Explosive bonfire lighting - GIF

[Altair]

Explosive bonfire lighting.




Previously:

World's largest bonfire - video and photos
Chinese festival bonfire - GIF
Lighting a bonfire with a hot air balloon burner - GIF

[Haroun]

I was working with a framer years ago & we were burning scraps on one job & I went & put gas on the pile then had to get the lighter, then come back & light the fire. It was a smaller version of that. The boss told me kerosene or motor oil are safer for stuff like that as they're less volatile.

[Frank S]

Our high school stacked wood up every year for a huge bonfire for our homecoming game one year we had managed to lash 30 utility poles together in a telescopic fashion the base had 12 40 ft poles Tepee style lashed to a vertical 120ft tree in the center 100s of pickup loads of lumber, pallets and everything else made of wood plus about 100 very old dry bales of hay piled inside and outside all the way to the top of the tree with the remaining poles hauled to the top lashed 1 at a time to the top of the tree hanging down over the stack of rubble, the pile must have been at least 40 feet in diameter but among all of this some "IDIOT" we suspected it was the quarterback had deflated a football then refilled it with a volatile compound and tied it somewhere near the top of the pile The fire was started with several Molotov cocktails thrown at it but no other incendiary fluids that I know of It took several minutes for the fire to rage all the way to the top but that was when everything went south when the football I guess for lack of a better word erupted into a bright blue ball of fire. It wasn't exactly an explosion but close enough it rained flaming particles of debris down and outwards nearly reaching the crowd standing back a couple hundred feet from the base the next year the bonfire was restricted to 40 feet tall

[hemmjo]

When I was a kid, 18-19, I worked at an inland marina. Only reason that is significant is, they had a lot of old stale gasoline in some rusty old 6 gallon fuel tanks outboard engines used. They were clearing a site for a new building. Bulldozer had pushed up a bunch weed type of trees into a big pile. A BIG pile, maybe 50' long, 20' wide and 10' high. The owner told his son and me, to get that pile burned up. Looking back we should have focused on getting a fire started in one spot and let it spread from there.

BUT, we did not do that. Instead we had about 20-30 gallons of that old stale gasoline. We sprinkled it generously around that pile. At least were were smart enough to know this had some potential for danger....lol. SO we got a stick, stood at the pile and threw the stick away from the pile, to get the "range" correct. Then we went to get the stick, tied shot rag to it, put some oil on the rag and lit that. Threw it back to the pile while standing where it had landed. The stick only made it about 1/2 way back when the fumes from all that stale gasoline ignited. We were just far enough from the pile that the flames did not get us, but the heat was sure intense. There was no big Bang, it was just a big WHOOMP. There was no flying debris, just huge ball of flames heat. That lasted a very short time, then there were a few lingering flames that only lasted a few minutes.

It is that day I learned to start a file small and let it build inself from there.

[hemmjo]

Our high school stacked wood up every year for a huge bonfire for our homecoming game one year we had managed to lash 30 utility poles together in a telescopic fashion the base had 12 40 ft poles Tepee style lashed to a vertical 120ft tree in the center...snip

What year was that Frank?

Reminds me of the 1999 Texas A &M homecoming disaster. It was bad and they never even got a chance to light it.

[Frank S]

What year was that Frank?

Reminds me of the 1999 Texas A &M homecoming disaster. It was bad and they never even got a chance to light it.

I think it was in the mid to late 60's not sure if I was in high school yet but it had to be before the new practice field was made and the dead tree might not have been as tall as I remember

[Hoosiersmoker]

The citronella torch oil is the best thing I've found, and it's dirt cheap.