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Priest in balloon is blown to ocean
Priest Visits boss
Off to heaven
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(DA)Intravenous Birdseed Man
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ice diving instructor misses hole
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A "Hot" Idea.
Guns are not effective bee killers
In over his head...
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Beer, baseball, and an escalator
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Groin ... groin ... gone
toasted Grenade
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no through road my ass
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man falls into mt st helens
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See how fast I can go!
Jumping From Bridge To Train
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Now promoted to higher position
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Man killed by 11,000 volts
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Reach out and touch a tree
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Detonator's Radio
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Darwin Awards
2008 Slush Pile

This item was recently submitted by a reader.
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A "Hot" Idea.

2008 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance

I'm not quite sure when this happened, but I figure it was sometime around 1988 or 89. The incident stood the chance to cause a great deal of trouble for my late father's company, and was a perfect example of stupidity at work.

The setting: A well known chainsaw production company.

The problem: Saw parts which had been mispainted.

The solution: A huge oven designed to burn the paint off.

Sounds simple right? Just take the parts, load them into a bin and slip them in this oven. The flames will burn off the paint, and then when everything cools down, you've got recycled parts. The engineers were quite proud of this, as were the management team and everyone up the chain. So the oven was purchased, with the company shelling out several hundred thousand dollars to have a special concrete plinth made for it, gas lines run, and an awning placed over it. To make everything easier, it was located just adjacent to the building. After a few test runs on minor things, the company was ready for the first run!

A large basket, containing around a ton of badly painted parts, was loaded into the oven by a forklift. The door was sealed and the button pressed. For the first minute or two everything was fine. However someone noticed that the temperature had begun to rise exponentially. Something wasn't right. Turning off the gas, they expected the temperature to lower, but no, it didn't. Further it rose, the oven getting hotter and hotter. Those gathered about it quickly beat a hasty retreat as the outside of the oven slowly began to glow a cherry red. That red then turned to a deep orange, and in places a bright white. The fire department was called out, and try as they might the fire couldn't be put out. Panic set in and they gave up on the oven opting to save the building. Paint had begun to blister and scorch away, and in some places the metal of the building had began to melt. Yes...melt.

It took three days for the oven to finally cool down enough that they could reopen it. Though by then it took cutting torches to do so. The door having been welded shut in the process from the heat. So what caused it? My father knew right away. It was simple really. The parts were made of magnesium. Now of all the metals out there, Magnesium is a great one to use for chainsaw parts. For one it's quite hard, and at the same time very light. However there's one draw back. Magnesium burns, and it burns quite hotly.

You'd think, on some level, the engineers would have considered that before building an oven to burn the paint off the parts with, yet apparently that thought had never crossed their minds.

Submitted on 04/14/2008

Submitted by: Chad
Reference: Personal Account:

Copyright © 2008 DarwinAwards.com

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Bruce said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
I had to think about this one for a little while since there didn't seem to be any self-selection involved here. But if the oven had blown up or the building burned down it sounds like the only people who might have gotten hurt would have been the engineers who should have known better. I also have to wonder just how knowledgeable these engineers really were since heating metal to these extremes can cause the metal to become brittle, which is a condition that probably wouldn't be suitable for chainsaws. Thanks, Chad!

Chip said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
Funny story, Chad! Thanks.

Darwin Awards II: Unnatural Selection

Hardback. 240 pages. Autographed.
$15
A fresh collection of magnificent misadventures! Lust, Vanity, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Envy, and Wrath extract an evolutionary toll on the wicked. Salute the owner of an equipment training school who demonstrates the dangers of driving a forklift by failing to survive the filming of his own safety video. Witness the man who becomes a victim of his own strange passion for jumping into rivers. Heed the honest bricklayer who loses a battle of wits with 300 pounds of tools.

This book includes more History of the Awards, Gordon's Law, and 10 discussions of evolution, including speciation and the role of verbal memes in civilization.

Autographed by Author!

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