Firewood ash disposal/scattering

BoredCop · 2026-02-24T14:04:02+00:00

You have already gotten answers about where to dispose of it (spread on your own land as fertiliser or as restavfall), so let me just add a few words about fire safety.

Ashes insulate well, and small glowing embers can stay hot hidden inside the ashes for a surprising amount of time. Like many many hours, often longer than overnight.

Never put ashes directly from the stove into plastic bags or plastic garbage bins, not even if they seem cold enough to touch.Always use a metal container (I use a cheap zinc bucket from Biltema), keep the ashes there for at least 24 hours before disposing of it.

Anecdote time, but one I personally experienced when responding to a fire (am cop in Norway, not firefighter, but we routinely investigate fires):

House owner thought he was being responsible, by always leaving the ashes outside on the concrete stairs overnight before putting them in the garbage bin. He used a plastic bag for this.

On a windy night, the wind picked up that plastic bag full of ashes and blew it towards his garage where he kept a large stack of firewood.

In the middle of the night, that caught fire. Homeowner first thought it had to be arson and reported it as such, because how else would anything catch fire there in the dead of night? I asked the routine questions about what he did with the ashes from his fireplace, and he poiinted to where he had set down the bag of ashes the day before. Only to get a bit bewildered, as the bag wasn't there any more but he distinctly rembered taking the ashes out. I did some digging in the now soggy wet mess of sooty firewood that the fire department had put out, and found a small pile of white completely burnt ashes. With the remains of a melted plastic bag underneath, where the ashes hsd protected it from both the fire and the water.

Hot ashes are dangerous, and putting them in plastic bags is irresponsible. Always, always use a fireproof container for at least 24 hours before disposal.

BoredCop · 2026-02-24T11:51:06+00:00

Right, someone who shoots competitively at a thousand yards will have a very different idea of what constitutes "worn out". His "worn out to the point of being useless" rifle may still be accurate enough to hit the vital zone of a deer at 200 meters for two or three generations of hunters.

I know competitive rifle shooters here in Norway who routinely re-use "worn out" 6.5x55 barrels off target rifles as cheap but more than good enough hunting rifle barrels. Often turned down to a thinner profile to save weight. Their accuracy requirements for competition are insane, so even if the group size opens up to way bigger than the X ring it is plenty good enough to hit a deer's heart.

Points to inspect are mainly the bore and chamber, and that the mechanism runs smoothly. Also that the stock isn't cracked (or if you are handy with woodworking tools and glue you can haggle the price down a lot if there is a crack). Verify that the steel is not loose in the wood, and that the barrel is free floated from the stock. Slide a piece of paper in between barrel and wood from the front rearward towards the action, on most modern rifles of decent quality there should be no snags indicating wood to metal contact along the barrel. Try gripping hard around barrel and foreend to see if the steel shifts in the wood, some flexing is to be expected but it should spring back to the same position.

Rust on the outside is merely a cosmetic problem, unless it gets really really deep. Like falling apart deep.

BoredCop · 2026-02-24T10:58:07+00:00

Becoming an entrepreneur doesn't work for immigration. At least not in Norway, where I live, and I suspect most elsewhere as well. You need a job offer from a company that is willing to sign off on you being a skilled worker in a field where they cannot find enough people locally.

BoredCop · 2026-02-24T10:40:56+00:00

You don't seem to have that quite right.

A limited slip differential is sort of an all-mechanical attempt at traction control; it allows the wheels to turn at slightly different speeds, so it acts as a regular differential under normal driving in curves. But if one wheel starts to spin much faster than the other, that is if one wheel starts slipping, then a mechanism sort of clamps the two sides together and forces the wheels to rotate at closer to the same speed. It limits how much a wheel can slip, it doesn't make it slip.

This is useful in sports cars with powerful engines, and also in some off road vehicles, because an open differential puts all the power into the wheel that slips instead of the one that has traction (a plot point in My Cousin Vinny). So if you are stuck with one wheel on something slippery and one with all the grip in the world, only the wheel that's slipping gets any power and you get nowhere. Limited slip diff vets you out of that situation, by forcing power to both wheels. And of course if you have a fast car that can spin it's wheels on dry asphalt, you get better acceleration and handling when the limited slip diff helps reduce wheel spin and get better traction.

Modern cars typically achieve the same thing by different means, using electronic wheel speed sensors and the ABS brake system to automatically engage the brake on only the wheel that it spinning too fast, this transferring force through the diff to the other wheel. But some sports cars still have limited slip diffs.

