Dangerous Current?

[3db]

How did you shut it off- screwdriver from the plug to something that shorted the stator?

Outboard motors were the same- open flywheels catching a sleeve when someone would reach over it. Nasty!

Nice washing machine- must have been a weird link.

Shutting it off? It depended on how far from the house i was and how much gas was left in the tank. Remember, this was in the days of dirt cheap gas.

 

[KenM10759]

You gotta be kiddin me!
I had no idea, and don't think I can add anything further to that subject... other than Come On Darwin!

You apparently hadn't yet seen any of this guy's YouBoob videos.

 

[herbu]

You apparently hadn't yet seen any of this guy's YouBoob videos.

Somehow I get the idea this guy is not who Johnny was talking about.

 

[KenM10759]

Somehow I get the idea this guy is not who Johnny was talking about.

No, he's not. I just thought folks here would get a kick out of him. If you check other videos on his YouTube channel you'll see some of the most bone-headed electrical adventures that leave me wondering why he's still walking upright. He does it for laughs and some income generation...based upon the number of hits you see.

 

[TLS Guy]

This is the lawn mower I used as a kid.... Iron Horse. (Marauder) the red one) ....lasted 20 years .. notice the open flywheel which you had to wrap a cord around to pull start it... none of this whimpy safety poop and no way of shorting out the plug..ours broke off.

This is it!

This is the mower I got to use. I did the mowing and looked after it after the age of about 7. I turned it into a riding lawnmower with pedal assist a few years later.

That was the first engine I ever rebuilt. We had it until the cast chassis broke up.

You stopped that one by turning off the gas and waiting for the carb to run dry.

 

[mtrycrafts]

My understanding is that amps are more dangerous than volts, and as such you can have 3 volts at 400 amps that'll kill you, or 10,000 volts at 1mA that you wouldn't even feel.

Or is it the other way around?

Well, how will that 3 V deliver 400A? Into what load? A dead short?
A 12 V car batter can deliver that into a starter but does nothing when I grab it.

 

[highfigh]

Well, how will that 3 V deliver 400A? Into what load? A dead short?
A 12 V car batter can deliver that into a starter but does nothing when I grab it.

Next summer, when it's hot and humid, sit on the metal sill of a car while you're wearing shorts and touch an energized wire under the dash. Make sure your bare leg is making good contact with the sill and it's not a fiberglass car, although I felt it when I was working on a Corvette. It's an interesting sensation. Didn't care for it.

 

[mtrycrafts]

Next summer, when it's hot and humid, sit on the metal sill of a car while you're wearing shorts and touch an energized wire under the dash. Make sure your bare leg is making good contact with the sill and it's not a fiberglass car, although I felt it when I was working on a Corvette. It's an interesting sensation. Didn't care for it.

Maybe I'll spit on my fingers and grab the battery terminal and see if that will do it.

 

[highfigh]

Maybe I'll spit on my fingers and grab the battery terminal and see if that will do it.

Or, put some water on your forearm and place it across both battery terminals.

OK, don't do that.

 

[Johnny2Bad]

Some radios and amplifiers didn't even have a power transformer- I can't imagine how many people were injured or killed by those.

Most electric devices made before the mid-'60s had an un-grounded power cord and one example of dangerous was guitar amps, which not only were un-grounded, they sometimes had a switch for reversing the polarity of the power connections. The switch had a capacitor on the polarity switch that's usually called the "death cap" because it could fail shorted and cause the chassis to be electrically 'hot'. When these amps are restored/serviced, a grounded cord is installed, the polarity switch is disconnected and the amp is usually safe but people have died or almost died because of this, including Keith Richards (Rolling Stones) and Keith Relf (The Yardbirds). I don't know what these switches have against people named 'Keith', but.....

A good indicator that something is wrong comes when touching the chassis of audio equipment and feeling a slight tingle or strange vibration when sliding a hand or finger along a metal piece, like the face plate of a receiver, pre/power or integrated amp when standing on concrete, especially without shoes. With a guitar amp, touching the strings, the cord or the amp can result in tingling when on concrete and it could be the amp or the electric wiring. I have experienced this in both cases and it's no picnic. If a guitar player has one hand or forearm across the strings and grabs a mic or touches it with their mouth when singing, arcing can be seen and grabbing it can cause the current to pass through the person's heart.

I have a friend, I know his entire family. His brother was electrocuted to death when he was about 18, the short answer is a two conductor AC powered electric drill and a concrete garage floor. So I tend to take electrical safety a little more seriously than some people.

I don't recall the player or the band, but there was a guitar player in a reasonably famous rock 'n' roll band in the late 70's who died onstage; a 2-conductor Power Amplifier was involved.

Interesting fact ... water is a very poor electrical conductor. By "water" we mean pure water. Add an impurity ... a bit of dust is all it takes ... and the water now becomes very conductive. Concrete, when wet, pretty much always introduces salts and dust into the water, it's a good Earth Ground in many construction examples. Pretty much a recipe for electrocution, actually.

 

[Johnny2Bad]

How did you shut it off- screwdriver from the plug to something that shorted the stator?

Outboard motors were the same- open flywheels catching a sleeve when someone would reach over it. Nasty!

Nice washing machine- must have been a weird link.

Usually you just reached over and pulled the plug wire, store it that way, re-attach when you want to run it again. People quickly learned to grab the plug wire and not the (usually exposed) metal connector at the top of the plug, or don a glove for the procedure, often handily stuffed into some suitable crevasse on the machine for storage.

Your method would work as well, the screwdriver is just not as handily stored and is, in the end, unnecessary.

With a low RPM, low compression motor, you don't need as much spark energy to light the plug, so it's not quite like the High Energy Ignitions (HEI) and other variants found on modern auto engines, but it's still real enough to get attention.

Which is why so many people know about the shock hazard ;-)