Blunders and Co-k ups

Dear All

Having exchanged a few blunders and co-k ups with Neil I thought the subject would make an entertaining thread so I will start the ball rolling with this mornings explosion.

I accidently short circuited a LiPo battery, I've never shorted a LiPo before and this short only lasted for 2 seconds but within 5 seconds the battery became very hot.

It was thrown out of the window onto the lawn where it was left to cool or blow, luckily it was only a small 11volt unit but its £20 that I won't see again.

The experience has been a sobering wake up about how dangerous these things can be

I found this on youtube LINK,

Paul

Hi Paul

I`ve got a cracker of a "Cock up"., par excellance!

It was in about 1947

I would be about 10 years old then.

I was watching my big clever hero brother, messing about in the kitchen sink

He had made a simple mould shape using damp soil!

An old pan was bubbling away on the gas stove with molten lead in it!

I can hear sharp intakes of breath right now!

You can guess what is about to happen!

Stand back he shouted, this may be dangerous! so I hid behind him........Lucky me, eh?

There was a loud bang and hissing steam filled the kitchen

When the smoke and steam cleared, there was lead splatter on all the walls and ceiling!

Including his goggles, face and ears and probably a clear section where we were standing!

Luckily, we were not hurt at all, but brother Eric got a good clouting round the ears, when Dad came home from work, plus a few choice Engineers phrases, no doubt

Funnily enough, I have never forgotten the incident and I`m not surprised

Bob had learnt a valuable lesson

Bob, that one cracked me up, in particular because as soon as you mentioned molten lead I took a sharp intake of breath!!

Thank you Richard

I can clearly remember the lead being stuck everywhere. especially the ceiling

And here`s me with a short term memory, I can still remember the fiasco after 74 years!

Bob

Hi All,

These are the essential life lessons you never forget :-

8 years old me takes light bulb out of holder insert my fingers this is an ideal way of finding out about electricity !!

10 year old me using the grandad's lathe, runs the tool into the jaws of the chuck !!

11 years old me cuts finger badly with a Stanley knife, never cut towards myself again !!

These are the life lesson's best learn't the hard way lest we forget

I bet Paul didn't mean to short out the Lipos ??

Regards Ray

Thanks Ray

Done plenty of similar risky stuff in my life time

But nowt recently

ie.....Lessons learnt

Bob

Believe this or not. I can remember this incident quite clearly. Probably because of having kept this photo from about 1939!

I was about three years old at the time

My twin brother and I were having a haircut at a neighbours house.....(.Mr Wood in Albert Avenue}

While Geoff was being done and I picked up the electric shears and did it myself!

Bob

That seems like a pretty good memory to be Bob!

For me I guess its a toss up between sinking a boat, which I described only recently, or setting fire to one, which I've kept quiet for a few years!

Setting fire to one came about from ignoring the doubts I had as regards a sight glass reading. I was sure the water level should have gone down more but the glass was still showing OK so, against my doubts, I sent it round again. Consequently it stopped in the middle of the pond. With the burner still going I found there was no response to the throttle so we started to attempt a rescue. Things started to be thrown at the boat and moves were made to get the rescue dingy out. Then it started to smoke a little. Then it started to smoke a lot. Then flames were seen!

Luckily we found a member brave enough to push the Viking burial re-enactment back towards the bank where various cups of water and a fire extinguisher were all discharged in its direction.

On getting the model home and investigating the root cause it was discovered that the lower sight glass connection was blocked with scale. I should have listened to my doubts. It looked like there was enough water in the boiler but it was in fact nearly empty. The dry boiler got hotter and hotter until the wooden lagging caught fire. Luckily the boat itself was unharmed and the boiler simply required a clean up and a re-lagging. The fire made quite a spectacle though and one member got it all on a video.

Umm, a few .

At the age of 7 and in the US in a vacant desert area Never shoot an arrow straight up in the air !! luckily a split second later we realised what we had done and legged it, luckily the arrow came back down near to where we were. ( I still do archery as well !!)

At the age of around 20, obviously not having learnt my lesson with the arrow, at a friends house we decided to test an air pistol by again shooting pellets straight up and timing how long the fell back to earth, after a few near misses we retired to the door area of the kitchen and carried on but stepped back into the house after each shot.

In my early modelling life I with the 2 from the pistol incident decided to build a hot air balloon from plans from the modelling plans book using tissue paper and meths. It was raining outside so we tested it inside the kitchen !!, this did not go well and went up in flames, luckily it was not big and we put out the floating fire quite quickly with only some minimal damage to those 70's type coloured plastic roof tiles, this was easily sorted as we swapped them for the ones over the kitchen cupboards.. many many years later when the family were having a kitchen refurb was our miss-deeds found out. and we owned up.