Quote:
Originally posted by zippyt
It is BAD practis to use un insulated tools for ANY live circut . I know phone lines are only 52 vdc but you can short out other stuff when you get shocked and you jump and drop your leatherman and start the pissed off dance ( cussing and kicking ) .
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Hey, I thought this was the MAN thread, what's with all this sissy talk?
My worst shocking was when I was working maintenance in a department store many years ago... it was my first week. There was a flourescent panel that was out, so I figured that it was a burned-out tube. Using my aluminum ladder, I removed the tube without incident, and went and got a new one. It turns out that the tube was fine, what had happened was the hot wire had come out of it's wirenut inside the fixture, and was grounding to the metal. I discovered this when I went to put the new tube in, and my finger grazed the fixture.
There was a guy buffing the floor not too far away, and I can imagine the scene from his perspective... out of nowhere, he hears a loud "Whaaaah!," followed immediately by the loud popping of a flourescent tube, and the sound of shattered glass raining to the floor. As this happens, the lights all go dark in that little corner of the store. He came running around the corner to see me in the dim light, standing on my ladder, covered in white phosphorus dust and surrounded by shards of broken glass.
"Are you ok?" has asked after staring for a moment.
"Oh, I'm fine," I said. "How are you?"
I was always a little carefuler after that. Amazingly, for all the times I was shocked on that 16-foot ladder, I never once fell to a bloody, broken death on the tiles below. I teetered a few times, but never fell. When standing on a ladder I always used insulated tools, but I always had to work on hot circuits because we couldn't have lights off while there were people in the store, and that resulted in brushes with electricity from time to time. The doctors say I might have brain damage, and that I may start using non-words like "carefuler" and "non-word."