ThinkGood,
Ya gotta remember, Trumpy and I are in different countries, AND were trained at different times. The old saying is "The only safe wire is one where you have both ends in your pocket"
We used to bare hand when we knew it was opened on both ends, and grounded. Most line companies have policies preventing this now, probably a good thing.
You can work any conductor hot from the right bucket bare handed with no problem, but ya can't forget where you are, or what you're doing, not even for one second, your head gets a little close to another phase, you're dead.
We used 40kv gloves on 34kv lines, if you had someone in the bucket with you, even gloved and sleeved, your keys would arc over to a rivet, or keys in the other guys jeans... used to be one of the initiation rights.
Short answer, not anymore. Most companies require linemen to even climb gloved and sleeved, and I don't know if I could do that or not. There is also the factor of the gloves don't bend well at all when cold, and in the summer, you have water running out of them making them slippery, some rules seem to cause a lot more problem than they cure.
Some companies require gloves and sleeves to climb, AND goggles. Climb a pole in August, 95 degrees, gloved and sleeved, with goggles on, on a high humidity day, now I can't grip the pole, but that's OK since I can't see how far I have to fall, and they wonder why my respect for safety departments seems to be a tad on the low side?????
Hope that comes close to answering your question. The first time I heard of this rule, a young lineman was in one of my classes, 24 years old, just had a daughter. He climbs to a transformer, took his right hand glove off so he could remove his goggles to wipe them so he could see. A fault occurred (possibly because of the wet glove) and killed him. The company denied his widow's claim for life insurance because her husband had violated their policy by being up the pole without all his safety equipment, of course they heard from me, but it did no good.
Kinda makes ya wanna go to plumbers school don't it?
Now for the "down under" version, Mike????
