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Have you seen this happen? It is surprisingly difficult—not impossible, just difficult—to light a small gas spill on fire. The reason that gas stoves are diffi

Have you seen this happen? It is surprisingly difficult—not impossible, just difficult—to light a small gas spill on fire. The reason that gas stoves are difficult to work with is because the flame so easily goes out. Under the right circumstances, gasoline will ignite, and the gas stove is designed to make that just barely possible. The picnic bench is a less ideal environment for lighting gasoline on fire. The movies make it look like you can just drop a match or lighter onto some spilled gasoline and get a raging inferno, but if you actually try to do this yourself (safely!) you may see that dropping a lit match into gasoline often extinguishes it. Depending on the ambient environment—the wind, temperature, how much gasoline, etc.

callalex 3y ago
I have seen it happen, because I did it as a young scout. The spill was ignited by a nearby lit stove. You are right that it’s nothing like the movies. It wasn’t a particularly dangerous situation or anything, I just looked and felt like a fool.
- grogenaut 3y ago
  IIRC One of the problems they brought up at Philmont was that the old peak stoves had pressure and leak issues where you'd pump it up and it's start squirting pressurized gas out of the cap, pump, or some other orifice that may have been created recently during pumping or by rust. Which means you've got a nice atomized mist of fuel / air going on and a super soaker filled with white gas situation. I think most of those cleared up. I like the MSR ones a lot better because the fuel is seperate from the stove (not built into it) and you can basically shut it of or QD it from the tank. I figured out how to prime it after trying 2 times. Then it ran like a champ and the amount of white fuel you can get into those bottles is great. I barely touched my 20oz bottle in a 5 day backpack trip up on mount hood and the stove weights literally nothing.
  - saltcured 3y ago
    In high school, I knew someone who was badly burned in the Sierra Nevada just from removing the cap on his MSR fuel bottle. The bottle was pressurized from elevation gain and sprayed all over before igniting due to another nearby stove. I still used my stove for many years after, but the knowledge of that made me handle it with extreme care each time. Like one step below a Japanese nuclear technician who is calling his shots and pointing before each action...
    - grogenaut 3y ago
      Good call. I've never used one where there are other fires present, just for backpacking which rarely allows campfires up here in the pnw when it's dry. I keep the MSR pump in my main bottle which has a QD for the stove. I've always walked away from camp when swapping the bottles. But I'll keep it in mind thanks! They do that for trains too but I noticed them doing it in "The Days", tho they still blew up the reactor.
      - saltcured 3y ago
        Well, we don't know if the plant architects remembered to call and point while they were placing the flood-sensitive generators underground and the drought-sensitive spent-fuel pools up in the rafters!

callalex 3y ago

I have seen it happen, because I did it as a young scout. The spill was ignited by a nearby lit stove. You are right that it’s nothing like the movies. It wasn’t a particularly dangerous situation or anything, I just looked and felt like a fool.

grogenaut 3y ago
IIRC One of the problems they brought up at Philmont was that the old peak stoves had pressure and leak issues where you'd pump it up and it's start squirting pressurized gas out of the cap, pump, or some other orifice that may have been created recently during pumping or by rust. Which means you've got a nice atomized mist of fuel / air going on and a super soaker filled with white gas situation. I think most of those cleared up. I like the MSR ones a lot better because the fuel is seperate from the stove (not built into it) and you can basically shut it of or QD it from the tank. I figured out how to prime it after trying 2 times. Then it ran like a champ and the amount of white fuel you can get into those bottles is great. I barely touched my 20oz bottle in a 5 day backpack trip up on mount hood and the stove weights literally nothing.
- saltcured 3y ago
  In high school, I knew someone who was badly burned in the Sierra Nevada just from removing the cap on his MSR fuel bottle. The bottle was pressurized from elevation gain and sprayed all over before igniting due to another nearby stove. I still used my stove for many years after, but the knowledge of that made me handle it with extreme care each time. Like one step below a Japanese nuclear technician who is calling his shots and pointing before each action...
  - grogenaut 3y ago
    Good call. I've never used one where there are other fires present, just for backpacking which rarely allows campfires up here in the pnw when it's dry. I keep the MSR pump in my main bottle which has a QD for the stove. I've always walked away from camp when swapping the bottles. But I'll keep it in mind thanks! They do that for trains too but I noticed them doing it in "The Days", tho they still blew up the reactor.
    - saltcured 3y ago
      Well, we don't know if the plant architects remembered to call and point while they were placing the flood-sensitive generators underground and the drought-sensitive spent-fuel pools up in the rafters!