# Washing Oil Stained clothes in boiling gasoline. Why didn't it blow up? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 26, 2014, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/washing-oil-stained-clothes-in-boiling-gasoline-why-didnt-it-blow-up/694076 "2014-07-26T03:02:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2014, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/washing-oil-stained-clothes-in-boiling-gasoline-why-didnt-it-blow-up/694076/41 "2014-07-27T21:01:53Z")
I think this is the most likely scenario. I like the explanation for the singed clothes too. That was one of my moms most vivid memories. I imagine her dad got grumpy if he found a burnt spot on his work pants. 😉 Standing by a kettle of boiling water with a paddle is the sort of mundane task you’d give a kid. Something useful they can actually do and not screw up. > [@CannyDan](#): > > \ > So the posited case makes no sense to me. Sure you could boil gas in a kettle, and soak clothes in it. You might even, if you’re really careful, do this over an open fire. Keep the flames small and mostly coals, make it a really, _really_ tall kettle, and keep the liquid level relatively low. But stir it with a stick? No way, regardless of the age of the attendant. Dip the stick, then remove stick – drip, drip goes the gas off the stick as you remove it and swing it away. Some drips go down the side of the kettle, some go into the flames. All immediately ignite, flames climb the outside of the kettle and ignite the whole thing. Just like my buddy re-igniting the brush pile. Not a bomb, just a vigorous fire. > > I suspect what was actually done involved two steps. Oil soaked clothes were washed by hand in a container of room temperature gasoline. This should remove most of the oil. Then the clothes were vigorously wrung out, and maybe hung to drip for a time. Then they were washed of the remaining gasoline residue in a pot of boiling water. Here the open fire makes sense, and explains the “push the clothes under before they burn” memory. Boiling in water was releasing the remaining gasoline as vapor, some of which hung above the kettle. This vapor routinely “flared” as it flowed over the edge of the kettle into the open fire. The flare on top of the water could burn any clothing sticking up above the water. But these small flares weren’t sufficient to pose much hazard for the attendant. At least, not much more danger than that posed by the open fire itself. > > The six year old might not have been tall enough or strong enough to be involved in the actual gas washing task. Wet coveralls in men’s sizes are heavy. Or maybe this part was done the day before, or in a separate place. But she was big enough to stand by the kettle with a wooden paddle for the “push ‘em down before they get burned” part. In later years she remembered “washing oily clothes in boiling gasoline” as a single memory event. ---
**Author:** ![CannyDan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cannydan/32/548_2.png) [@CannyDan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CannyDan)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2014, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/washing-oil-stained-clothes-in-boiling-gasoline-why-didnt-it-blow-up/694076/42 "2014-07-28T13:40:06Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > I think this is the most likely scenario. I like the explanation for the singed clothes too… [coyly averts gaze, draws circle in sand with big toe…] Aw, shucks. Tweren’t nuthin’. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Ellen\_Cherry](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellen_cherry/32/3600_2.png) [@Ellen\_Cherry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellen_Cherry)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/washing-oil-stained-clothes-in-boiling-gasoline-why-didnt-it-blow-up/694076/43 "2014-07-30T15:06:13Z")
My husband has reported that his grandparents also cleaned oily clothes in gasoline, in Louisiana. I’ve always been fairly incredulous, but he is adamant it’s true. He has an additional story about an accident when someone intended to throw water on something and grabbed the gasoline instead, which indeed resulted in a fire. As for the cost of gasoline, this was Louisiana in the middle of the oilfields, in the 1930s. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/washing-oil-stained-clothes-in-boiling-gasoline-why-didnt-it-blow-up/694076/44 "2014-07-30T19:46:10Z")
I worked with a guy who came from, to put it politely, a Carolinas white trash background. He had mostly grown out of it, but the things he and his brothers did were appalling, and the stories of things their dad and uncles did was worse. They could never let the old man borrow their cars, because he’d fill them up with whatever solvent was handy - paint or lacquer thinner, acetone, methanol - and while that might have worked with pre-1970s beaters, it was hell on cars with catalytic converters and so forth. They talked about the time they were on a road trip with their dad and the truck’s gas tank started leaking. He stopped at a country garage, borrowed an oxy torch, and welded up the leak. He was sure that a full tank of gas would absorb the heat and be no danger. He was apparently right, but even my knuckle-dragging partner told it as a “my old man is an idiot” story. ---
**Author:** ![johnpost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f17d59/32.png) [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/washing-oil-stained-clothes-in-boiling-gasoline-why-didnt-it-blow-up/694076/45 "2014-07-30T21:06:07Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > They talked about the time they were on a road trip with their dad and the truck’s gas tank started leaking. He stopped at a country garage, borrowed an oxy torch, and welded up the leak. He was sure that a full tank of gas would absorb the heat and be no danger. He was apparently right, but even my knuckle-dragging partner told it as a “my old man is an idiot” story. a high school teacher of mine was in the military and said, when in a hurry, they filled the tanks with gas to weld them. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/washing-oil-stained-clothes-in-boiling-gasoline-why-didnt-it-blow-up/694076.md?page=2)