In article , Paul Drahn
wrote:

On 12/22/2014 10:12 PM, Don Foreman wrote:
A few on this forum have said that they've liked reading my
occasional scribbles. This is for y'all old metalworking buds;
enjoy!
---
The lazy, careless paper carrier "delivered" my paper near but not on
my front stoop again this morning. It was in a plastic bag, but it
was raining and the bag wasn't completely closed so a corner of the
paper got wet. Guess what carrier ain't gettin' any Xmas tip from
me?

OK, thought I, I'll dry it out in the microwave. I've done that with
wet paperback books before. They're not pretty when done because the
pages get wrinkly and swell and the steam doesn't do the spine
binding adhesive any good, but it does dry the pages so they're
readable. Microwaves heat water, but not paper. It can't get hotter
than the boiling point of water, and when the water is boiled off then
no further heating occurs. That's what's supposed to happen and what
has always worked in the past.

I started it going, then repaired to the bathroom with a book -- not
my newspaper because my newspaper was in the microwave getting dried
out so I could read it later. Not my first choice, but I can adapt.

While sitting on the throne reading my book, by and by I heard a
"whump". Whump? Uh oh. I live alone so I notice whumps. I
wondered if there was a problem in the kitchen. I scurried to the
kitchen as quickly as I could without leaving a trail down the hall,
jammies at half mast. Woulda made a hell of a video.

I found the door of the microwave had opened, possibly due to the
bonfire within. The interior of the microwave was filled with orange
flame. The best eagle scout in the State couldn't have gotten a wet
newspaper burning like that.

"Oh, golly", I thought; "I need to do something about this."

I have ABC nitrogen-charged dry powder fire extinguishers handy, but
they make a hell of a mess. I was standing right by the kitchen
sink, and there was a glass on the counter. I filled the glass half
full of water, used that to fill my mouth and both cheeks. Face
cheeks, that is. Then I went to the nearby microwave and blew while
slapping both cheeks, producing a wet spray like the wettest sneeze
you can imagine. The flames were instantly snuffed. One more dose
of that and the ashes weren't even smoking or smoldering, that fire
was OUT. I removed the glass rotating carousel plate from the oven
with a hot pad, deposited the wet black mess in the sink and sprayed
it with the sink sprayer just to be double-sure.

Catastrophe averted! Next urgent task was to open doors and windows
and set up some fans to clear the rather acrid, choking, eye-stinging
smoke. The smoke alarms didn't "get it" until I had things well under
control but they sure made a racket after that for a little while. I'd
say good thing it was unseasonably warm today, but then I wouldn't
have had a wet paper if it was cold enough to snow rather than rain.
After ventilating for awhile I went thru the house with Atmosclear and
some other odor-eating aerosol. They helped, but it still smells a
little like a summer campground in my house. Perhaps I should cook
some bacon, or garlic, or both.

I bought that microwave in 1998 so it didn't owe me anything though it
was still working just fine. I tried it to see if it would still
work. It didn't. No matter, it was damaged far beyond cleanup.

So what happened? My friend Vicki says that someone told her today
that newspaper is now made from recycled paper that has metal in it.
That could explain it, I guess.

I went to Wally's and got a new monkeywave today, very similar to the
late and lamented that is now bagged and tagged to be recycled -- and
(METAL CONTENT) I now have an MOT (microwave oven transformer) under
my workbench that may become a spot welder or who knows whut?

Meanwhile, I'm playing with the notion of making a very simple
induction heater for annealing the necks of rifle brass. I don't
have to make sense, I'm RETIRED!

Love reading your posts, Don. Keep the coming!

Actually the steam will continue to get hotter and hotter from the
microwaves. They operate on the water molecule and don't care where the
molecule is. Microwaves have fans to remove some of the steam, but are
pretty small.

Actually, not quite true. Ice is far less lossy than liquid water,
because freezing pins the molecules in place. In the vapor the
molecules are free to rotate, but the density is about 1/800 as much as
for the liquid.

The dielectric constant of ice is about 3.2, of water is about 80, and
of steam at atmospheric pressure is about unity.

Joe Gwinn