"William Bagwell" wrote in message
...

On Tue, 2 Jun 2020 11:41:26 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

Luckily for me the machine shop teacher who taught me how to weld and fold
bandsaw blades had enough restraint to avoid those stunts. The welding
instructor tried to get me to touch a TIG high frequency arc, like he did.
I
told him I'd already used up my nine lives in electrical accidents.

My 1.25" sawmill bands are much more difficult to manage than 1/2" ones. I
unfold new or resharpened blades by throwing them on a brush pile that
absorbs their fury.

Likely a fellow student taught me, certainly not my instructor.
TIG's in the 70s just tickled a bit, "Look at me, I can strike an
arc on my fingers" modern ones are like "Holy **** why did I do
that!"
--
William

=========================
I've accidentally touched the 480V power line above an open breaker. I
wasn't grounded and it only felt like a prick from a metal splinter, but
when I looked there was a little blackened pit in my finger.

The foreman had been grounded when he touched 480V, and it knocked him
against the wall rack of nuts and bolts which avalanched down on him.

A tech working near me grounded a scope probe to the gate drive of an SCR
that floated at line voltage. When he switched on the power the entire probe
cable exploded, badly burning him.

At the same job I heard noise from a nearby breaker box and looked up just
as a fireball blew off its front panel. Bad aluminum wiring connections.

There was a large 3-phase power supply on the floor next to the machine I
was building. I was out sick one day, and the next morning I found the power
supply replaced with black blast residue on the floor and up the near side
of my machine. Two newly minted engineers had tried to determine the correct
phasing to the power supply by holding the leads on the input terminals
while squatting on their heels. Apparently one lost his balance and touched
a nearby electrolytic can with 480VAC.

40KV in a recently disconnected piece of coax hurt, not as much as the 10uF
cap charged to 700V. That felt like my arm was on fire. I was redoing
someone else's sloppy wiring with frayed strands outside the crimps and
apparently hit a loose fine strand.

I bought the first hand-cranked megger I saw and test all my home appliance
repairs with it. The heater wiring in some is very sketchy and I've measured
as low as 1 Meg to ground, before cleaning off the corrosion.

https://www.asc.ohio-state.edu/physi...l_current.html