# Bozos And Horror Stories



## intjonmiller

I'm curious to hear about others' shop horror stories. Not your own errors necessarily, but what you've seen done that left you speechless. Poor business practices as well, but in particular I'm thinking about abuse of machines and tools. 

I'll start, in the first comment. I didn't find anything on this subject by searching a dozen different ways, but if I just missed it feel free to merge my comment with an existing thread.


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## intjonmiller

I used to work for a local manufacturer. Small operation, maybe 20 people total. I was first hired to build a massive powder coating oven (big enough to drive a truck inside, though that wasn't the plan), then stayed on to help improve their production processes. The business had grown from a couple guys' idea and they just added equipment and products as they went along, but no one was really trained in anything. They just figured it out as they went along. 

They had an old Southbend Lathe. I don't recall now the exact size or age, but I would estimate WWII or earlier and maybe ~15" swing, 36"+ bed. Beautiful, heavy-duty machine. They used it to turn a groove in the edge and bore a hole in the center of 5" cast aluminum wheels, and to face and chamfer the sharp corners of 5" steel wheels which were cut off of 5" structural tubing. That's it. They could have done it all with a Harbor Freight special without any modifications to improve the quality. It was rather sad to see it so neglected. 

At one point while I was back in that part of the shop to heat a pulley to expand it to mount on a motor for the oven's exhaust I saw one of the welders using the lathe ways as an anvil. Just hammering away like a blacksmith on some part that had warped because he hadn't tacked it properly and overheated one side. I startled him when I freaked out about it. He explained that's what they always did. They never used the back portion of the lathe for anything, so what's the harm? I begged him not to do it again and said I'd find another solution. I talked the owner into getting a cheap anvil-shaped-object for that purpose so they would spare the lathe. 

I still cringe when I think about that abuse.


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## core-oil

Years back, I worked in an establishment that did general engineering repairs  however one day I obtained a magnetic table for the workshop,  Later that week I went into the shop to find the guys had put a plug on its cable & plugged it into a single phase socket, I explained  "you don,t do that guys" and told them to connect it to its little transformer /rectifier, I cannot remember what went wrong, but they were not able to get it working,  So the answer obviously was, You got it folks "Improvise"  Yes sir they tacked the work piece on to the table with a little run of weld Unbelievable !

Straightening flat bar on the lathe shears sounds just about right, apparently according to another guy who was a skilled fitter /turner, he came into the workshop just in the nick of time a nano second before  another genius was about to wallop a flat section on the marking out table right on the corner which would have been easily broken off.

Another time i perseuded the management into getting me a nice little 3" wide engineers vice for small work I was engaged in, It was a nice little British Record  very well made, Not like a lot of the modern crap, I cared for it , didn't abuse it, after use cleaned it, Well it lasted two weeks, till the shop handyman tried to bend a heavy section in it with a 14 pound flogging hammer I weep for engineering.


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## boostin53

I don't have anything good to add.  But I can say it really grinds my gears when I see people using screwdrivers as pry bars, Cresent wrenches as hammers and drill bits as punches.


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## P T Schram

After 19 years in EH&S, most of my experiences with abused tools resulted in injuries that I had to deal with.

Five guys dead at a plating shop in Northeast Indiana. Had they been able to read and had some general chemistry, they'd still be alive. Caused me to learn all manner of confined space/high-angle, technical, rope rescue along with vehicle extrication/victim extraction techniques along with "first aid for Emergency responders, industrial structural firefighting, and HAZWOPER.

A one-armed man who got his arm burned off working for a power company.

An electrician who had one of his toes blown off using a clamp-on ammeter on an 80KV circuit.

A forklift driver's legs broken because he refused to have the seat belt repaired and the forklift fell on top of him breaking both legs. He argued that by having the latch busted made him faster at his job. This one really hurt because it happened right after I'd finished re-writing their "Powered industrial Truck Management Plan and had trained the entire staff, but was good enough for them to hire as a consultant but not good enough to be hired as an employee and this accident happened less than a month after I finished the contract but wasn't hired to stay on.

Another forklift driver kept his hand on the ROPS in spite of repeated counseling sessions. When he blew his hand up when he got it caught between the ROPS and a bollard, he finally stopped doing that. My boss came barging into the first aid rooms creaming to have the employee drug tested. When I interrupted saying ti would be pointless, I got shouted down-until one of the sheriff's deputies escorted my boss out and informed him that on ym direction, the victim had been given two grains of morphine for the pain, thus negating any value of drug testing him!

