Safety Reminder

[stillp]

Where did I read about someone Waxoyling his car in the winter. The Waxoyl wasn't flowing very well so he thought he'd warm it up a bit... with a welding torch!

The explosion and fire destroyed his car, garage, and part of his house.

 

Pete

[john.r.davies]

So many stories of near disaster, and death. Reminders not to set fire to ourselves. All bleeding obvious, yet accompanied by apologies for H&S bossyness. Roger and anyone else in the trade will know that young engineers are trained to ALWAyS use their PPE (Personal Protection Equipment) and to do a routine Risk Assessment before every task.

I mean barrier cream on the hands, vinyl gloves or heavy leather, eye protection, as routine not just remembering not to be foolhardy with sharp or heavy things, or careless with the inflammable. And a bit less apologetic about it.

 

Let's be more careful out there (in the garage)!

 

John

Edited January 12, 2016 by john.r.davies

[Paul Down]

A good friend had drained a cars fuel tank in his pit without incident and removed the can of petrol to a safe place. On re-entering the pit his hob nailed safety boots must have hit something metal and caused a spark as he was engulfed in flames. and suffered quite serious burns. The petrol vapour must have collected in the pit while draining the tank. One reason I would never have a pit. Another is that living on the Pennines it would no doubt always be half full of water.

[Peter Cobbold]

No pit here either.

I wonder what do they do about petrol vapour in the bilges of boats? are there petrol vapour sensors?

My garage is completely sealed - tanked against water all round- and petrol smell is pronounced upon opening the door.

Often wondered what a flammable mixture smells like....

Peter

[RogerH]

Reading John's post above; one thing I do without question is eye protection.

Angle grinders, sanding discs, turning on the lathe etc - eye protection.

 

Apart from loosing the sight in an eye(s) it is bloody painful just getting the smallest bit of grit in there.

 

Roger

[RogerH]

Hi Peter,

not sure what a flammable mixture smells like but I do know what it sounds like - WOOF.

 

Roger

[AlanT]

The young Hong-Kong Chinese girl, my GP's locum, looked at my sore eye and said.

 

"Could you have a piece of metal in it?" followed by "Would you like me to take it out?".

 

She did this while holding up a large Hypodermic needle. She was serious and it did work.

Edited January 12, 2016 by AlanT

[Peter Cobbold]

1.4% by volume apparently:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline#Flammability

""If the concentration is below 1.4%, the air-gasoline mixture is too lean and does not ignite. If the concentration is above 7.6%, the mixture is too rich and also does not ignite "

So evaporate 14ml in a litre bottle - and sniff.

makes a change from glue sniffing

Peter

[littlejim]

Hi Peter,

not sure what a flammable mixture smells like but I do know what it sounds like - WOOF.

 

Roger

Recall an aircraft incident where alcohol was being used as the cleaning solvent and getting spilt, and on to clothes etc.

Bod involved had to change tools so unplugged first one from extension cord to plug in new one. Small unnoticed spark, then shortly thereafter noticed pants and legs were burning.

The alcohol flame didn't have enough colour in it for him to realise that a fire had started.

T

[McMuttley]

Not TR related, but in my early teens I was sitting in bed and decided to take the bedside lamp apart (as you do). Of course I used a knife as a screwdriver. I had managed to get the wires out of the base and noticed it was still plugged in, so thought I would see what would happen if i touched the knife that I had in my left hand with the wires that I held in my right. In a huge flash of sparks dropped everything on my lap. Life probably saved only by the fact that the knife had a wooden handle with just small metal screws running through - and the fact that the dancing live wires dropped on the blanket covering my legs.

 

Not much better with gas either, but that another story (about a new kitchen unit a hacksaw, lots of hissing noises and and angry man from the gas board).

Edited January 13, 2016 by McMuttley

[Peter Cobbold]

Recall an aircraft incident where alcohol was being used as the cleaning solvent and getting spilt, and on to clothes etc.

Bod involved had to change tools so unplugged first one from extension cord to plug in new one. Small unnoticed spark, then shortly thereafter noticed pants and legs were burning.

The alcohol flame didn't have enough colour in it for him to realise that a fire had started.

 

That invisible flame is why vintage race cars wear a orange flourescent disc alongside the fuel filler - to alert the marshals.

The vapour over the fuel in the tank is highly flammable at room temperature compared with petrol, so a tiny spark is all it takes, even static.

Peter

Edited January 13, 2016 by Peter Cobbold

[john.r.davies]

Static? You want static sparks? Watch just before the water bucket hits the reservoir:

 

 

 

 

And of course, the favourite red neck way to inflate a tyre - sorry, tire - involves lots of KwikStart spray and a spark.

Kwikstart of course is mostly ETHER:

 

 

 

Makes me kinda glad, Elmer, that them anesthesiologogs stopped usin' it, oh, years ago!

 

John-Joe

Edited January 13, 2016 by john.r.davies

[Peter Cobbold]

That spark was a couple of feet long. At 3 million volts per metre that's.... 600,000volts ?