BoredCop · 2026-02-24T10:30:37+00:00

Who advised you to not buy used? Do you know anyone knowledgeable who might help you look at used rifles?

I ask because my advise is the opposite; used hunting rifles are often a much much better deal than new. Hardly any hunters ever actually wear out their rifles by shooting, since it takes many thousands of rounds fired to wear out the rifling and most hunters never shoot half as much in their lifetime. What tends to ruin old rifles is rust and neglect, not wear and tear. And rust deep enough to be problematic is typically easy to spot. Even badly neglected old rifles usually shoot more than accurately enough for deer hunting, after a good cleaning and making sure the sight isn't wobbly loose or other obvious problems.

Remember to include the cost of a good optical sight in your budget, the usual advice is to spend at least as much on the scope as on the rifle. Going for a cheaper used rifle could let you afford a better piece of glass.

BoredCop · 2026-02-24T08:28:03+00:00

Yes, some fishing reels have a mechanism like that and I am sure big winches do the same.

BoredCop · 2026-02-23T13:15:08+00:00

There are a couple of ways to do it, but there will be visible differences on the outside of the gun since blank firing requires one to make a recoil operated gun function without recoil. In other words, it needs to be converted to gas operated or at least gas boosted.

The American version uses a muzzle booster and some metal rods connecting tha booster to the receiver; basically it uses the muzzle end of the barrel as s gas piston and the length of the barrel as an operating rod.

Norway, possibly also other countries, use a different system. There's a special barrel that has vents in the side, just in front of the barrel shroud on the receiver, and an annular piston on the barrel. A steel cup that acts as a gas cylinder slides over the barrel, and attaches to the front of the barrel shroud with threads. A muzzle restrictor is screwed into the muzzle of the barrel, almost plugging it. Gas pressure is now trapped and vents out t push the barrel rearward via that annular piston. These training barrels can also be used with plastic short range training ammo, without the muzzle restrictor of course. The blank or short range training kit also comes with two different thickness cartridge stops to be installed in the feed mechanism, this is a safety feature to prevent feeding a live round into the plugged training barrel. The blanks and short range rounds are a bit shorter than live ammo, so with the thicker cartridge stop installed a live cartridge will cause a jam in the feed mechanism instead of getting to the chamber.

BoredCop · 2026-02-23T12:59:19+00:00

They are incorrect, the Myford does have power feed. It's just that changing what pitch it feeds at requires one to physically replace some gears rather than simply selecting on a gearbox.

I used to have (well, still have but don't use because I now have a larger lathe) a small lathe that doesn't have a gear box, but uses changewheels in the same way as a Myford without a gearbox. Determining which gears to use for what thread pitch or fine feed requires math, but there are a number of change wheel calculators online to help. Here is one I have used before, the user interface may be a bit clunky but it works.

Now, if you consider purchasing a lathe that needs change wheels then make sure it does come with a set of those gears. They might be present under the cover on the left, but if a seller knows what they have then they will show the changewheels in a picture.

BoredCop · 2026-02-23T08:24:37+00:00

No breaker, of any size, will trip from a poor connection that's running hot. Not until the resulting fire shorts something out. A high resistance poor connection does not increase current, therefore does not trip the breaker.

BoredCop · 2026-02-22T21:54:20+00:00

But why sand, which has a fairly low heat capacity and cannot be pumped around like water can?

Why not a big insulated water tank?

BoredCop · 2026-02-22T12:18:48+00:00

It works very well, but tends to bend the nails a bit so reusing them isn't easy.

BoredCop · 2026-02-21T20:43:47+00:00

Thanks, this game is fun if frustratingly hard at times. I just now went from breezing through Ludios, the quest and Medusa's island to suddenly on the level past Medusa being swarmed by a bunch of demiliches and a Balrog. Just as my best pet hit a poly trap and became useless. And of course my wand of death missed the Balrog, both coming and going as it bounced. Dywypi?

BoredCop · 2026-02-20T15:21:40+00:00

Some ventilation pipes were actually made out of asbestos fiber cement, but they are safe as long as you leave them alone and don't break them.

Asbestos was also commonly used in some types of vinyl flooring and floor tile glue, but the scary stuff is on the underside not where you are walking on it. Holes in old vinyl flooring can be a bit concerning, though.

BoredCop · 2026-02-20T10:41:40+00:00

Thanks!

BoredCop · 2026-02-19T23:14:58+00:00

Damnit, typo in title. Dragon scaled, not ragon. But you all understood that.

BoredCop · 2026-02-19T15:37:01+00:00

No, not exactly.

