And Dyer Lytle thus wrote:
>=20
> but I'm chicken of grinding and producing heat with magnesium since I
> have no idea how to extinguish a magnesium fire.  CO2 extinguisher I =
guess)

No I don't think a CO2 extinguisher will work on magnesium. You need
a Class D - burning metals extinguisher.
I _KNOW_ a CO2 extinguisher won't put out an aluminum fire, as I tried this, 
and it didn't work very well. We did contain the fire until it burned out
without burning down the high school. I thought the comment by the fire marshal
was interesting. He looked at the aftermath, and the stuff we had to fight the 
fire, and commented that what he would have done in the same situation
was "Pull the fire alarm on my way out of the building!". Of course we were
too dumb to know this, and motivated to try to minimize the doo-doo 
we were already in.

NOTE: The cheapest Class D extingusher is a bucket of _DRY_ sand big enough
     to cover, and smother the fire. This works for small fire on the
    ground. NEVER try to put out a burning jet fighter this way;-)

Bill Crick
76 Type II/VI/VII
Ottawa Canada

PS: Phone call to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Board from some 
   Soviet Nuclear officials from near Chernobyl 
  ->"Do you know anything about how to put out a large graphite fire?" 
 was apparently the first hint to the outside world that Chernobyl 
had blown up! A neighbor of mine took the call 8-0!!!!