SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20200119-CE97B-2147375333. Severity: Incident, No Injury. Product: Ronson Ronson Tech Torch. Incident: I was tinning and soldering some wires for my car stereo project. I needed a different gauge wire for the next step so I turned torch off and set it on my work table to get some wires from my cabinet behind me. When the turned around to continue my work, the torch was still on. I just taught and said to myself that maybe I didn't turn it off and left it at that. Approximately two or three months after that incident, I was using the torch on some heat shrink tubing and something worse happened. As I was using the torch as a heat blower to shrink some tubing, my phone rang. Again, I turned the Ronson Torch off and set it on my work table. I went to our living room to answer my cell. After hanging up, I headed back to my work table. I was maybe 10 feet away when I noticed that the torch was still on. And at that exact moment, I heard a sound that resembles something like a combination of air coming out when you get a puncture in your tire and water heater being turned on. And then a big ball of flame (approx 2 feet) which knocked down the torch which also fell on the floor still lit. But this time, the flame was coming inside the torch body. And you can tell the flame was pressurized. Since it was burning on a concrete floor with nothing flammable around it, I didn't even bother trying to put it out. I figured it will soon extinguish by itself when the butane runs out, which it did. I could not have been on the phone that long (10 -15 min). And even if I was on the phone longer than that, the torch should not have exploded like that and it should have turned off and release th