the 70s, a “home mechanic” in our village decided to clean out the petrol tank of his car before removing it (the reason why he needed to do this has never been clear to me but, for reasons best known to himself, he did). He used a cylinder vacuum cleaner to do it. Apparently, the blending of petrol vapour and the sparks generated by a rapidly spinning Electolux motor yielded a result worthy of Pratt and Whitney’s finest. My Dad told me that they found debris over a mile away, while s***-for-brains himself was left with a Jules Winnfield style speech impediment ever since, but at least live to t-t-t-tell the t-t-t-tale. Apparently, he suffered more trauma from his wife (who was ironing in the soon-to-be-demiloshed bedroom above the garage) than from the explosion itself. True story.

what about pushing a swing so hard that it wraps itself around the bar that it hangs from..
is this the same thing…?

I used petrol to start a BBQ like this…

daft, you’ll taste the petrol on the food…