And, I didn't witness it, but the T&D maker at my last engineering job told of working for GM Bay City when he found an apprentice trying to press some molding tooling apart with a huge hydraulic press. He was told to disassemble the tool first, then it would simply come apart... The T&D guy left the shop only to hear a loud boom a few seconds later. Three men dead, five disfigured and millions of dollars of machinery destroyed/damaged.

Then there was my dad's and my friend who made his own black powder-dried it in his kitchen oven and milled it in the garage...


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## P T Schram

boostin53 said:


> I don't have anything good to add.  But I can say it really grinds my gears when I see people using screwdrivers as pry bars, Cresent wrenches as hammers and drill bits as punches.



I have a few tool truck customers for whom I replace screwdriver blades weekly as they refuse to use the correct tool for the job. One of them even has the correct tool but won't use it!


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## intjonmiller

boostin53 said:


> it really grinds my gears when I see people using screwdrivers as pry bars, Cresent wrenches as hammers and drill bits as punches.


I like how Snap-On has to write on their screwdrivers, "Not a chisel, punch, or pry bar." Gives you a lot of faith in the automotive repair field, doesn't it? 

I have used drill bits as punches, but only brad point woodworking bits into wood because I needed that exact size marked at that exact location and there's no better solution there, and no damage to the bit.


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## intjonmiller

core-oil said:


> Years back, I worked in an establishment that did general engineering repairs  however one day I obtained a magnetic table for the workshop,  Later that week I went into the shop to find the guys had put a plug on its cable & plugged it into a single phase socket, I explained  "you don,t do that guys" and told them to connect it to its little transformer /rectifier, I cannot remember what went wrong, but they were not able to get it working,  So the answer obviously was, You got it folks "Improvise"  Yes sir they tacked the work piece on to the table with a little run of weld Unbelievable !
> 
> Straightening flat bar on the lathe shears sounds just about right, apparently according to another guy who was a skilled fitter /turner, he came into the workshop just in the nick of time a nano second before  another genius was about to wallop a flat section on the marking out table right on the corner which would have been easily broken off.
> 
> Another time i perseuded the management into getting me a nice little 3" wide engineers vice for small work I was engaged in, It was a nice little British Record  very well made, Not like a lot of the modern crap, I cared for it , didn't abuse it, after use cleaned it, Well it lasted two weeks, till the shop handyman tried to bend a heavy section in it with a 14 pound flogging hammer I weep for engineering.


If I didn't know there were so many of these guys in the world I would think we had worked with the same crew.


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## intjonmiller

P T Schram said:


> Then there was my dad's and my friend who made his own black powder-dried it in his kitchen oven and milled it in the garage...


Your *late* friend? 

What a collection of Darwin winners. It really sucks when they take out others as well. My brother was recently arguing that we shouldn't be so concerned about safety and let survival of the fittest work for our benefit. I pointed out that the safety stuff is largely to protect everyone else from their stupidity.


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## P T Schram

intjonmiller said:


> I like how Snap-On has to write on their screwdrivers, "Not a chisel, punch, or pry bar." Gives you a lot of faith in the automotive repair field, doesn't it?
> 
> I have used drill bits as punches, but only brad point woodworking bits into wood because I needed that exact size marked at that exact location and there's no better solution there, and no damage to the bit.



And, don't forget your safety glasses!

My safety glasses are first thing on in the morning and last thing off in the evening.

I do believe that I own shoes without safety toes, but I don't know where they might be.


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## intjonmiller

P T Schram said:


> And, don't forget your safety glasses!
> 
> My safety glasses are first thing on in the morning and last thing off in the evening.


In that same shop I mentioned at the top, I was wearing my safety glasses under my welding hood. Guys were giving me a hard time about that, like it's somehow not manly enough to be careful. When one of them was grinding something nearby and I suddenly found myself watching a piece of shrapnel cooling just half an inch in front of my right eyeball I had an opportunity to show them exactly why I wear them. Nevermind the fact that the UV glasses prevent getting burned by the reflected arc light, they're also very useful when the helmet is up.


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## P T Schram

intjonmiller said:


> Your *late* friend?
> 
> What a collection of Darwin winners. It really sucks when they take out others as well. My brother was recently arguing that we shouldn't be so concerned about safety and let survival of the fittest work for our benefit. I pointed out that the safety stuff is largely to protect everyone else from their stupidity.



Sadly yes, but surprisingly, not from being stupid. 

He was born missing some muscles across the back of his shoulders and the complications of other developmental things finally caught up to him.

