Learnt very early when I put down a drill as it spun down onto a dust sheet - which it promptly snatched up.
Safety guards or not - I wait until handheld power tools have stopped moving before putting them down.
Just after leaving school, the CB radio craze was just starting off. I had to have one and I got one for my 16th birthday, a binatone, which ran off a 12V powerpack, which I couldn't afford so I had it attatched to a car battery in the corner of my bedroom, which I used to charge up periodically. One day i read that car batteries gave off hydrogen gas whilst being charged....'hydrogen' I thought, 'burns with a squeaky pop' as I remembered my chemistry lessons. Except the chemistry lessons only used a test-tube full of hydrogen. I landed on the other side of the room, which needed re-decorating, given that the doors, skirtings and all other glossed surfaces had thousands of bubbles in them where the acid had burnt into the paint. My clothes fell off me in shreds, the carpet had a hole in it 2ft across and there were fragments of plastic battery casing turning up months later. The curtains seemed fine, until they were washed a few weeks later and they resembled string vests, all in all, not a very successful experiment, and I'll never forget going to bed that night thinking, 'squeaky pop? - my arse'
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember The Natural Philosopher saying something like:
Back in the days of steel-framed fish tanks I was metal brushing one with a rotary steel wire brush in an old B&D. It slipped under pressure and grabbed onto my jeans, ripping the right leg apart as it slowed. Luckily there was no skin contact.
Good idea.
It's as if god's saving me for something even more painful than what he's already thrown at me, knowing my luck I'll probably fall into an industrial blender at some point in the future, only to be recovered in the nick of time, be put into the back of an ambulance that bursts into flames on the way to hospital, and then crashes into an acid tanker.
Still, it'll be summat to tell me grandkids.
Not DIY, but when I was about seven (or younger) I liked playing with electrics (!). I decided to pull the plug of the electric fire out of the big round pin socket - while it was on.
Yes - DC mains. Big arc. Set fire to newspaper and armchair nearby. Sat outside on someone's lap and marvelled at the fire engine...luckily.
One my old boss told me about, when he was a youngster:
He needed 1200V DC in a physics experiment to energise a detector. He managed to get hold of a dozen 100V wet cells, and was in the process of wiring them up in series...
...fortunately he had only wired 3 of them together when he touched both terminals simultaneously.
When he felt better, he started again, this time including a high- value resistor between each cell.
After my mishap she told me I should never pick one UP till it's stopped ... ;-)
Cheers Richard
Best I can offer is doing woodwork in school. I stuck a chisel into the end of my finger while using it as a nail remover (having ignored the teacher's instruction of NEVER using a chisel as a nail remover).
When looking at Swiss army knives prior to purchase I tugged open the large blade and promptly sliced open the end of a finger. I bought it anyway. Some time later I lent it to a chap who was using it to cut plastic tie-wraps holding advertising panels to a wire fence. "Careful, it's really sharp!", I warned him. Next thing I knew he was off to hospital to have his blood-soaked hand stitched up...
I did something similar, leaving a big spanner on the flat top of a battery while I turned a car engine over; big mistake. Huge bang, battery vanished except for the bottom 2 inches holding the remaining steaming acid and the terminals attached to the cables. The spanner was some 20 or 30 feet up the street.
A relative was clearing a garage in the 1970s. The usual assorted tins of dried up paint, boxes of rusty nails, cans of oil, ancient rusty tools, random bits of wood and metal, old doors etc., went into a skip. One oil soaked cardboard box was scooped up, the bottom fell out of it and 3 WW2 hand grenades bounced across the floor. He left the building rapidly. They were live but apparently not primed. They still show up occasionally.
With the whipping about and the amount of gas that 4 bar could release would it have stayed alight?
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Phil L" saying something like:
Not to me, but the foreman of a neighbouring engineering works... They had a dreadful old propane powered lift truck which never started on a cold morning - the batteries were shagged and the tight buggers wouldn't spend any money on it, so every morning the foreman jump started it with a welding set. See where this is going?
One morning I needed to borrow it and it wouldn't start, as usual, so I nipped back to our workshop to gather up a jump battery and some leads. While I was gone, the foreman came out and did his usual party piece, but this time the battery went 'POP' and showered him and bystanders with acid and bits of battery casing. Amazingly, not a drop of acid or any debris went in his face. His clothes were ruined, though.
