On Tue, 18 May 2010 07:35:38 -0700, Larry Jaques
wrote:

On Tue, 18 May 2010 07:02:33 -0400, Joe wrote
the following:

On Mon, 17 May 2010 12:03:27 -0400, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:

I suppose you have lightning rods on your workbench and a piece of
antistatic mat on your roof.

As a matter of fact, I do have a (single) lightning rod on my
workbench. A few weeks ago, I found a really cool antique twisted
copper rod at the flea market. It was six feet tall, had a
multicolored glass sphere about 4 inches diameter, in addition to a
clear spool-shaped glass piece. The forked tip elements were curved
inwards toward each other. I never have been able to justify paying
the price dealers get for those old rods, but when he said "Five
bucks", I just about tripped over other shoppers to give him the
money. It now is lying on the workbench while I try to figure out how
and where I will mount it.

Cool. I'd never seen one until you mentioned it. Here's a
hand-crafted one: http://www.metalhands.com/lightningrod.htm

Sweet. That is a really imaginative design - sorta steampunk in fact.
Thanks for the link. I will try to get a picture or two of mine and
post them somewhere (got a good photo sharing site?). I've seen lots
of 2 or 3 foot lightning rods, but this is the only one I've seen that
is so tall. The cable that was used to connect the rods to the ground
was often a thing of beauty as well. There is a good example in a park
near Wilmington, DE that protects a beautiful oak tree; it is a very
thick braided copper cable that divides off to follow each major limb.
The park formerly was the private garden of one of the DuPont women,
so she had the werewithal to provide the care that such a specimen
deserved.

I don't have an antistatic mat on my roof, however; since both my
house and my garage roofs are metal, it would be somewhat redundant.

It's properly grounded?

Nah.

Joe