The worst replacement of a fuse that I have seen was a 1/4" bolt to replace a 30A cartridge fuse.

What kind of "replacement fuses" have you guys ran into?

I thought all of the maintenance men used copper tubing or pipe. They must not have had a piece of 1/4" on hand.

Ryan,
What a question you ask.
I've seen quite a bit over my time as a Faultsman.
I've seen people put nails in pole fuses on the load sides of Xformers to keep the TV going during Rugby games, only to have the line-side drop-outs fail, about 3 seconds later.
At least these people have the sense to use Insulated Pliers when putting the "fuse" in.
But, things on the inside of a house really amaze me, I've removed old porcelain fuses in older houses, trying to find Faults and Meggering the installation, only to find 80A or more, Tinned Copper Wire fuse links in the fuseholder, these don't tend to co-ordinate too well with the HRC pole fuses we use here.

I was working in a small town once with little industry. We were about it.
The local vet called for her electrical contractor from 'the city'.
She passed the phone to him and he explained the situation.
X-ray machine had a blown fuse, hurt dog waiting for the use of it, 30A oddball from Europe, 2 1/4" hole center, non-time delay.
I measured my inventory and all I had were re-usable links, no cases.
The truck arrived just as I finished drilling the holes. He screwed them in place (no cases) in open air, and closed the cabinet.

The dog is doing fine.

I've seen cartridge fuse & knife switch (all open stuff) combo units with a piece of 12 AWG or 14 AWG solid wire stretched between the fuse clips on the board.

The frightening thing is that that little stump of wire was the most substantial piece in the entire system, the rest of it mostly being 16 AWG lamp cord!!

Any pennies behind blown fuses? American pennies ($0.01) are about 2cm diameter and made of copper and lately copper clad zinc. People used to stick a penny in a screw in fuse holder and reinstall the blown fuse on top of it to get the lights back on. Of course there's no more overcurrent protection anymore....

Some replacements from the archives!

great comic

i've run into 3 inbus screws replacing 3 25A Neozed fuses. 1800A, very little overload for AWG10......

A bullet!....Read this in Car and Driver magazine many years ago....A guy with a pick up truck was in a jam and needed to replace a burned out fuse in his pick up truck (the fuse box was located under the dash by the steering column) and used a bullet to replace it. Needless to say, he was in the hospital getting his left leg repaired because it went off! Was this guy brilliant or what?

Wait a minute. Most of the auto fuses that you could theoretically do this with are skinny glass cylinders.

What bullets are made that are the same dimensions as an automobile fuse?

I'm assuming that if I tried to stick the bullet of a revolver into such a fuse holder, it would not fit and possibly wind up damaging the retaining clips?

I think a .22 caliber MIGHT be close

http://www.snopes.com/autos/techno/fuse.asp

If a .22 LR isn't handy you might be able to jimmy rig a .17 HMR into place, but I think a .22 Hornet would be to big.

A couple of my worst. https://www.electrical-contractor.net/ubb/Forum5/HTML/000091.html https://www.electrical-contractor.net/ubb/Forum5/HTML/000100.html
Boy, I sure had a crude camera...S