Thanks for that. I too have a couple N95s in my toolkit leftover from dusty jobs. Have been wondering how many times I can reuse them.
Mine have a plastic fixture in the middle:
But I think at 170° the plastic should be okay, and likely a longer time at this temp rather than 30 min at higher temps should be about as effective.
I'll try it on one by itself first, with some foil on the lower shelf just in case it melts. Pretty sure I'd smell melting plastic before there's any danger of combustion.
Had a bit of a scare here yesterday - began getting an occasional whiff of gas in my apartment. I made sure it wasn't from my kitchen, and figured it must be drifting in from the hallway or through the open window.
Five minutes later firemen were banging on everyone's door with a detector, looking for the leak. Turned out it was my neighbor directly across the hall. He had no idea, but they got him out of there and he was fine. Maintenance came and fixed his gas feed, but it was a sobering reminder that there's a risk anywhere there are gas lines. Given my compromised lungs, if it had happened in my apartment it might've killed me.
If you're ever in a gas leak situation, remember that it's lighter than air so it's stronger up high than down by the floor.
If the fumes are powerful, crawling to an exit rather than walking upright could save your life.
And for Heaven's sake don't turn on any lights - a tiny spark inside the switch could set of an explosion.
Back in Spring of '83, I was living in Pompton Lakes, NJ. A reservoir dam broke upstream and the Pompton River slowly rose twelve feet flooding our entire area. I had to dismantle as much of my basement studio as I could and bring it upstairs when the basement began filling. Unfortunately my record collection was already wet and too heavy to carry up - I lost about two thousand albums. But I managed to get my guitars, the tape decks, mixer, and effects rack upstairs before I had to leave.
I shut off the gas & electricity before getting out when the tailpipe of my car was still just barely above the rising waters. Eventually the whole neighborhood was under three feet of water and we had to evacuate for more than a week. A few days later we heard on a news broadcast that a house on our block had been destroyed. They didn't say which one but the word was it had been blue. Ours was blue, one of only two blue houses on that block.
Ten days later when the National Guard began letting residents back into the area, I drove as close to our street as I could get and borrowed a rowboat to go over and check on the house. It was still there, mostly intact. Luckily it was up on a three foot foundation and the high water mark was just below our livingroom floor. The basement was entirely filled with oily water and mud. Opening the door from our seemingly-normal kitchen to the basement was like stepping into the Twilight Zone - there was only black water, looking exactly like a shiny floor. It was as if the stairs had vanished.
Anyway, our neighbor three houses up had had neglected to (or hadn't known to) turn off his gas & electric feeds. The house had slowly filled with gas from the furnace pilot underwater, and a thermostat or the fridge had provided a spark to ignite it. The explosion didn't just blow out the windows; the entire house was just
gone. All that was left where there had been a home was foundation & flat bare floor. And, right where the livingroom had been, a circle of carpeting with an armchair in the center of it, completely undisturbed. Totally surreal. Must've been an eddy in the gas in that spot. The only other thing remaining was a bathtub on the outside of the foundation, hanging by a piece of pipe it was still attached to.
Must've been quite a blast. The windows on that end of our house (about fifty yards from the explosion, with two houses in between) were all smashed from the concussion. Later on when cleaning the toxic sludge out of our swimming pool I found several bricks painted blue on one side.