That said, he was THE BEST welder I'd ever seen and at one point was hired to do underwater welding where he was strapped into a contraption that followed the contour of a ships' hull and he was pulled from one side to the next. There was ONE AWS cert he didn't have and IIRC it required a level of dexterity he could not meet with his limitations-NOT disability!

He ended up working as a fabricator for a company that made prison hardware. He said ti was the best job he'd ever had and made the most $ doing it.

He also used the black powder in his civl war cannon. My dad, one to never let an opportunity to suggest someone else do something incredibly stupid suggested to this gentleman that if beer cans shredded from the ignition, to fill them with concrete Yes, beer WAS involved in this discussion. The next thing I know, I'm reading in the paper about a woman's house getting hit by a concrete filled beer can that came careening through her house and landed in front of her TV... Of course, there was a HUGE cloud of black smoke that was kind hard to hide from!


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## Whyemier

Worked in a small jobbers shop in the seventies.  This was before CNC and tape machines were still new.  I did the set up on the turret lathes and punch presses and worked doing repairs when needed.  Saw one of my fellow workers, maintenance guy, hoist the forklift's forks right out of the guides so he could work on them. Put his hand on top of the guide while he bent over to adjust something.  The fork slipped off the hook, no strap, took two of his fingers off and broke the hand leaving him with limited use of it from then on. 

We also had a woman buffing small spindles on a belt sander.  She used to wrap her hand in a rag to hold the spindles. Got her hand pulled into the belt and lost two or three fingernails, ripped out of the quick.

I don't know how many people would not use the safety harnesses on the punch presses.  I set them up so I know they were there and had a three-four inch clearance when the punches engaged but people were always loosing a finger or the end of the finger. Had one guy feeding stock into the punch press fast as he could go.  Cut the tip off two fingers and then cut them shorter on the next piece.  Foreman had to tell him he had already lost his finger tips before he would stop. He never felt a thing.

If the foreman had been doing his job he would have told him, before it happened, to wear the harness then fired him the next time if he didn't.


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## TOOLMASTER

how many times do I have to tell you the band saw is not for cutting your hand off... high school shop was traumatic enough..hand cut off ..girl scalped on lathe..pot head sticking hand in sulfuric acid....following blood trails to the nurses office ...it only got worse after that.lol


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## intjonmiller

Whyemier said:


> I don't know how many people would not use the safety harnesses on the punch presses.  I set them up so I know they were there and had a three-four inch clearance when the punches engaged but people were always loosing a finger or the end of the finger. Had one guy feeding stock into the punch press fast as he could go.  Cut the tip off two fingers and then cut them shorter on the next piece.  Foreman had to tell him he had already lost his finger tips before he would stop. He never felt a thing.
> 
> If the foreman had been doing his job he would have told him, before it happened, to wear the harness then fired him the next time if he didn't.


Isn't that amazing? I did metal roofing for a while and I couldn't believe how often guys would drag around a safety rope while wearing a harness, because the jobsite could be seen from the highway and nobody wanted a fine from OSHA, but they wouldn't actually attach it to anything. I actually attached mine only to find that someone had to move it at some point to install some flashing or whatever, and instead of clipping it back on a foot or two away they just dropped it. 

At one point I was on a particularly steep and slick roof, as a storm was rolling in and we were trying to get down to safety, carefully sliding down to the work cage on the material lift, with the plan being that we would leave our lines connected so we could just hook them back up the next day, when one moron unclipped my line AS I WAS SLIDING DOWN THE ROOF. This was about 2.5 stories off the ground, and at best the lift would have been an obstacle to slow and redirect my fall, if not just providing extra opportunities to smack my head on the way down. I made it perfectly clear how I felt about that and he thought I was trying to pick a fight with him, right there on the roof, in the rain, with lightning on its way to our spot. Thankfully his brother held him back and we left safely. That was my last day on the job. We were about 150 miles out of town, having driven out in a couple of company trucks. I called my brother who drove out and picked me up. I went to the owner the next day and said I refused to work with people who had no respect for safety, especially hotheads like that prick. He explained that the guy had substance abuse problems and they were doing him a favor by allowing him to work to try to get back on his feet. So they consciously sent this guy with known substance issues out to a particularly dangerous jobsite? That's insane! 

The only roofing I've done since then has been for family and I've actually enjoyed it. As I sit here in my office right now I don't miss it one tiny bit. Not even in this nice weather. Too many idiots on job sites.