[RogerH]

Hi John,

I once went out on a North Sea air/sea rescue training exercise. To my surprise I was the dummy being dropped off on the barge - all on my own.

 

When the helicopter returned, they lowered the winch, I reached out to grab it and a massive bolt of lightning arced from me to the winch.

needless to say I took my hand away only to get the winch hook smack me in the face - it really hurt and drew bloody.

 

However they didn;t record it as a real rescue.

 

Roger

[McMuttley]

" a massive bolt of lightning arced from me to the winch...... hook smack me in the face"

 

That explains the avatar pic then

[acaie]

Can we pin this topic?

[Stevecross]

Roger

 

The eye protection thing is also something I am rather familiar with.

 

I went through a spate of visits to A & E to have lumps of grind dug out of my eyes about 15 years ago.

As you say hot grind metal in the eye is perhaps the most painful thing you can experience. The odd thing is that at first it does not really hurt but a few hours later it kicks in big time.

Driving home with one eye masked is a no no. You do not realise at the time how hard it is to drive without binocular vision.

Had both eyes gone at the same time once but never really understand how it was happening as after the first time I was taking particular care to make sure I had goggles on at all times.

Turned out that at that time I had "dry eyes" which meant that when I removed my goggles any grit in my hair would fall and end in my eyes but there was not enough fluid to remove it so blinking ground it in.

For anyone who has not experienced it, it is seriously painful.

 

In the amusing spirit that I started this thread in here is an account of the last time I went to A & E with ruined eyes:-

 

When my wife was pregnant with our youngest daughter she decided she wanted a home birth.

The allotted midwife and her backup duly visited and were familiar with our rather rural location.

A couple of months before the due date I happened to order two new fluorescent inspection lamps. One for the garage and one (as I told my wife to help me deliver our Daughter when she was born ) as , so I said, something was bound to go wrong and I would end up on my own.

You know what's coming here, don't you?

 

Yep, early one morning it all kicked off. I phoned our midwife number only to find our primary midwife was off on holiday and so was her backup.

Short story is that I ended up delivering our Daughter about 10mins before the relief midwife arrived.

The connection to this thread is that being rather bored with the whole new baby thing after a couple of days, I sneaked out to the garage the day after she was born and because I was a bit away with the Fairies at the time I got grind in my eye.

Got preferential treatment in A & E though when I said I had to get home to look after my wife and 1 day old Daughter and got out in an hour!

An amusing offshoot was that morning I was having some coal delivered. The coalman turned up with our order, said "alright mate" I just stood there with a glazed expression and said "I've just delivered a baby"

He still takes the Pi*s out of me every year!

Steve

[Waldi]

I work in the oil industry and there the rule is "we do it safe or not".

This may make some of us think "oh yes, big companies, liability driven" but the case is still that more accidents happen at home than at work.

One of our bosses stated that if we were not working safe at home, we should question why.

Made me Think, apparently he had a good sense for timing.

I did stupid things to, also at work, but try to learn from my mistakes and those made by others.

Keep sending in your experiences, good or bad, if it only preventS one accident it is worth it!

Waldi

[Peter Cobbold]

I work in the oil industry and there the rule is "we do it safe or not".

This may make some of us think "oh yes, big companies, liability driven" but the case is still that more accidents happen at home than at work.

One of our bosses stated that if we were not working safe at home, we should question why.

Made me Think, apparently he had a good sense for timing.

I did stupid things to, also at work, but try to learn from my mistakes and those made by others.

Keep sending in your experiences, good or bad, if it only preventS one accident it is worth it!

Waldi

Waldi,

Quite right - most accidents happen in the home.

I shall take great care when putting on my socks:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/roccothecomic/obese-man-dies-attempting-to-put-on-his-socks-b1eq#.qxjpD1x8O

Peter

[stillp]

I've had flakes of rust in my eye a couple of times. Once in the local A & E, a junior doctor (who probably hadn't slept for a month) prodded it with a cotton bud soaked in acriflavine until it came out. Not fun.

The second time I didn't realise until later, on a sales trip to Minehead. Rinsing with eyewash didn't help, so the hotel receptionist sent me to the local hospital. They told me I was in luck - a noted eye specialist was lecturing students, and he'd have a look at my eye when he'd finished. They had an apparatus that looked like a mediaeval instrument of torture, in which my head was clamped. A small holder that could move in a curved path was adjusted until it matched the curvature of my eyeball, then he fitted it with a chisel-shaped scalpel blade, repeatedly swung it past my eye, screwing the blade in a little further each time, until the edge of the chisel caught the rust flake and lifted it out. Rather scary, but my eye was fine the next morning, unlike the first time when I had to wear a patch for a week.

Both times I'd been using a rotary wire bush under the TR - wearing ventilated goggles. The rust flakes must have found their way through the ventilation holes.

