...but not quite, since it is about a boat.
Posted as a postscript to a message on uk.rec.engines.stationary and
worth repeating.
David Mack
> Read the Instructions!
>
>
> A friend of mine once built a canoe. He spent a long time on it and
> it was a work of art. Almost the final phase was to fill both ends
> with polyurethane expanding foam. He duly ordered the bits from Mr
> Glasplies (an excellent purveyor of all things fibreglass) and it
> arrived in two packs covered with appropriately dire warnings about
> expansion ratios and some very good notes on how to use it.
>
>
>
> Unfortunately he had a degree, worse still two of them. One
> was in Chemistry, so the instructions got thrown away and the
> other in something mathematical because in a few minutes he
> was merrily calculating the volume of his craft to many
> decimal places and the guidelines got binned as well.
> He propped the canoe up on one end, got a huge tin, carefully
> measured the calculated amounts of glop, mixed them and
> quickly poured the mixture in the end of the canoe (The twin
> pack expands very rapidly).
>
>
>
> I arrived as he was completing this and I looked in to see
> the end chamber over half full of something Cawdors Witches
> would have been proud of. Two thing occurred to me, one was
> the label which said in big letters:
> "Caution - expansion ration 50:1" (or something similar) and
> the other that the now empty tins said "approximately enough
> for 20 small craft". Any comment was drowned out by a sea of
> yellow brown foam suddenly pouring out of the middle of the
> canoe and the end of the canoe bursting open. My friend
> screamed and leapt at his pride and joy that was knocked to
> the ground as he started trying to bale handfuls of this
> stuff out with his hands. Knocking the craft over allowed the
> still liquid and not yet fully expanded foam to flow to the
> other end of the canoe where it expanded and shattered that
> end as well. A few seconds later and we had a canoe with two
> exploded ends, a mountain of solid foam about 4ft high
> growing out of the middle, and a chemist firmly embedded up
> to his armpits in it.
>
>
>
> Round about this time he discovered the reaction was
> exothermic and his hands and arms were getting very hot
> indeed. Running about in small circles in a confined space
> while glued to the remains of a fairly large canoe proved
> ineffective so he resorted to screaming a bit instead.
> Fortunately a Kukri was to hand so I attacked the foam around
> his hands with some enthusiasm. The process was hindered by
> the noise he was making and the fact he was trying to escape
> while still attached to the canoe.
>
>
>
> Eventually I managed to hack out a lump of foam still
> including most of his arms and hands. Unfortunately my tears
> of laughter were not helping as they accelerated the foam
> setting. Seeking medical help was obviously out of the
> embarrassment of having to explain his occupation (Chief
> Research Chemist at a major petrochemical organisation) would
> simply never have been lived down.
> Several hours and much acrimony later we had removed
> sufficient foam (and much hair) to allow him to move again.
> However he still looked something like a failed audition for
> Quasimodo with red burns on his arms and expanded blobs of
> foam sticking everywhere. My comment that the scalding simply
> made the hairs the foam was sticking to come out easier was
> not met with the enthusiasm I felt it deserved.
>
>
>
> I forgot to add that in retrospect rather unwisely he had set
> out to do this deed in the hallway of his house, it being the
> only place with sufficient headroom for the canoe, achieved
> by poking it up the stairwell.
>
>
>
> Having extricated him we now were faced with the problem of a
> canoe construction kit embedded in a still gurgling block of
> foam which was now irrevocably bonded to the hall and stairs
> carpet as well as several banister rails and quite a lot of
> wallpaper. At this point his wife and her mother came back
> from shopping......Oh yes - and he had been wearing the
> pullover Mum in law had knitted him for his birthday the week before.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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