Thanks for the "DIY cockups", much fun

Reminded me of the time years ago when Evo-Stik was the "No More Nails" of the day. My Dad laid new floor tiles in the kitchen with it, enclosed space, no ventilation. We found him outside, lying down pointing at grass and giggling.

It was simple back then, if it needed sticking then use Evo-Stik (later Araldite), if it needed cleaning or setting fire to, then "trike" was the answer. Before we knew it was dangerous, obviously.

Reply to
Mentalguy2k8
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When I was a child, a friend of my grandmother was having formica fitted to the kitchen worktops with evostick. They had overlooked the pilot light in the boiler, and the whole kitchen went up in flames whilst waiting for it to dry to use as a contact glue.

Evostick used to work very well back then, when it was toluene based. Never worked as well since toluene was banned.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

Seriously dangerous stuff. In the 70's a colleague of mine (PhD chemist) did something similar, except that it was the cooker pilot light. Then picked up the open tin with bare hands to try to get it out of the house. Wound up in Frenchay for serious skin grafts (fortunately recovered).

Reply to
newshound

Pah. One of the colleagues used to do chromatography in hot toluene. The building used to smell ... interesting.

Reply to
Huge

Way back in the late 60s, I was on a training placement at Eggborough power station. On one occasion I was pointed towards the three enormous power terminals in the bottom of the stator casing, which were still covered in remains of the jointing compound. I was simply given a bundle of rags and a can of trike and left to it. I wondered why I was getting a little light-headed.

Some years later, when fitting acoustic ceiling tiles in a smallish kitchen, I didn't fully appreciate exactly how strong the fumes from the blobs of adhesive actually were, but at least I realised before I fell off my stepladder.

Chris

Reply to
Chris J Dixon

Some years ago I "built" a sailing cruiser, actually it was like a very large Aero kit. During the process I had to line the cabin with foam backed vinyl using Evostic as the adhesive. I kept going into the cockpit to see if there was alcohol around! an enjoyable experience.

Reply to
Broadback

My father bought some of them new fangled polystyrene tiles for the kitchen ceiling. Took him ages to remove loose paint off the ceiling and then spread evostick over the whole area. As he fixed the last tile, he looked over his shoulder to see the first row dripping onto the floor. Us kids had a good laugh and pissed off out for the rest of the day.

Reply to
Eric

On Wednesday 15 May 2013 16:34 Eric wrote in uk.d-i-y:

I never did understand what the attraction of flammable tiles were in a kitchen though...

Reply to
Tim Watts

A house near here had a kitchen fire. They'd painted the polystyrene tiles with gloss paint. As I was helping the woman out of the kitchen a flaming tile landed on my left shoulder and stuck to my jumper. I lost a bit of hair on that side but was OK otherwise apart from a tiny scar/mark I have on my ear. Nasty though.

Bill

Reply to
Bill Wright

No H&S back then. Most homes had flammable furniture, parafin heaters, several smokers, coal fires, unswept chimneys, nylon bedding, ascot gas heaters that were never maintained, asbestos pipes. People faced death all day long !

Reply to
Eric

It's great to read how other people can be as stupid as oneself :)

Reply to
Gib Bogle

That probably explains why there are ~40% less call outs to fires these days. It would be 50% less if it wasn't for part P encouraging the use of plug in multiway extensions.

Reply to
dennis

My dad fitted proper plasterboard coving to our living room. Applied the adhesive as per spec., it stayed up for an hour or so and then there was the repeated crash as lengths of coving fell off one by one. Next time, twice as much adhesive and all was well.

OIddly enough, it said to cut the mitred corners by hand with a tenon saw. After the first swear-ridden attempt he got the jig-saw out and it worked no problem.

Reply to
Halmyre

My problem was not being completely scrupulous when cleaning out all traces of the previous mix when preparing the plaster I used to stick some coving up. It went off in the time it took me to lift the coving and offer it up to the ceiling. Once learned...

Chris

Reply to
Chris J Dixon

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