All our problems are solved: post your dodgy solutions

[Ian_Grant]

On 12/11/2022 at 4:34 PM, KeithAug said:

Some dodgy solutions of the past had the merit of actually working - unlike their modern equivalents.

 

<snip...snip>

I am sure that many products have become environmentally more sustainable and safer at the expense of function. 

About 20 years ago (memory is not exact) Ontario switched to "environmentally friendlier" paint for vehicle licence plates. Aluminum isn't the easiest surface; after a while they all started peeling. You'd see some plates with the entire paint layer free from the plate, only held in by those little frames some people buy, or you'd see plates with half the paint gone. At the beginning you had to argue to get a new plate without the replacement fee, then they brought in a 5-year "warranty" on the paint.

 

Nowadays they still get some batches which peel, but they will replace for free. But you still have to go through the pain of waiting in line at the registry office to trade plates.

[wefalck]

The problem is that such measure are typically taken in isolation, not based on a systemic assessment of all the consequences and impacts. The life-cycle impact of an entirely new plate may well be higher than using some not so environmentally friendly paint (whereby the main impact comes from inadequate handling and application, rather than production). We see this over and over again in political decisions that aim to solve one problem, but then create a host of other problems down the road.

[Jack12477]

Ian, same thing happened here in NY state with our license plates, must be we use the same company 🤔 😒 😂 

Edited December 30, 2022 by Jack12477

[Jack12477]

Gary, @Morgan , that stove looks very similar to a Petite Gaudan/Godin (sp?) parlor stove we installed in the Saugerties Lighthouse in 1990 after we finished restoring it.  Ours was wood or coal fired, produced an incredible amount of heat.  

Edited December 30, 2022 by Jack12477

[thibaultron]

My heating system has a self regulating mobile heating unit system! The colder the room gets the more mobile units move to your location.

[Ian_Grant]

10 hours ago, Jack12477 said:

Ian, same thing happened here in NY state with our license plates, must be we use the same company 🤔 😒 😂 

But different inmates to stamp them out, I guess. 😁

 

When the Ontario Liberals got thrown out after too many years in power, the new conservative government decided to completely change the plate design. This cost quite a bit apparently, paying consultants for a new motto among other things. Fundamentally they switched from dark numerals on a white background to white numerals on dark, with other artistic flashes. Only after they started issuing them did someone notice that with the carefully selected new paint scheme, the numerals became illegible after dark under certain kinds of streetlights.....sheesh......😭...our tax money at work.....

 

So they switched back again, at great expense.

Edited December 31, 2022 by Ian_Grant

[Jack12477]

Deja Vu New York ! 

[Canute]

Ron, a 7 cat night? Must be toasty.

[mtaylor]

13 hours ago, Canute said:

Ron, a 7 cat night? Must be toasty.

Sort of like "3 Dog Night" but with cats instead of dogs.

[bruce d]

From Popular Mechanics for Young America, published 1905:

[Snug Harbor Johnny]

  ... But if the gas is on too long before the lad works up enough static charge, there could be quite a flash when the fuel-air mixture ignites - hair singeing, to be sure !

 

[Snug Harbor Johnny]

  'Brings to mind a teenage acquaintance of my brother and I ... the friend's name was Charlie.  'Seems my brother was invited over to Charlie's back yard one summer day while his dad was at work and his mom was out shopping to do a science project he read about (not sure where).  In a jug he'd placed shreds of aluminum foil and added granular household lye (sodium hydroxide).  Wow, remember when you could buy Red Devil lye at most any food or hardware store?

 

  The experiment was set-up under a crabapple tree.  Water was added and Charlie tied a small weather balloon (from Edmunds Scientific company ... remember those cool Edmunds catalogs) to the neck of the jug.  Very soon a reaction occurred in the jug that had an output of hydrogen gas, and as the water got hotter and hotter - the ballon filled up quicker and grew (as my brother related) to about 3 feet in diameter.  The object (from the source) was to have a very buoyant hydrogen-filled balloon, and one was supposed to tie a stamped post card wrapped in plastic for any finder (wherever the wind would take the balloon) to send back saying where the ballon was found.

 

  Charlie had other ideas (unbeknownst to my brother).  The balloon was tied off (but still attached to the neck of the jug) and Charlie added a fuse (taken off a cherry bomb).  Before my brother could say much, Charlie lit the fuse saying, "Run !"  He imagined that it would make a loud explosion, but was unaware that oxygen was needed to get the explosion he imagined.

