The following 3 posts moved from danger sip mods thread
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The forum seems to have taken on a bit of a holier-than-thou attitude recently. First there was George's thread about wiring, then the safety specs and now this.
At no point am I going to claim safety is unimportant. That would be idiotic but it does appear that there is a lot of advice being meted out that I wouldn't expect most people to follow themselves.
Previous to George's thread I can remember several on the topic of wiring in a plug in the garage for a welder and no one complained back then. Hell, how many of us haven't wired in a socket, light or an extension for the shed or garage? But suddenly it's bordering on a life sentence for George to wire up his plug! For something this simple we take the best advice available with regards to how to do it an get on with it.
The next thing I know there's a barrage of advice queuing up to tell me my safety specs are inadequate and I shouldn't so much as look at a grinder without a full face mask. Now I'm no Civil Servant with half the alphabet after my name and qualifications coming out of my ears but surely specs are better than nought? And surely for all but the most intensive grinding and other specific applications specs are going to be good enough? How many of us are following the advice we so vehemently give others? Who can honestly say they've worn a face mask every single time they've picked up a grinder for 2 seconds grinding? I can't. And even having had rust removed from my eye I can't say I won't do it again either because in all likelihood, I will!
So now we come to the welder. Yes I can see that grommets would be a good plan and MKs mention of eddy currents makes sense (though at the power levels indicated this seems like a bit of overkill). It even makes sense to keep all live components to one side of the welder but all this talk of immediate action and frying the next door's kids is a bit premature, don't you think. There is no evidence that these modifications have caused any issues. Who hasn't tinkered with some bit of kit either for convenience or to make it work again with the result that it's probably not as safe as it once was? You know, sticking in a slightly bigger fuse 'cos you're ****** off it keeps blowing.
I guess what I'm trying to say is none of us are perfect. We should certainly continue to give good, safe advice but we should try not to go overboard on the legalities etc. In most cases a good dose of common sense is all that's needed to keep us on the straight and narrow.
I suppose I should say that the above represents my humble opinion! Hopefully no one will take exception to me expressing it...
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The forum seems to have taken on a bit of a holier-than-thou attitude recently. First there was George's thread about wiring, then the safety specs and now this.
At no point am I going to claim safety is unimportant. That would be idiotic but it does appear that there is a lot of advice being meted out that I wouldn't expect most people to follow themselves.
Previous to George's thread I can remember several on the topic of wiring in a plug in the garage for a welder and no one complained back then. Hell, how many of us haven't wired in a socket, light or an extension for the shed or garage? But suddenly it's bordering on a life sentence for George to wire up his plug! For something this simple we take the best advice available with regards to how to do it an get on with it.
The next thing I know there's a barrage of advice queuing up to tell me my safety specs are inadequate and I shouldn't so much as look at a grinder without a full face mask. Now I'm no Civil Servant with half the alphabet after my name and qualifications coming out of my ears but surely specs are better than nought? And surely for all but the most intensive grinding and other specific applications specs are going to be good enough? How many of us are following the advice we so vehemently give others? Who can honestly say they've worn a face mask every single time they've picked up a grinder for 2 seconds grinding? I can't. And even having had rust removed from my eye I can't say I won't do it again either because in all likelihood, I will!
So now we come to the welder. Yes I can see that grommets would be a good plan and MKs mention of eddy currents makes sense (though at the power levels indicated this seems like a bit of overkill). It even makes sense to keep all live components to one side of the welder but all this talk of immediate action and frying the next door's kids is a bit premature, don't you think. There is no evidence that these modifications have caused any issues. Who hasn't tinkered with some bit of kit either for convenience or to make it work again with the result that it's probably not as safe as it once was? You know, sticking in a slightly bigger fuse 'cos you're ****** off it keeps blowing.
I guess what I'm trying to say is none of us are perfect. We should certainly continue to give good, safe advice but we should try not to go overboard on the legalities etc. In most cases a good dose of common sense is all that's needed to keep us on the straight and narrow.
I suppose I should say that the above represents my humble opinion! Hopefully no one will take exception to me expressing it...
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