Guys,
This brings to mind an experience I had a many years ago. I just finished making a rifle barrel and proof tested it just outside the gunshop. As a back stop, just a few feet from the muzzle, I had a large pile of very old locust fence posts. Later that night my wife announced that my shop was on fire! Apparently the spark from the patch started a fire in the old locust logs after several hours. There was no brush or leaf litter around, either. I would bet the house that a hot patch from a muzzle loader could not start a fire directly in the 100 year old logs, but it did! The shop building was not damaged.
Jim
To extend this as a reminder of why we have to be so careful about making sure a fire is out. Here is a personal story:
A few years back my next door neighbor Tom's daughter had some friends over for a campout on land the community holds in common. Knowing that the fire danger was high (I am a private forester and fire risk is always on my mind) I checked the camp fire the next day to make sure it was out. They had doused the fire with water and the fire ring was cold, all good. The day after that I come home and mention to my wife that I thought I smelled smoke, she says "Its been like that all day" - Ok, I sit down to read the paper. A half hour later another neighbor calls frantic about the smoke that is coming up the slope near the house. I run out and the slope above the campsite is on fire! I yell to the wife to call 911 while Tom and I pull all the garden hoses we can roust up to string down the bank to the fire. We did good too, we pretty much had the fire front knocked down and I was thinking about starting the mop up work when the fire department showed up.
Getting back to Jim's comment above: The Department of Natural Resources investigator determined that the camp fire was over an old, rotten tree root that had acted like a slow match holding the fire for a couple of days before it took off. I'll bet the embers on Jim's patch got into some punky locust in his pile and just bided it's time until no one was looking. That's why Smokey says to drown the fire, stir the ashes and drown it again!
The final part of the story is a little funny. A few weeks later Tom knocks at my door with this really long look on his face. Since it started with his daughter's camp fire, the DNR sent him a bill to cover a fine and the "cost" of the fire. It was something like $75,000! He was dumfounded, I was mystified since I couldn't figure out how the few hours the fire department spent on scene tending a fire that Tom and I were well on the way to containing was worth the bill. The local Fire Chief was a little bit miffed too, talk about an incentive to not report an escaped fire and try to handle it on your own, not a good thing! In fact the Chief said they did not get any of that money from the DNR in any case. Tom called the DNR and in the end they admitted that they "had got the paperwork mixed up" and they were billing Tom for someone else's fire! I think he was still on the hook for around $3,000 though.
Sorry for the off topic story but it does show how careful you have to be, the fire may look like it is out....
