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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 2,236
Likes: 1
Member
Pearlfish,
Is that how the whole body piercing fad got started?

ElectricAl, If that didn't scare you away, nothing will!

[Linked Image]

Lots of funny stories here! And with great lessons.

More! More!

[Linked Image]


-Virgil
Residential/Commercial Inspector
5 Star Inspections
Member IAEI
Joined: Nov 2001
Posts: 40
G
Member
Body piercing,

That reminds me of a story I was told when I first started about a newbie on a ladder. Seems his foreman was pushing the fishtape in the pipe through the wall into the back of a 1900 box. The newbie had his face right in front of the box and looked away for a minute when the fish came thru.The fish hit the corner of his eye and when he jerked his head back it hooked him thru the eyelid.

Honest!!!!!

He later quit the electrical field and entered the ministry and officiated at my wedding a few years later..


Ya never know,

Glenn

Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 335
S
Member
Last time I did that alone I learned how quickly a fish tape can turn into a heating element (as it welded across the lugs). It burned off as I was heading out the door at a rapid pace. Never did that again. Ahhhh... how dumb we once were.

Joined: Dec 2002
Posts: 308
E
Member
I almost had a fish tape incident. But i have this story to tell.
I just started school (electrical ) my first semester. Thought i knew what i was doing. any way to make the story short i tried to push in a burned breaker into a panel that had the bus bar burned because of loose connection. Any way as i pushed on to this breaker the bus bar shorted in the back to the to the box and bam. My face was burned,eye lashes gone,eye brows gone,left and right hand burned had my right eye closed for 2 days with a patch. cost me $1500 emergency hospital bill.

I think that the paper insulation that is placed between the busbar and the panel box was gone i mean lost its integraty over the years.

because of the above incident i have to wear eye glasses all the time now.
I thank god every time that i go infront of a panel because eyeglasses are better than no eye sight i could have gotten molton metal at about 5000 degree in my eyes.

That's all folks.
Edward


Thanks
Edward
Joined: Jun 2003
Posts: 1,143
D
Member
I'm glad I found this confessional ... er, uhh, forum!

I was pulling new THHN into a 3/4 EMT with older (thick) plastic insulation on it. After "finding" the requisite hidden boxes above the dropped ceiling, I was pulling my steel tape through, with the (new) circuits I was working on dead, the others live, so as not to interfere with the rest of the house.

Long story short(ened), hook got snagged, cleaned some of the insulation off the in-place 12 AWG, and ZZZOTTT... remote control lights - "off" only!

Hadda pull in a new 12... and finally convinced the wife I needed the nylon 100 foot snake!

Joined: Mar 2004
Posts: 391
B
Member
I was once working a job in a huge commercial complex that had it's own privately controlled sub-stations. We had to pull some cables into one of the existing HV cabinets. Everything in the cabinet that could be de-energized was, and everything else was thoroughly wrapped in hot-blankets. Still hairy work, but it was as safe as it could be made with the power on.

I didn't know much about what was going on, I was just the new-guy there to help with the cable pulling. The foreman points out a set of conduits in an adjacent room and we start to push the tape into one of 'em. We're pushing and pushing, we can hear the guys in the next room:
"Keep coming, it's getting close... Come on... Come on..."
So we keep feeding the tape in until all of the sudden we just hear a bunch of exclamations and one of the guys in the other room just starts screaming:
"STOP STOP STOP STOP!"
They come running over from next door:
"You guys need to set that tape down as carefully as possible and get the hell out of there..."

Well, come to find out the foreman had mistakenly picked the wrong set of pipes for us to fish.

We walked into the switch-gear room to see that 1/4 band of steel had come up through an empty conduit in the base of one of the energized cabinets and had wound it's way deep into the 13,800 volt buses switching mechanisms. Somehow, it had failed to contact a single energized part and the only side-effect was I was a good bit more jumpy for the rest of that day.

We had to get a crew out to denergize the entire sub-station before the cabinet could be opened and the fish-tape removed.

-John

Joined: Mar 2004
Posts: 98
O
Member
I use this method when Ive got a new wire pull. At the panel,screw on to the t a ,a trc with a threaded plug.For 1/2 and 3/4 runs a bell plug.

Joined: Feb 2004
Posts: 1,438
Member
I can't say I haven't seen my share of disintegrated fishtape leaders from people shoving them into hot bus.. [Linked Image from nachi.org] This seems to mostly happen to some of the service guys who go out on mini-installs solo... Usually they're hooking up a piece of equiptment in a plant or commercial building where turning power off, would more than likely, be cause to send everyone home... We tend to give these kinda jobs to the service "teams" vs. the stand alone guys now, this being one of the reasons

Joined: May 2004
Posts: 1
S
Junior Member
Haven't done the fish tape thing. The first man I worked for taught me well on that. But I will share my first experiance with how powerfull electriciy is and what it will do.
I'd been in the trade about a year. We went to a sheet metal shop and installed a sub panel about 150' from the main panel. As we were finishing up my boss told me to put the cover on the sub-panel, clean up and load the truck and meet him at the coffee shop. He was going to meet a contractor and would see me there. When I started to put the cover on I noticed the screw in the center at the top was loose, had never been tightened and the top of the box was loose from the wall. Can't have that and I reached in with a screwdriver but couldn't get to the screw because of the feeders. I went to pry the feeders apart just a little and boom. I cowered down off a short step ladder back into a corner I thought was safe. I couldn't see a thing as the blast about blinded me. After a short time I got my vision back and went back to the panel. I had blown about six inches of the feeder cable away. I moved the panel up about 8" on the wall to where the feeders were long enough to hook back up put the cover on the panel, loaded the truck and went to the coffee shop. My boss was about furious and was about to come looking for me. Why in the Hell would it take over an hour to put a cover on and get the tools in the truck. I showed him what was left of my screwdriver and asked him if I could get another one next time we got supplies. Needless to say I was the talk of the coffee shop for several days. HEY, you hear what that dumbass kid working for Jones done?

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