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## Whyemier

intjonmiller said:


> .... Too many idiots on job sites.




*Amen!*


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## intjonmiller

Okay, a completely different kind:

I had to get an emergency root canal done last month. In the process I had to get x-rays done. My dentist's office is excellent, with all modern equipment and apparently some sort of "gorgeous women only" hiring policy. So this 18-year-old girl is running the digital x-ray on me. I know she's 18 because it came up in the midst of her chattiness I could have done without. She takes a shot and studies the computer screen and decides we can do better. She repositions the sensor in my mouth, walks to the opposite wall where the button to activate the x-ray emitter is kept for safety and takes another. Still not right. So she calls one of the other girls over to come push the button for her, then all but climbs on my lap as she holds the sensor in the right spot. I admit it was not unpleasant. Anyway, I'm wearing a lead vest, but she isn't. Good thing it worked that time, but I'm starting to be a little concerned about how many times they've hit my head with the x-rays (I know the modern ones are much lower doses than the old ones), but I just go my way and get the work done.

As I'm leaving I pass the x-ray area (it's an open part of the office, not a closed room) and I see the same girl manning the button while the same other girl is in some other lucky patient's lap. They have clearly done this enough to know the routine. She's getting married this fall, but I suspect her eggs will all be fried before then.


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## John Hasler

boostin53 said:


> I don't have anything good to add.  But I can say it really grinds my gears when I see people using screwdrivers as pry bars, Cresent wrenches as hammers and drill bits as punches.


You don't have bushel of worn-out screwdrivers.  I have one large one that I have put some bends in the handle of to make it a better pry bar.  Broken drill bits make serviceable punches, too.  I've never needed to use a crescent wrench as a hammer, though.  I've also go a bushel of hammers.


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## boostin53

Broken bits do make good punches, but I'm referring to perfectly good bits being used as a punch on metal.  I however do not have a screwdriver that's been repurposed as a pry bar. I have plenty of different shape and sized prybars for what I need. Maybe one day I will need to fashion one from a screwdriver haha


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## Whyemier

John Hasler said:


> ...I've never needed to use a crescent wrench as a hammer, though.



*The first machining job I had...well the second come to think of it, the engineer for the company told me they (whoever they are, Cresent, General, Craftsman, etc.) spent years trying to find a way to incorporate a hammer into an adjustable wrench.  Never did get it to work.  He told me this after just witnessing me tapping on some something with my adjustable wrench. 

Go figure! 

Guilty!*


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## ScrapMetal

Had to post this...




Looks like this "problem" has been solved a number of ways over time...




-Ron


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## Charles Spencer

P T Schram said:


> He also used the black powder in his civl war cannon. My dad, one to never let an opportunity to suggest someone else do something incredibly stupid suggested to this gentleman that if beer cans shredded from the ignition, to fill them with concrete Yes, beer WAS involved in this discussion. The next thing I know, I'm reading in the paper about a woman's house getting hit by a concrete filled beer can that came careening through her house and landed in front of her TV... Of course, there was a HUGE cloud of black smoke that was kind hard to hide from!



I knew a guy who was a Revolutionary War re-enactor artillerist.  He used paper cups as blank wadding I guess during battles.  But he also used cement filled beer cans to knock down trees for fire wood.  Of course he did this on his own land and in direct fire mode.


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## Jimsehr

When I worked in an US Army  machine shop I ordered some silver solder . And when it did not get to the machine shop, about a month later I found the supply room was using it for bailing wire.
jimsehr


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## jim18655

Local factory I had done some work in had a "machinist" chuck a 2"x48" shaft in a lathe without supporting the far end. It started to wobble and hit him in the head. Dead on the spot.


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## Eddyde

There was a guy at a cabinet shop I worked at that used to spray Nitrocellulose Lacquer while smoking.... yup, there was a fire a big fire! Somehow he lived through it though. That was 26 years ago I wonder if he's still alive?


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## boostin53

Forgot about ratchets. I can't begin to tell you how many times I've seen a ratchet used as a hammer. My right eye twitches every time........


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## 4GSR

My adjustable wrench gets used as a tap hammer every time I loosen the draw bar on the mill to get the end mill loose from the collet!
And I've taken my share of screwdrivers back to Sears for replacements, too!


