Your most shocking moments

[v8er6.6]

When I was a young`n, I had a thing of taking everything apart. Remember trying to fix an old valved television, there was this thick dust on top of the valves, so with my idle fingers I proceeded to "dust the valves off". Which in turn "dusted" me across my bedroom.

Was fiddling with a video that wasn`t working once, so I changed the fuse in the plug with another fuse that I didnt know worked or not. So to save taking the plug apart again I pushed it into the socket without the cover on it, using my hand to hold all the prongs in place. That was a serious duh moment

Got a good old belt off my electric cooker a few years ago...
that hurt

One night the bulb blew in my bathroom, so I took the bulb out and went to get another. Came back with a new one and whilst fumbling for the light fitting in the dark, I stuck my thumb into the business end of it. .

Had a good belt off playing with plug leads on an electronic ignition. Believe me, it`s got more of a "bat" than a points setup

Once changed the battery in a keyfob for an aftermarket car alarm. It was a little tiny battery that had the words 12v on the side. So me thinking "that`s not 12v" , decided to check by putting it on my tongue

 

[johnakay]

when I married our lass!

 

[SwissTony]

When I was a young`n, I had a thing of taking everything apart. Remember trying to fix an old valved television, there was this thick dust on top of the valves, so with my idle fingers I proceeded to "dust the valves off". Which in turn "dusted" me across my bedroom.

Was fiddling with a video that wasn`t working once, so I changed the fuse in the plug with another fuse that I didnt know worked or not. So to save taking the plug apart again I pushed it into the socket without the cover on it, using my hand to hold all the prongs in place. That was a serious duh moment

Got a good old belt off my electric cooker a few years ago...
that hurt

One night the bulb blew in my bathroom, so I took the bulb out and went to get another. Came back with a new one and whilst fumbling for the light fitting in the dark, I stuck my thumb into the business end of it. .

Had a good belt off playing with plug leads on an electronic ignition. Believe me, it`s got more of a "bat" than a points setup

Once changed the battery in a keyfob for an aftermarket car alarm. It was a little tiny battery that had the words 12v on the side. So me thinking "that`s not 12v" , decided to check by putting it on my tongue

http://www.darwinawards.com/

 

[MrFluffy]

I was removing a 15 amp plug from an unswitched socket, and to get the necessary grip I unknowingly wrapped my fingers round the plug, touching both the Live and Neutral pins, giving me a tingle.

Ive done that on a old mica insulator fuse panel during my early teens too. On our old house panel at the time there were finger dimples moulded into the fuse carrying insulators to wrap your fingers round and when it started to come out there was a stage where the pins were live next to the moulding.
Just really crap by design and shows why they have partially shrouded pins on plugs etc now, it did hurt, I only ever did it once...

Nowadays the things that really scare me still are draining the tube's on crt displays. I have a habit of arcade machine collecting and usually one of the jobs during a resto is replacement of the monitor because its gone soft and you NEVER touch a display without discharging it first (unless you want to make those darwin awards eventually). I have a shielded probe but the crack and arc as it discharges the anode cap's stored charge still makes me jump even though I know everything is insulated from me.

Bill, when a valve heater field collapses into you, you get the volts AND the amps

 

[Wedg1e]

I know a guy who was working on an isolator box that was switching BIG power. Someone hadn’t isolated what they should have done, and he accidentally placed his spanner across some terminals. Result, the spanner vanished with a huge flash and all the hot spanner metal was shot through his overalls and went all over his chest. I believe this did smart a bit.
He came back to work a few weeks later with a much better but obviously burned torso, which he proudly showed everyone. Luckily, the guy still had his sense of humour by writing “Snap On Chrome Moly” in marker pen across his chest.

I heard a similar tale of a guy who worked on telephone exchanges in the days when they ran from massive banks of batteries (they may do still, I dunno ). Anyway, he dropped a screwdriver, reached into a rack to retrieve it and shorted the battery bus-bars with his wristwatch. Lost his hand, as well as the watch...

 

[clueless77]

i went to fix an old dears washing machine and pulled the plug out before doing my dead tests with my meter, no voltage so i started working on it. the old girl was doing the usual "oooh this cupboards such a mess, what's this out for" she plugged the ****** in while i had hold of the door lock, i grabbed her by the shoulders and said "right love, you go and watch telly, i'll tell you when i've finished!". she was stood looking round the living room door apologising until i left. not the first belt i've had and probably won't be the last

 

[mike os]

worst Ive seen was back when i were a lad living on a farm in africa.... monkey climbed the 11k transformer pole & was hanging on to 2 of the bus bars....real cartoon moment... hanging spreadeagled and charcoaled....not much fun living off the genny for 2 weeks till they could replace everything tho

 

[SwissTony]

hanging spreadeagled and charcoaled....not much fun living off the genny for 2 weeks till they could replace everything tho

At least you got a good meal out of it

 

[Pulsarbebb]

went to a new drainage job when i was 15 with my dad, he said just unhook the wire across the field to get the van through not realising that the field was part of a dairy farm and the wire was hooked to the mains and silly me grabbed it with both hands

 

[v8er6.6]

Reminds me of goin to watch the rally when it still went through Hamsterley Forest.
Cutting across these fields and came across an electric fence. Knowing what it was, I did the "see if its live test", using one hand to quickly tap the wire.
Didn`t get a shock.
"Right lads were sound" I said.
So a number of us decided to climb over.
Midway, a number of us were diving into the next field in such a hurry, and the ones who werent climbing over were pi***ng themselves

It was a *****ng "pulsing" electric fence

 

[Robotstar5]

Reminds me of goin to watch the rally when it still went through Hamsterley Forest.

Did rescue on there one year, was so icy had trouble standing up didn't slow the cars down much though!

 

[v8er6.6]

Thinking about it, it happened on the last year it went though there.
Everyone reckoned it was too hard due to the ice. The whole section was just a sheet of the stuff mind. The corner we were standing at, we must have pulled out every other car.
It`s a shame the Rally don`t get this far up now, Hamsterley and Kielder are pretty local.

 

[brightspark]

I heard a similar tale of a guy who worked on telephone exchanges in the days when they ran from massive banks of batteries (they may do still, I dunno ). Anyway, he dropped a screwdriver, reached into a rack to retrieve it and shorted the battery bus-bars with his wristwatch. Lost his hand, as well as the watch...

guess his time was up. did he get a second hand

 

[Wedg1e]

guess his time was up. did he get a second hand

Tell you what, you stick to welding and I'll do the funnies

 

[Pulsarbebb]

another time at college in 2006 our class of about 7 where crossing the fields of the college farm and also came across the electric wire, so one lad stepped on it to hold it down we all stepped over fine then when the last lad stepped over he let go of the wire and the wire went between the lads legs and shocked him on his balls well youve never seen someone jump so high

 

[graffian]

A bloke doing the tappets on my car was bitten by the MSD, wonder who never switched the ignition off;-)