Blunders and Co-k ups

[Paul TParticipant @pault84577]

[Paul TParticipant @pault84577]

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

[Bob Abell 2Participant @bobabell2]

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

[Richard SimpsonParticipant @richardsimpson88330]

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

[Bob Abell 2Participant @bobabell2]

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

[Ray Wood 3Participant @raywood3]

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

[Bob Abell 2Participant @bobabell2]

Thanks Ray

Done plenty of similar risky stuff in my life time

But nowt recently

ie…..Lessons learnt

Bob

[Bob Abell 2Participant @bobabell2]

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

[Richard SimpsonParticipant @richardsimpson88330]

That seems like a pretty good memory to be Bob!

[Richard SimpsonParticipant @richardsimpson88330]

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.

[The Long BuildParticipant @thelongbuild]

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.

[Bob Abell 2Participant @bobabell2]

Hello Long Build

Shooting your airgun vertically into the sky, reminds me a similar action we often did in our teenage days

Going for further education to obtain ONC, we learnt about acceleration and gravity etc

I`ve always liked the Formula…….

"S = UT+ 1/2 FT Squared"

If you fired into the sky and the pellet took 9 secs to go up and down to earth

We get……Distance in feet = 0 + 0.5 X 32 X 9 X 9

Dist up and down amounts to 1296 feet

So the slug reached an altitude of 648 feet

I find that truly fascinating, just another distant memory from the past

Bob

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

That's handy to know Bob if you are buzzed by a privacy invading drone…

Colin

[Rich Griff 2Participant @richgriff2]

True story, I saw the wreckage…

 

Local harbour with a fast current on a good tide…

 

Gales blowing, yacht seen adrift, broke it's mooring…

 

How the chap got to the yacht not known…boarded, engine refuses to start, rocket flare found, whoooosh, hits rigging, lands in boat etc…

 

Next day remains of boat on shore, burnt down to the water line…

 

 

R.I.P. no names….not me.

Edited By Rich Griff 1 on 07/09/2021 17:37:13

[Malcolm FraryParticipant @malcolmfrary95515]

I heard a similar story about the Wyre Light, a wooden lighthouse structure off Fleetwood. As part of a lifeboat display, they were to fire a flare, which, at the appointed time, they did. Straight up, on a very calm day. Fortunately, the lifeboat was on hand. The remains can be seen from Fleetwood prom.

I have no doubt that I have plenty of bludners in my past, but I have the ability to forget in a self protective manner.

[Paul TParticipant @pault84577]

Bobs tale of molten lead reminded me of a site back in the late 70s when I was a junior site engineer, It was an office block with a central atrium and a first floor balcony.

The balcony was insitu concrete and because the client didn't want to see holding down bolts the posts / handrails for the balustrade were to be cast in later using a new product called epoxy.

My gaffer didn't want to spend money on this expensive product so over a weekend he decided to cast the posts in using molten lead.

What he didn't take into account was that the client had released the ground floor offices to various little companies and they were busy sorting out their new workspace, walking unprotected underneath the gaffer whilst he was pouring the lead.

No he didn't inflict any injuries but the client threw him off the job.

Ray

No I didn't set out to short the battery but it was a very sobering experience and goes to show how easy it is to get into trouble.

[Richard SimpsonParticipant @richardsimpson88330]

On my very first trip as an engineering cadet we were approaching a Japanese port and the Second Engineer said to me. "Go and shut the inlet to the main engine fuel oil heater". Now I'd just been recently tasked with labelling valves in that area so I knew exactly which valve to shut. I went down into the engine room, closed the valve and decided to have a walk round the bottom plates. A few minutes later I saw engineers running around the engine room in all directions, obviously in a state of panic. Not knowing what was going on to create such a level of intense activity I went back to the control room.

On entering the Control Room I was met with a vitriolic blast from the Second Engineer,

"Which f*ck*ng valve did you shut?"

"The inlet to the steam heater"

"I meant the f*ck*ng steam inlet not the fuel inlet!!!"

"But you didn't say steam inlet, you just said inlet"

How he refrained from killing me I will never know but, at the end of the day, we all learned a lot from the incident.