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## Grumpy Gator

_My mentor / teacher /Uncle who taught me machining would always tell me the right way to do things but would not do them himself. First rule was never leave the chuck wrench in the chuck.Every morning I would come in and it was in the chuck. One morning before work he called and asked me to bring a ladder to the shop with me. When I got there and asked him why? He pointed to a hole in the ceiling and told me to go up on the roof and shove the chuck wrench back down and fix the hole in the roof. Now most normal people would learn from that but not my Uncle the next day when I got to work that damn thing was in the chuck. When I asked him about it he told me i would learn better from his bad behavior to do it the right way...bass akwards I will admit but I have never left the key in the chuck to this day.  I'm guilty of using it to tap on a work piece to true it up before I cinch it down while turning slow._
_        *G*_


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## master of none

I might as well chime in also,years ago in my teens I'm 64 now so it was a while ago I worked in a machine shop running a punch press a very satisfying  mindless job where the man with three fingers on his right hand set up a press where I would put my hand in the press and hold the part until the rotation was complete I looked at this guy and realize why he was missing 3 fingers so with a lot of hesitation I did this a couple of times until the foreman came around boy was I glad to see him and stopped this insanity, I quit soon after and would never take a job running a punch press again ,still  scared of punch presses to this day. Rick


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## intjonmiller

Jimsehr said:


> When I worked in an US Army  machine shop I ordered some silver solder . And when it did not get to the machine shop, about a month later I found the supply room was using it for bailing wire.
> jimsehr


Oh that's hilarious! And the timing is funny, as I was just shopping for silver solder this morning for an upcoming project. I kept thinking, "this stuff is definitely more expensive than electrical solder."


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## jpfabricator

The last time I used a pair of needle nose pliers to install drum brake springs on the back of a jeep, was the last time I used the "wrong" tool ever.
This particular slip provided me with a new scar about 2" above my right eye.

Sent from somewhere in East Texas Jake Parker


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## intjonmiller

master of none said:


> I might as well chime in also,years ago in my teens I'm 64 now so it was a while ago I worked in a machine shop running a punch press a very satisfying  mindless job where the man with three fingers on his right hand set up a press where I would put my hand in the press and hold the part until the rotation was complete I looked at this guy and realize why he was missing 3 fingers so with a lot of hesitation I did this a couple of times until the foreman came around boy was I glad to see him and stopped this insanity, I quit soon after and would never take a job running a punch press again ,still  scared of punch presses to this day. Rick


Even if he didn't lose his fingers on that exact machine, there's little chance he lost them through some other kind of behavior. Some people just can't be taught, even the hard way.


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## brino

intjonmiller said:


> Some people just can't be taught, even the hard way.



Maybe eventually he would have learned........when he couldn't even count to one.


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## tq60

ScrapMetal said:


> Had to post this...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Looks like this "problem" has been solved a number of ways over time...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -Ron


Looks like a monkee wrench.

Have a few and all similar design.

Adjustable jaw and a hammer.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337Z using Tapatalk


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## vtcnc

Know a guy replacing the upper cylinder on his backhoe. Holes on the backhoe arms didn't line up quite right. Guy pulled the drift pin, stuck his two fingers in to check the edges to see how far off they were...the strap holding the bucket let loose...he lost the ends of two fingers. My buddy told me there was a chain in the bucket...probably wouldn't have been cut on the edge of the hydraulic cylinder body like the nylon strap was.

Most accidents were never accidents to begin with.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk


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## uncle harry

Jimsehr said:


> When I worked in an US Army  machine shop I ordered some silver solder . And when it did not get to the machine shop, about a month later I found the supply room was using it for bailing wire.
> jimsehr



I remember someone who had worked for a company that made components for the military. The maintenance guys needed a shim & cut through the wire mesh on the security crib. Then they took a serialized government tag costing serious money and did their shimming. A very expensive shim!


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## intjonmiller

uncle harry said:


> I remember someone who had worked for a company that made components for the military. The maintenance guys needed a shim & cut through the wire mesh on the security crib. Then they took a serialized government tag costing serious money and did their shimming. A very expensive shim!


Well how were they supposed to know it was valuable or important?!?