 

  Rather, the ballon 'popped' from the heat of the fuse - and that set a ball of pure hydrogen alight without making a 'boom'.  My brother described it as sort-of like the Hindinberg disaster (Oh, the humanity !) ... it was a persistent fire and NOT an explosion.  However, the burning ball of hydrogen ALSO rose into the air and passed right through a portion of the crabapple tree - singeing all the leaves as it went.  And the fuel was consumed just as the fireball cleared the top of the tree.

 

  The contents of the jug was poured out in a corner of the yard, and a few days later Charlie's dad noticed that there was a brown 'column' going right up through the crabapple tree - which (as such trees often are) was ordinarily susceptible to a variety of fungal diseases that cause a lot of leaf yellowing, browning and loss.  So the man scratched his head (as Charlie would relate) and commented, "I wonder what's wrong with this tree now?"

  

 

  

Edited January 13, 2023 by Snug Harbor Johnny

[Ian_Grant]

I am reminded of an occasion when I went camping in my youth with a number of work buddies many years ago. After a lot of beer had been drunk it was time to light the campfire. We couldn't get the damp wood to fire up. SO,... someone poured camp fuel all over it and it was up to Paul to light it. He realized that the fumes were spreading, so his solution was to sprint at the firepit while striking the match, then leap over it, dropping the match in as he cleared it. There was an "whoomph" and a searing flame erupted from the pit and spread rapidly outward. Fortunately it stopped just short of the still-open Coleman fuel can.😬

[bruce d]

From Popular Mechanics Shop Notes 1905, A fool-proof way to dry your frozen blasting powder in a coal mine: what could go wrong?

 

[Snug Harbor Johnny]

[David W]

As a kid we played with an AC Gilbert Chemistry Set. You could poison your sister, blow up your teacher or *gasp* play alchemist. We all had some version of this set. All we as kids did was to make gunpowder which only burned since none of us realized that it needed a confined area of some sort. Then the rich kid learned how to use other chemicals and make things go bang.

 

As to suit and tie - until my long term company went business casual about 1995, we were required to dress properly

[bruce d]

2 minutes ago, David W said:

We all had some version of this set.

Oh yeah, I tried everything to make dangerous substances and asked Mother if the set was defective when I couldn't. Them was the days ...

[wefalck]

Did I mention, that I once tried to make gun-cotton? My father had a useful book, that told you everything about how to make explosives and how to test them ... perhaps I was lucky that it didn't work, because the cotton-wool I used was actually not cotton.

[mtdoramike]

The first model ship that I tried to build was a Bluenose Canadian fishing boat. I got so aggravated with it that I placed it on the driveway and ran over it with my truck, backed up and ran over it again, then gathered up the pieces and threw them in the trash can. It didn't fix anything on the model, but it did wonders for my frustration. My wife asked me in a sarcastic manner "did that make you feel better"? I simply replied "yes it did".

Edited January 22, 2023 by mtdoramike

[Snug Harbor Johnny]

1 hour ago, David W said:

As a kid we played with an AC Gilbert Chemistry Set. You could poison your sister, blow up your teacher or *gasp* play alchemist. We all had some version of this set. All we as kids did was to make gunpowder which only burned since none of us realized that it needed a confined area of some sort. Then the rich kid learned how to use other chemicals and make things go bang.

 

As to suit and tie - until my long term company went business casual about 1995, we were required to dress properly

  We also didn't know that commercially made gunpowder mixes finely powdered ingredients in a slurry that is milled long enough to intimately incorporate them on a molecular level ... which after drying and granulating produces a powder that will 'flash' - ergo explode - without containment.  The stuff we made dry with mortar and pestle was far less effective ... didn't stop us from experimenting.  The local hobby store sold refills for chem sets, and the most popular ingredients were ... potassium nitrate, surfer and charcoal.

 

[Snug Harbor Johnny]

  Another 'Charlie' story ... he and another friend got hold of a mag wheel when they really WERE magnesium.  Once evening, they thought it would be cool to light it somehow ... so they built a small fire on a rocky slope on one side of a large field, and heated the mag wheel for some time.  It didn't ignite - perhaps because of an oxide layer keeping oxygen away from the metal under the layer.  In disgust, Charlie threw a stone at the hub - which must have gouged through the oxide layer ... and the hub started to burn (as magnesium does) with an INTENSELY bright white light that sent them running as fast as possible away from the scene.  'Must have been like the illumination of a night rocket launch.  A fire truck arrived after the magnesium was consumed, and they put out what was left of the campfire.

