Crayons will smoke like anything...

if they fall into a duct boot on the front of a stove!

Cut a register into the floor about a month ago directly over the stove about a month ago, had a couple duct boots with duct to draw the hot air from the blower outlet up to it. Working well to get more heat in the living area. One of the kids dropped a crayon down the register today, and it happened to go right down the duct also. WOW what a lot of smoke from one small crayon.

Anyone have any good ideas on how to get the wax off the stove? It's mainly on top of the loading door frame. Smoke has stopped but there is still a significant residue.

Will be putting some hardware cloth somewhere, either on the backside of the grate or on the tops of the ducts, to stop it happening again.

I dunno~! .... I know to get crayon or wax out of clothing you put a brown paper bag on it & iron it, , repeat & repeat until wax is gone. Can you get a piece of brown paper bag onto the wax? If not... more heat! Just vaporize it....propane torch....give it to 'er!

A couple of times we had crayons go through the clothes dryer, and they left a lot of color on the inside of the drum. We set the dryer to hot and ran empty it for a few minutes, then used old rags to wipe off the softened wax. So if it's a hot surface and you can reach it with a rag ....

agcowvet wrote:Will be putting some hardware cloth somewhere, either on the backside of the grate or on the tops of the ducts, to stop it happening again.

Good! Good! That will help develop the kids' ingenuity! Poke 'em through end-first next time, kids.

We had slim table knives when the boys were young, and they discovered a knife would just slip through the kitchen sink drains. Eventually the drain stopped draining, and the trap was clear so it was plain that the clog was above the trap. Everything under the sink was one big maze of cemented PVC, so I took my hacksaw and cut the pipe above the trap. Surprise! I hit metal almost immediately and had to saw through about six of them.

Ha! Sounds like a kid in the scenario! Funny, I just saw Crayola mozzarella string cheese snacks at the store yesterday. I might suggest lacquer thinner and a lot of rags but not if the ducts are hot! Maybe put some kitty litter on the area and work it in with a rag, shop vac handy?

When I was a toddler I flushed a potato down the toilet, it overflowed. Plumber came and pulled it out, boy was I scared.

Dann757 wrote: I might suggest lacquer thinner and a lot of rags but not if the ducts are hot!

Would probably work but please don't use solvents while the stove is burning, vapors will make a big boom.

Not sure how you would apply this here but I was able to remove wax from a carpet by boiling some hot water, ladled it onto the wax and sucked it up with a wet/dry vac.

There was some residue left at the end and I used some detergent and a scrubber along with the hot water.

Might be the same procedure to remove gum from carpet: Freeze spray, then remove the pieces.

Denatured alcohol and a wire brush should do the trick. I'm not 100% positive but that can usually clean anything . You can also try wd40 and a wire brush then cloth. If you read the back of WD it can also be used to remove residue of certain sorts.

I read this quick and thought someone was trying to smoke crayons!

Damn! Carry on ...

A few years ago we had a strange melting plastic smell coming from the small circulator stove in the library. We thought one of the kids must have dropped a small toy or something down in between the outer cabinet and cast iron. I stood over the stove for what seemed like forever pointing a flashlight down from the top and couldn't see anything. A day or two later after spending all the time looking down into the stove, I noticed something on the outside of the stove...turns out that one of the younger kids (no one admitted it) colored the side of the stove with a crayon The stove was hot so it was easy to wipe it off the ceramic coated metal and the smell immediately went away.

Maybe you will get lucky and be able to simply wipe it off like we did.

rockwood wrote:...turns out that one of the younger kids (no one admitted it) colored the side of the stove with a crayon

That's an easy one, it was the kid laughing and pointing at you when you were looking into the stove.

You're probably right

SMITTY wrote:I read this quick and thought someone was trying to smoke crayons!

Damn! Carry on ...

I swear we musta been separated at birth. (I think I remember an announcement at Woodstock; "Don't smoke the purple crayons.")

Used a wood scraper to remove most of it, will try for the last with some solvent and a rag following Spring shutdown. Thanks for the ideas.

HA I don't think you'd want to smoke this particular brand of crayons, they might be non-toxic to eat but the smoke is pretty noxious