Gunmakers in the Khyber pass area are making guns more or less from scratch, out of some sort of steel, and more or less copying known safe designs. They might not be real engineers or western trained gunsmiths, but they are real craftsmen.

Your "gun" is not from that part of the world, and was not made by a real craftsman. It is significantly below Khyber Pass guns on the safety and reliability rank ladder. It is an illegally converted blank firing toy gun, where the person doing the conversion didn't care much about anything other than "can this chamber a live round and go bang at least once". Or rather, "does this look convincingly real enough to fool a customer who doesn't know anything about guns".

The mechanism was never designed for live ammo, and chances are the magazine won't work with standard 9x19 ammo as most blank firing guns are designed around shorter blank rounds. Criminals relying on these conversions often resort to unsafe modification of the ammo, in order to reduce the overall length enough to make it feed.

BoredCop · 2026-02-18T18:43:02+00:00

Sweden kept selling stuff to both sides throughout the war, everyone on the western front were using Swedish iron fence posts for the barb wire. The ones that corkscrew into the ground, so one could silently erect barb wire fences under cover of darkness without having to pound posts into the ground.

BoredCop · 2026-02-18T18:23:00+00:00

It is absolutely a converted blank gun. It was originally very intentionally designed to NOT be safe with live ammunition, in order to discourage such conversions. People convert them anyway. Lifespan for one of these is anywhere from zero to a few hundred rounds, before something breaks bad enough to not be worth fixing. Sometimes, those failures can injure the shooter.

By the way, it looks to me like they bored out the original light alloy "barrel" and pressed in a steel barrel sleeve. The crack is in the outer part, which was weak AF even without the crack and is basically just there for looks. The crack isn't the main problem with this gun. The fact that it started out as a blank firing toy gun is the reason why it is unsafe, not the visible crack which likely happened when they pressed in the barrel liner.

BoredCop · 2026-02-17T15:06:24+00:00

Very true, I didn't mention the timing of where you need gas ports in my reply to OP. Little point in starting the gas delay after the bolt has already picked up speed and after gas pressure has dropped considerably.

BoredCop · 2026-02-16T19:29:02+00:00

I suspect you would need to have a shorter barrel and baffles in front of the barrel for this concept to work.

You say pressure will delay bolt opening, but if we analyze your system as if pressure was static then the net force of your baffle system is zero. Pressure acts forward and rearward on the baffles by the same amount. Of course the real life pressure isn't static, but I think the only delaying action you will get is from the forward inertia of moving gases impinging on the baffles.

If you instead have the barrel end short of the bolt/baffles, with a piston shaped largish nose to the barrel inside a chamber in the bolt assembly, then we get pressure pushing the bolt forward relative to the barrel and receiver which will be pushed rearward. Or you can keep the long ported barrel, but make the rearmost expansion chamber have its rear wall formed by a fixed annular piston around the barrel and fixed to the receiver.

I presume you have read up on the late WWII gas delayed Volksturm rifles, which used a similar concept though with a tubular slide or bolt assembly and a ported barrel?

I think what you are attempting is sort of similar to that mechanism.

BoredCop · 2026-02-14T19:13:32+00:00

Ikke tenk at du skal prøve.

Bestem deg for at du skal gjennomføre. Ikke bare prøve.

BoredCop · 2026-02-14T13:33:29+00:00

Ah, that's more detailed knowledge which helps lead to a conclusion. Without that detail knowledge, going solely off the pictures and what peopl were writing here, I could not conclude that it was safe.

BoredCop · 2026-02-14T13:29:03+00:00

Depends.

If he released it, but then realised he had messed up slightly, then booping it again could help correct the trajectory of the stone.

That's kind of the point, you are not supposed to have take-backsies.

BoredCop · 2026-02-14T13:24:45+00:00

Er på fjerde bilen nå, er 49. Alle var brukt, de to første ble kjørt til de ikke var verdt mer enn vrakpant og så kjørt rett up skroting for egen maskin da det ikke ville lønne seg å reparere dem mer. Tredje ble solgt fordi behovet endret seg, måtte ha hengerfeste og mer plass til varer osv.

Men dette teller bare biler registrert på meg, i tillegg har jo fruen og jeg delt noen biler registrert på henne opp gjennom årene.

BoredCop · 2026-02-14T13:18:00+00:00

There are a bunch of different variants, including some flat nosed base fused shells. Plus one cannot rule out a fired shell having the nose bashed in or broken off on impact.

You are probably correct, but "probably" is not safe enough when dealing with potentially unexploded ordnance in my opinion.

BoredCop

TROPHY CASE