May 16, 2001

4:19 PM

Adventures in welding:"Unauthorized welding by crewmembers in the main laundry ignited a large accumulation of lint in the ventilation system, leading to a major fire aboard a cruise ship that injured 23 people and resulted in damages exceeding $17 million, the National Transportation Safety Board has found." Now I understand why you have to clear out the lint.
posted by thescoop (6 comments total)

Naming a cruise ship Ecstasy is just asking for trouble!
posted by DiplomaticImmunity at 5:35 PM on May 16, 2001

When I was a young teenager, my wife's boss's son burned down their house by leaving lint in the dryer's lint trap, then starting up the dryer and leaving it unattended.

Lint is tremendously combustible. My wife doesn't understand why I'm always checking the lint trap on our dryer.
posted by briank at 6:18 PM on May 16, 2001

if you would like to exploit the combustability of lint for your own purposes, take off your shoe, hold your foot up, set a cigarette lighter to low, and run a flame across the sock. if there's sufficient lint, a nice little wave of flame will swoop harmlessly across the sock.

not sure what sort of discussion this post is really supposed to elicit...
posted by mitchel at 9:40 PM on May 16, 2001

"...hold your foot up, set a cigarette lighter to low, and run a flame across the sock."

*Parental advisory alert* don't try this at home kids...

Apart from the danger to life aspect, forgetting to clean out your filter could lead to a world shortage in lint art (amoung other things)

Perhaps I shouldn't have gone there.
posted by lucien at 11:30 PM on May 16, 2001

Plus it is notoriously difficult to weld lint.
posted by briank at 8:20 AM on May 17, 2001