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## Steve-626

Whyemier said:


> *The first machining job I had...well the second come to think of it, the engineer for the company told me they (whoever they are, Cresent, General, Craftsman, etc.) spent years trying to find a way to incorporate a hammer into an adjustable wrench.  Never did get it to work.  He told me this after just witnessing me tapping on some something with my adjustable wrench.
> 
> Go figure!
> 
> Guilty!*


https://www.acklandsgrainger.com/en/product/WRENCH-MINERS-HAMMER-HEAD/_/R-RASRS12H

http://catalogue.acklandsgrainger.com/app.php?RelId=6.4.7.18&BookCode=emc15&pagelabel=79&lang=enu


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## T Bredehoft

During my apprenticeship, in the early 1970s, the company installed some German "automatic" machines, (automatic in that when a part rolled in and tripped the limit switch, the machine did its job and that rotor rolled on to the next station.) The installation crew came with the machines, and our company hired a translator. an ex-patriot German who had left Germany in the 1930s to Canada. During the installation period I got to know "Johnny."  At one time during the war, he had been working (in Canada) in a munitions plant making BIG guns. I never found how large the guns were but the Lathe operator rode in a saddle on the carriage. At one time, he had come on shift just as the previous operator had placed a new barrel in the lathe. Johnny asked him if it was secure.  "Yup, its ready to go," he was told.  He climbed up in the saddle and started the spindle and engaged the tool, turning the diameter. The previous operator had done everything right except engage the tailstock. As soon as the tool engaged in the work, the barrel came out of the chuck and landed in Johnny's lap, before knocking him to the floor.  He, of course, survived, but both thighs had been broken. By the 'seventies, he had completely healed, had no limp, but he told me to always check if a part is really secure in what ever machine I was running.


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## Whyemier

Steve-626 said:


> https://www.acklandsgrainger.com/en/product/WRENCH-MINERS-HAMMER-HEAD/_/R-RASRS12H
> 
> http://catalogue.acklandsgrainger.com/app.php?RelId=6.4.7.18&BookCode=emc15&pagelabel=79&lang=enu



Yes but you have to realize this was 42 years ago,


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## Ben Nevis

Shortly before I started working at a steel mill one of the millwrights earned himself a Darwin award. He had a length of rusty pipe that needed to be cleaned, so he chucked it in a pipe threader so he could use a belt sander to remove the rust. Since it stuck out too far to reach while using the foot switch, he stuck a pipe nipple in it to keep it running. He had long hair, and somehow got it caught on the pipe. It flipped him around a couple of times and broke his neck before it scalped him.


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## savarin

When I started my career as a chef we had very large mixing machines, like a giant mixmaster.
These never came with guards in those days but they did have a collar for sloppy mixes so they wouldnt flop out the bowl.
I once saw an apprentice pastry chef use a large flexible pallet knife to skim the mixture as the machine was turning.
Even after being told not to he continued.
The mixer blade caught the pallet knife grabbing it then flinging across the kitchen at near on light speed. It hit the wall and smashed a hole in the ceramic tiles.
Now karma enters the scene.
A couple of months later the same guy was using his hand to pat the large blobs of dough back into the bowl when it caught his thumb.
It actually wound him into the machine breaking his arm in a large number of places. The best part was having to unwind him.

Different hotel, very large 5 star in the middle of london.
The best one ever I heard was about a commis chef we called "Dumbo" not because of his actions but because of his ears.
This hotel had a basement kitchen with 120 chefs working. The Great room held 2000 customers and the smaller ballroom held 240 customers.
Dumbo had the duty of ignighting the gas hot cupboards before service so they were hot when we started serving.
These where two layers high and 30 feet long with multiple burners, each burner  had an interlocked pilot and main tap like so


	

		
			
		

		
	
  the object being to turn the pilot tap, light it then the main tap can turn through the cutout. (no safety cutout in those days, early 70's)
Dumbo went down the line turning all the taps on then was going to ignite at one end and the flame would travel all the way down the line igniting them all.
Picture the scene, all the gas taps on full, Dumbo patting all his pockets for a lighter, ooops, nothing, back to the lift, down to the main kitchen, lights a wax taper , back into the lift, up to the service kitchen, doors open and 
	

		
			
		

		
	



	

		
			
		

		
	
  totally destroyed the kitchen, two stainless counters blown through the wall into the street, blew the wall down into the restaurant and the only thing that saved him we think is the blast blew the lift doors shut in his face preventing the flash from burning him. Needless to say he was sacked.

This same hotel was having renovations done and a new customer lift being installed.
The builders were using jack hammers to make the holes in the floor for the lift shaft.
Started at the bottom and worked upwards. The bozo working on the fourth floor did--- yep you've guessed, worked all around himself like willie coyote and plummeted to the basement breaking most of his body. He survived.
I wasnt on duty that day but no one could stop laughing about it.
I refuse to tell about the ones I have done.


