Don't take the cover off a j/b on a purlin in an attic, then lie on your back across the joists to clip a cable in place...then pull yourself up by reaching over the purlin!!

Uhuh...yep...I did it

Got two lovely circular burns on my forearm where I neatly 'covered' the phase and neutral terminals in the box! Fortunately the path was only the distance between the two contacts - and not through me to the Cu pipng I was lying against!

The shock was horrendous - the consequences could have been much worse - particularly as I was working alone in the building, right at the ar end of the attic.

It just goes to show that no matter how careful and experienced you are, taking "your eye off the ball" for one second can spell disaster

Take care all!

Whoa John!,
That doesn't sound too cool.
I had a vaguely similar experience during a Commercial re-wire I did about 3 years ago.
I was working up in the roof in this rather elderly building, testing and disconnecting various lighting and other circuits.
I was walking across the tops of the ceiling joists and happened to touch an old Lead-sheathed single core wire.
Some idiot had previously disconnected the earthing on the lead sheath, but the Phase wire was still in a fuse in the panel and the wire end was touching the sheath at the other end of the cable. GRRR.
Luckily the ceiling was made of Lath and Plaster and it took my wieght as I fell onto it.
That experience could have been both embarrassing and expensive, at the same time, as there was a 12 foot drop to the floor below.
I won't be getting caught like that again!.

This sounds like a dumb and dumber session. I can only add the advice to never hold on to the plaster ring of a steel box on the wall while standing on a ladder and bending over to get two wirenuts to attach the exit light to the two wires you stripped back a second earlier. When bending over the head forms an arc and sure enough, the head meets the wires. Yup, I felt like an idiot. I'm sure each and everyone of us could tell a story where we fudged on the safety rules a little. The nice thing is that we are here to tell the stories.
Ron

 
Nors — I heard once 277V to the forehead is downright hallucinogenic(!) I understnd even the JackAss show refused to air that footage. ;-]

Ron,
Yes it sure does, but let's bring things back into line with this:



{Message edited to remove a couple of comma's}

[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 01-05-2005).]

Well, I'll add a story of a simple light fixture change that sticks in my mind. I was putting up a hanging pendant with a metal frame, 3-core flexible cord. The ceiling outlet was the loop-in type, so live to the switch fed through one set of terminals.

I'd verified the wall switch was in the hot side of the line, the panel was the far end of the house, it was getting late in the day anyway, so the extra light from the adjacent hallway was handy, so I didn't turn off the lighting circuit. Hey, I'm not touching the live loop-thru terminal, why bother?

I had the pendant frame kind of wedged on my arm as I made the connections, starting with the earth. Somehow I got distracted for a second, turned back to the terminal strip and managed to stab the earth wire from the flex straight into the live loop-thru terminal. Ouch!