Fire Proof

Can Lithium-ion batteries really catch fire? A friend of mine proved it beyond a doubt.

I’ve never liked the idea of knock-off, counterfeit or no-name tool batteries. Inexpensive, but underpowered and just not as efficient as originals, knock-off batteries can be downright dangerous according to the Power Tool Institute. Literally bursting into flames or even exploding is not unheard of.

A couple years ago, I gave some older tools to a neighbor. Not junk, but redundant tools I just didn’t need, among them a fine Black & Decker 20-volt drill/driver. Earlier this month he called to tell me that the drill I gave him caught on fire. Alarmed, I headed over to his house to check it out.

He showed me the remains of the drill, and it was a mess. He was doing an ordinary task – using a round wire-brush attachment to remove accumulated rust from a grill he was winterizing. That’ll make any battery warm up under the constant load.

But knock-off batteries don’t always have (almost never have, really) the same circuitry that the original manufacturers include in theirs, and so the way they handle heat and stress is very different. Usually, the result is excessive heat – really excessive heat.

In his case, the heat just kept ramping up as he worked. He was wearing gloves and so didn’t feel the heat at first. He did notice a smell but wrote it off as being caused by the wire brush as it spun against the metal. At about the same time that metallic smell changed to the wonderful aroma of hot plastic, he felt the heat through his glove. Looking at the drill, he saw that the plastic on the bottom of the handle was deforming and smoke was wafting out.

He yanked the battery out and tossed it into the bucket of water he was using to clean the grill. The cordless drill was still soft and scorched – its useful life over – but the danger was past. Examining the battery I immediately saw it wasn’t the original I gave him with the drill, but a cheap knockoff he got on Amazon for about 15 bucks.

A lot of reports of tool danger are anecdotal; we read about them happening to other people. In this case, I saw the results myself. I was always a believer in the inherent danger in counterfeit batteries, but now I’m surer than ever. I will never use one, and you shouldn’t either.