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## intjonmiller

savarin said:


> This same hotel was having renovations done and a new customer lift being installed.
> The builders were using jack hammers to make the holes in the floor for the lift shaft.
> Started at the bottom and worked upwards. The bozo working on the fourth floor did--- yep you've guessed, worked all around himself like willie coyote and plummeted to the basement breaking most of his body. He survived.
> I wasnt on duty that day but no one could stop laughing about it.
> I refuse to tell about the ones I have done.


Wow. You hear about that but you never get to see it. 

Personally, having worked in construction, I would have asked why we didn't start at the top floor. There's no way that the falling debris doesn't cause increasingly large problems the taller that shaft gets. But then again thinking like that is the kind of thing that made me unwelcome in construction.


----------



## Whyemier

*My father, who I had tremendous respect for because of his knowledge, didn't always think it through and figure the correct way to do things.  We were looking for a 'vessel' to heat some pieces I had made, so we could harden them.  He found an old propane gas bottle and decided to cut the top off and use it.  I asked him if he checked to see if it was empty and safe to put the torch to.  He said yes, "Of course, I'm not an idiot!"  I asked him again to make sure.  He complained and wasn't going to do it.  Finally I asked him to crack the valve just to put my mind at ease.  Imagine the surprise when we heard the hiss of gas leaking from the bottle.  Ouch!  That would have hurt!.  We found another bottle from which the valve had been removed so it had time for any gas to dissipate.*


----------



## dlane

The guy next door didn't want to pay for gravel for his driveway, so he got his wood chipper out and commenced to throwing rocks into it thinking it was going to spit out gravel , that didn't last long.


----------



## dlane

And he wanted me to fixit,


----------



## Mark in Indiana

How about this?.......


----------



## ScrapMetal

Mark in Indiana said:


> How about this?.......
> 
> View attachment 127499



Definitely, "been there, done that". 

-Ron


----------



## David S

Yup just like making a lovely soldered wire splice...only to notice that I forgot to put the heat shrink tubing on.

David


----------



## intjonmiller

Story time. Not because the photo needs a story, but because there are so many bozo examples along the way. 

Almost five years ago my sister and her husband bought a weird house. It's kind of famous in their area for being MASSIVE (10,000 sf in an average suburban area where 3,000 sf is on the large side of average). People assume it's a polygamist home because it's strangely sprawling. (I've lived in Utah most of my life and I've never met a polygamist. It's as much legend/myth around here as it is elsewhere. Everyone just *knows* there are polygamists in Utah, but actually finding one is another matter.) It was bank owned, an upstairs pipe had burst when it wasn't occupied and took months to repair everything before they could move in, but they got it for a song. Like no increase in their mortgage payment over their previous 2,000 sf home. 

And we've been fixing it ever since. The previous occupant was a "contractor", and built it as his home and his wife's daycare business. He just kept building. I would love to meet the guy, smack him upside the head, and ask what he was thinking. The plumbing, electrical, and watershed were the first nightmares. I found out early on that some walls have studs that are at 16" OC, while others are at 24" OC. I used to do all sorts of architectural sheet metal, including gutters, so I redid the gutters when his Home Depot steel prefab gutters predictably failed. The level of the roof is all over the place, requiring incredible creativity to get the gutters to drain to locations where downspouts were an option. There are two turret-shaped corner protrusion areas with four theoretically-135-degree-angles like a bay window. Yet not one is 135 degrees, nor are any two the same. And it had to slope rapidly from the center down to both sides to keep up with the roof's weird pitch. If you've ever had the pleasure of doing custom miters you'll understand that it took me almost a full day just to do one of those turrets. 

But this week we discovered something we had somehow missed all this time: the living room, which is clearly supposed to be rectangular, is EXACTLY 1 foot wider at the back than at the front. This time an upstairs toilet overflowed. We hung the ceiling drywall last night and it was a fascinating to look back after we finished the full-size panels and before filling in strips to fix the goofy angles. (Dorks from ServPro who did the water extraction and cleanup cut it out just over 12' out, whereas the damage only went to about 10', so 3 panels wasn't quite enough.) 




Bozos. Bozos everywhere.


----------



## intjonmiller

Oh, and for those who will freak out when they see the non-staggered panels, I used tapered backers on the butt joints, which fell between joists, so they are all tapered joints. MUCH easier to tape and finish continuous lines than interrupted ones.