Stupid bastard; I told him that would happen.
Cutting a hole in plasterboard for a new double socket. Knife in right hand, cutting horizontally from top left, left hand steadying the plaster board. Knife slipped. Cut across top of index and third fingers. Index finger entry point at base of nail, exit half thickness of finger the otherside, cut just below the pad and down to the bone. Third finger not so bad, entry at half thickness of finger, exit just as the finger rounds to the side at the first joint.
9 stitches in the index finger, 4 in the third. I do like our cottage hospital, was home stitched and bandaged less than 2hrs after the incident. This was just before The Lad was due to appear on the scene, he is now nearly 11 and I still don't have proper feeling in the top of my index finger. Curiously it's only touch/pain that is missing, hot/cold still works. The "numb" patch on the side of the 3rd finger has almost gone now.
Ah this reminds me of an incident a long while back on "Songs of Praise". Lighting power coming from a large mobile generator, probably in the 100 to 500kW range. Now the Engineering Manager (bod in charge of the Outside Broadcast) always used a particular generator owner/driver, as the "price was right". This generator owner/driver was more of a showman than broadcast. The main terminals where open and at the back of the truck, a spanner fell across them, generator opens its throttle to cope with the "load", eventually the spanner melts. Now this is a showmans type generator, regulation is a little lacking. In the abscence of the "load" the volts sky rocket and most of the lamps in the church blow...
Being 16, I pulled off an amazing coup, I acted daft and simply said I'd connected the black an red wires from the CB as normal after charging, there was a spark and the next thing I new it went 'boom', when in reality I'd used a lighter.
I did get battery acid in my face, but apart from the revolting taste, no injuries or other damage, although my ears weren't in the best of health for a few days, the bastard went with a hell of a bang.
Unsurprisingly, I haven't tried it since.
I've got to say though, this is over a span of thirty years, I'm 45 now and i first started in the year before i left school, weekends, holidays etc
I have no idea, just glad I did not find out! (the hose was a bit charred - but only the outside layer, it may well have taken quite a while to burn right thorough)
Similar feeling on the end of my nose now... loft ladder not fixed properly, opened hatch, loft ladder slipped down and sliced end of my nose off.
Amazing amount of blood :-) SWMBO finally got the new carpet she wanted (and new floorboards!).
Turning up at casualty with a comedy injury at 7 am on a sunday makes you a source of entertainment I discovered - staff at the end of a long and difficult shift :-) I can still remember the laughing as they started to glue it back together "this might sting a little, try not to breath in the fumes as I stuff it up your nose"
Sting a little???? Jeeeeeez.....
While I'm at it, beware of rose thorns:
Something to do with a particular bacteria that lives on roses in the gunge from aphids. Took months and several ops to recover from that. He still has a very odd shaped finger :)
Oh, and he hasn't got any roses any more :-)
Darren - no powertool related stories though I'm afraid
Bugger! I didn't know that. My mother used to tell of a cousin who pricked her finger on a rose thorn and got an infection. Unfortunately, this was pre-antibiotics, so she died. We seem to be entering a post-antibiotic world.
Job for week-end; spray roses. With petrol. Then light.
I think (I can't remember for sure) that the original problem is actually fungal.
That photo is after the first of several ops to cut out the infected/dead stuff. Seemed to be a case of cutting back to good and then trying to fill in the gaps.
Reminds me, need to sort out wooden window frame with some rot in (ob diy)
Heh, that probably cures the aphid problem as well
Darren
Many moons ago, I was adding a ring to an old Revo box, where the negative rail was almost hidden down the back. Whilst struggling to fiddle the wires into the hole, I inadvertently switched the mains back on !*!*!*!
As I learnt how it felt to be an electric fire, my reaction was amazingly calm thinking, 'Fuck me, I've really done it this time !' Fortunately, the only damage I was left with was a bleeding hand, where it got grazed on the way out. In fact I was quite proud of myself, because having nailed a bit of wood into the floor to lock the switch off, I immediately got on with finishing the job.
Certainly made me more safety conscious though.
Andy C
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