 

Pete

[Motorsport Mickey]

Waldi,

Quite right - most accidents happen in the home.

I shall take great care when putting on my socks:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/roccothecomic/obese-man-dies-attempting-to-put-on-his-socks-b1eq#.qxjpD1x8O

Peter

If you remember about 10 years ago there were reports in the media that members of the public who had trees upon their properties were to be held responsible for accidents which occurred with these trees, branches breaking and hitting people upon the conk etc.

Immediately it was reported that the only way to ameliorate any claims against homeowners was for them to have an arborist inspect and "manage" the tree yearly. Cue a barrage of complaints to papers and news services from tree owning homeowners based upon broadly the lines of "you can whistle if you think I'm having a yearly cost for an arborist, I shall cut my trees down" !

The report was quickly catergorised as a misreading of "possible" readings of legislation (nobody said by who)and not to be taken seriously, which is when our Health and Safety Executive spoke on the subject declaring that about 3 people a year die when putting on their socks ! overbalancing trying to do it standing up (who does that ?) etc and declared that people killed by incidents with trees were of the same order and categorised as "background" risk, ie an everyday event of such low risk as not usefully able to be formulated into coding tables.

 

My tip, sit down whilst putting your socks on !

 

Mick Richards

Edited January 13, 2016 by Motorsport Mickey

[RogerH]

Hi Mick,

since my hip operation I occasionally attempt to put my socks on standing up just to see if I can.

Usually I can but I ensure there is the bed nearby to save my blushes.

 

As for TRees, was it Norwich that cut down their Horse Chestnut trees because of complaints of conkers dropping on peoples heads.

 

Roger

[Peter Cobbold]

If you remember about 10 years ago there were reports in the media that members of the public who had trees upon their properties were to be held responsible for accidents which occurred with these trees, branches breaking and hitting people upon the conk etc.

Immediately it was reported that the only way to ameliorate any claims against homeowners was for them to have an arborist inspect and "manage" the tree yearly. Cue a barrage of complaints to papers and news services from tree owning homeowners based upon broadly the lines of "you can whistle if you think I'm having a yearly cost for an arborist, I shall cut my trees down" !

The report was quickly catergorised as a misreading of "possible" readings of legislation (nobody said by who)and not to be taken seriously, which is when our Health and Safety Executive spoke on the subject declaring that about 3 people a year die when putting on their socks ! overbalancing trying to do it standing up (who does that ?) etc and declared that people killed by incidents with trees were of the same order and categorised as "background" risk, ie an everyday event of such low risk as not usefully able to be formulated into coding tables.

 

My tip, sit down whilst putting your socks on !

 

Mick Richards

MIck,

I remember that all too well - had me worried as we have 8 acres of woodland.

Now I have to worry again - about proposed right to roam legislation in Wales. Roaming through a wood in a gale is asking for trouble...or looking for compo.

Peter

Edited January 13, 2016 by Peter Cobbold

[john.r.davies]

Over Xmas, we had No.1 grandson to stay with his parents, of course, they're not monsters.

18 months old and a ball of live nuclear energy, so I spent a lot of time on the floor playing with him (and his lovely toys eg a Playmobil tractor that had to be assembled! Woohoo!)

That gave me a lot of back pain that has only just subsided.

So, next Xmas, risk assessment!

 

And trees. In that last four years we've had three mature trees in the garden felled. One had chestnut canker, and had dropped a large branch into the road, one fell over in the storms, twice (it had three trunks) both right across the road and one started to bring down an earth-retaining wall it was next to. Sad, the tree man said the chestnut had another two hundred years in it, but you can't leave a tree that could drop twenty foot branches on cars and people.

 

John

[Stevecross]

Peter

 

"Quite right- most accidents happen at home"

 

Hope not a reference to my home delivery post!

 

Re trees.

We are lucky to have three connected properties with a land area of some 23 acres.

Property 1 is a holiday rental. Property 2 is my residence & property 3 is my Aunts.

Guests from property 1 go across my property 2 to the play area and swimming pool on property 3.

A lovely old Horse Chestnut sat on the boundary between property 2 & 3 directly overhead from where guests from property 1 walked to get to the pool in property 3.

In the middle of a 3 week summer let I noticed that a huge bough on the Chestnut was starting to crack directly overhead.

The tree had been suffering from the moth attack for 3-4 years (we have lost 4 others so far).

I immediately called a friend of mine who in his business has dropped 100x more trees than I have had TR's

As we set up to fell the old girl the bough snapped and fell to the ground (at it's joint it had a diameter of around 20 inches so a pretty substantial piece of timber.)

Part way through cutting a notch on the "fall" side the whole tree shuddered twisted and fell in the opposite direction. It was around 15 metres away from the road but took 3 of us with 3 chainsaws 20 mins to clear the road.

The base of the tree was some 3 1/2 feet in diameter but the centre 2ft were completely rotted out.

That completely surprised 2 professionals and is why I try never to use a chainsaw while on by own.

Steve