Edited By Richard Simpson on 08/09/2021 12:02:40

[Richard SimpsonParticipant @richardsimpson88330]

Another cracker was also in my cadetship days. I was on a transatlantic small container ship and it was normal in those day to give everything a good clean half way across. In the bilges this meant putting drums of degreasers into the bilges and letting them slosh around for a couple of days before setting to with fire hoses to blast everything off and leave things relatively clean and free of oil.

Those ships had two engines, each with their own shaft alternator so when we were deep sea we could shut down the auxiliary generator sets and change over to either of the shaft alternators. This day were were mid Atlantic and the crew were down below blasting everything in sight with the fire hoses. All of a sudden there was an unbelievably almighty flash and a bang, all the lights went out, the engines stopped and the emergency alternator started up. Everyone was stunned for a second then started the process of getting everything back up and running again.

When we went down to the bottom plates there was one of the Greasers stood between the two engines with a limp fire hose in his hand. He hadn't moved during the entire starting up process and was staring vacantly into space. It took us a while to realise that he had been a little careless with the fire hose and had directed it into the vents of the shaft alternator. The high pressure sea water had shorted out the entire live alternator set.

How he remained alive has always amazed me!

Edited By Richard Simpson on 08/09/2021 13:58:21

[Richard SimpsonParticipant @richardsimpson88330]

Do you want another ship one? Well if you are bending my arm.

In much later days as a Chief Engineer of a large cruise ship the plant was diesel electric. Five main engines split into two engine rooms with the number of engines running for the speed you needed. Alongside in port there was just one set running supplying all hotel and machinery space services.

One normal quiet day in port all of a sudden the lights go out and everything goes quiet apart from the distant rumble of the emergency generator set starting. Everyone into the control room to get another engine on line and get all services back up and running and, when finally things had settled down again, retire to the office with the team to discus what had happened. No one was doing anything that day that should have affected main plant and no one had any idea what had caused the black out. The only thing the Chief Electrical Engineer could offer was the fact that the engine had received a stop command from somewhere in the emergency stop control system. The electrical team were tasked with checking every component in the safety circuit but to no avail. Everything seemed to be in good order.

There is nothing worse than having a major fault that has caused an engine to stop but not knowing what it was. We remained baffled to the end of the day.

That evening I was sat at my desk and the Chief Mechanic came in. He asked if one of the Wipers could have a chat with me, to which I said of course, and the Chief Mechanic wheeled him in. He stood there looking at the floor and only just audibly muttered

"It was me"

"What was you?"

"I stopped it"

"Stopped what"

"The engine"

I suddenly became significantly more attentive. It turned out that this lad was walking through the engine room with a long aluminium ladder on his shoulder. His mate called to him so he turned around. The end of the ladder just touched the large red emergency stop button on the side of the running engine causing the shut down and the black out.

I couldn't be annoyed with him as he had shown unbelievable courage to come up to my office to own up and save us all a lot of further investigative work but I did ask him not to do it again. From what I can gather he had been absolutely terrified of what the consequences were going to be but the Chief Mechanic had persuaded him that I was "approachable".

Edited By Richard Simpson on 08/09/2021 13:56:10

[Rich Griff 2Participant @richgriff2]

This one is fresh, true story.

Chap must have been greasing prop shaft on his yacht. He stowed the grease gun and went out in the yacht for a sail.

Anyways the local life boat requested help from the next station. When they got there the fire had been put out inside the yacht. In the corner was seen the remains of a battery fizzing away. It was sprayed with white powder only to reveal a grease gun welded to the bare battery terminals !

True story and happened a few days ago, no names ( not me ) and no one hurt.

[Bob Abell 2Participant @bobabell2]

Batteries of all types can be really dangerous. Just waiting in the shadows, out of sight, for their chance to cause mischief

We could do with a few worthwhile suggestions for storage?

Even a handful of A4`s, chucked in a box could be a problem?

Bob,…… (Jobes Comforter?

[Paul TParticipant @pault84577]

Captain Bob

You are so right, these LiPos scare the life out of me, my problem is that they are necessary for drones and rc planes so I have learnt to live with them, some of the large drone batteries are like house bricks.

All of my LiPos are stored in a old (small) safe as it is both fire and explosion proof.

Paul

[Tim RoweParticipant @timrowe83142]

Hello Paul

That would be fire and explosion proof from the outside.

One lights up and the rest go too.

Don't stand in the way of the door!!!

Tim R

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