[thibaultron]

I too had chemistry sets as a child. I bought one for my son in the early 90s. They had made it so safe (most of the chemicals were bottled as pads "Soaked" in the chemicals, rather than liquids) that we could not get any of the experiments to work! I took chemistry classes in both high school and first year of college, so had a decent idea of what we were doing, still no luck.

[Altduck]

6 hours ago, thibaultron said:

I bought one for my son in the early 90s. They had made it so safe (most of the chemicals were bottled as pads "Soaked" in the chemicals, rather than liquids) that we could not get any of the experiments to work!

Yes, I had the same experience in the 90's but it was with my Grandson.

When we were kids, the sets had lots of "real" chemicals and you could do neat stuff with them.  My favorite was flash powder in a large gelatin Capsule you could buy by the box full at the local pharmacy and fill yourself.  They were compounding pharmacists in those days, not just pill peddlers, so they had lots of chemicals, too.  I packed these in my backpack for Boy Scout camping trips, to toss in the campfire.  Stopped doing that after our ***'t Scout Leader demo'd his rugged Backwoodsman skills by bending down over the fire to light his cigarette on a burning log - at just the wrong moment.

Good Times, they were.

[Altduck]

Just now, Altduck said:

Stopped doing that after our ***'t Scout Leader....

OK, my bad - wrong abbreviation for Assistant

🙂

[Dr PR]

Johnny's story abut the magnesium wheel brought to mind an experience I had.

 

I was a Nuclear Weapons Officer in the Navy, and we worked with missiles with all kinds of nasty stuff in them - including magnesium. So the Navy sent me to many fire fighting schools. One was a flight deck firefighting school where we learned to do all sorts of impossible things.

 

In one class they set off an aircraft flare (magnesium and an oxidizer) and told us to put it out with water. When an old salt Chief says to put it out, you put it out! We ran a high pressure water hose nozzle up the tail end and flooded it with so much water that the steam carried away the heat faster than it was being generated and it went out! Then they set an aircraft magnesium wheel on fire and we proceeded to put it out with water from several fire hoses!! Only a small spot on the wheel was burning but the heat spread through the entire mass. The entire wheel surface was flooded with water to carry away heat and eventually the fire went out.

 

Then we went on to walk into a flaming pool of aviation fuel to rescue a "pilot" in a steel mock-up airplane. Of course, we had to do it from down wind with the flames blowing right at us! Here the trick was to use two hose teams. The lead team had a 2 1/2 inch hose with an ordinary two function nozzle - solid stream and high velocity spray. The backup team had a 2 1/2 inch hose with a "spud tip" (metal tip with a lot of small holes) on a long extension. They placed the spud tip over and just ahead of the nozzleman on the lead hose, creating a sheet of high velocity water fog from the spud tip. That sheet of water created a "tunnel" in the flames, blowing back the burning gasses so we could walk right up to the plane. Then a guy in an asbestos suit came in to rescue the pilot. It was scary but fascinating to see flames blowing above and to the sides of us!

 

Those are only three of the impossible things we did in the Navy fire fighting schools (we also put out oil fires with water).

Edited January 23, 2023 by Dr PR

[thibaultron]

After the first Iraq war the Iraqis set many of the oil wells in the occupied countries on fire as they retreated, prompting stories of the coming apocalypse of the wells burning for decades, as there were so many, and standard methods took a lot of time per well. Well as you can see that didn't happen. One of the most innovative ways to put them out, was a Polish (I believe) company that thought way outside the box, and built a frame with one or two jet engine mounted with the exhaust pointing toward the rear. They would back the running engines toward the flames and the oxygen poor massive flow output would smother the flames, while massive amounts of water cooled the metal end of the well, so the oil would not be reignited,

[wefalck]

Interesting, I hadn't heard of this technique. There used to be a guy called Red Adair, I think; who was a specialist for putting out such fires using controlled blasts, which may work on a similar principle.

[Cathead]

Yeah, I remember reading about Red Adair as a kid. He was a master at creating shaped charges that would snuff out even massive oil well explosions/fires.

[Edwardkenway]

There was a film from the 70s with John Wayne about him I think 

[wefalck]

There was also a 1953 franco-italian road-movie 'Le salaire de la peur' with Yves Montand and Peter van Eyck, where four guys were hired to drive two lorries with nitro-glycerin to be used to extinguish a burning oil-well into the South-American djungle ... one lorry makes it.