----------



## Eddyde

Here's one that irked me big time the other day, file this under Bozo design flaws. I was installing a "specialized" holder for lead a lined vest and gloves to be used in an X-Ray room,  nothing fancy, just some thin walled tubing bent into hooks and a stamped base, not even stainless just powder coated. However, the design put the mounting screw holes directly behind the hooks that projected out from the base so that it was impossible to actually use the holes. I had to drill new holes to get it installed, no huge deal but because it's "medical" this thing cost a ridiculous amount of money, If there was a HF equivelent it would be about $10 this cost well over 10X that!


----------



## master of none

Hey Eddyde I hope you called them and complemented them on there superior workmanship .   Rick


----------



## intjonmiller

Okay, here's one of my own bozo moments. 

A little over a year ago my brother gave me our father's old radial arm saw and surface/universal grinder, a Covel Type 6. I had been wanting both (though I expected to get a mill and a lathe first). I spent half a day cleaning and lubricating everything, then I just looked at it. What a cool machine! 

I didn't have anything really worth grinding, but I had lots of flat stock A36 laying around, so I put a piece on the rusty magnetic chuck, with the rail in place for extra holding power, and plugged it in. I was too impatient to actually wire up a power switch and the shop-made safety cover didn't fit so I needed to modify it, but I was just going to try it out with the wheel that was already on it to see how it would do as-is, so no big deal, right? I just couldn't wait to try it out. I should have. 

Apparently I had over-lubricated the vertical column adjustment because the normal vibrations caused it to gradually lower as I was grinding. When I realized it was working its way down into the material I was in the middle of the workpiece and it was now taking a dangerously heavy grind, so any horizontal movement would put it into and even heavier grind. The power cord was plugged in immediately behind the machine and the vertical adjustment is on top, behind the wheel. The only way to turn it off would be to reach through the plane of soon-to-be-detonating rapidly rotating grinding wheel. I just had to stand back and watch. A moment later it esploded and I unplugged it, gathered up the pieces of the wheel that I could find and put them with my other bozo moment reminders. Fortunately that's a small collection, but I do wish it would stop growing. 

I highly recommend keeping those mementos on display, by the way. It is very healthy to be reminded of our ability to not always think ahead.


----------



## wawoodman

I once got a plan for a wall unit drawn by one of the "premier" local designers of the moment. He called for pocket doors into a cabinet with a full width shelf.

And I had a really hard time explaing to him why it wouldn't work.


----------



## John Hasler

intjonmiller said:


> The only way to turn it off would be to reach through the plane of soon-to-be-detonating rapidly rotating grinding wheel. I just had to stand back and watch.


No circuit breaker?


----------



## intjonmiller

Not reasonably accessible at that moment. It's in the house.


----------



## Mark in Indiana

About 2 years ago, my neighbor asked me to look at a new sink disposal installation that was performed by a plumbing contractor, not some jackleg.
The problem is that when she flipped the wall switch, it would spark and trip the breaker. When she confronted the installation technician about the electrical problem, late in the afternoon, his response was " I can't fix it. I'm not an Electrician". At the time, her husband (a Civil Engineer) was out of town, not due back until the next day.

When I got there, I noticed that the disposal was mounted and piped correctly. However, the _*Professional Installation Technician *_wired the *motor wires together *and the* supply hot to neutral*. Also, he didn't install a separate ground. The wall switch that operated the disposal had exploded.

I took a picture of the botched wiring job (see below), disconnected any unsafe wiring, and sent the picture to her husband. I figured that he could take appropriate action. Unfortunately, he couldn't get anywhere with the contractor. 
Assuming that he's a Civil Engineer, he would know where to get the best bang for the buck, if he had to file a complaint at the county office for contractor's licenses. 

I came back, corrected the wiring and installed a heavier switch in the wall. I don't know if the plumbing contractor made right or not.


----------



## intjonmiller

Mark in Indiana said:


> When she confronted the installation technician about the electrical problem, late in the afternoon, his response was " I can't fix it. I'm not an Electrician".


I don't understand the complaint. He's clearly right; he's not an electrician.  

Good job being there for your neighbor, and for having a clue.


----------



## John Hasler

"Jackleg" and "contractor" are not mutually exclusive terms, as your neighbor learned.  I hope he didn't pay the guy.


----------



## jim18655

I see he forgot to connect the ground also, unless it's BX cable. Probably more of a concern than the backwards wiring.


----------



## Eddyde

Speaking of "Jacklegs" Here's one about an "electrician": I the contractor, was building a restaurant back in the early 90's, we were pushing the hours to meet a deadline. One evening a couple of "electricians" were hooking up a 10 hp 3 phase fan for the exhaust hood, I was downstairs when one of the "electricians" headed up to the roof to make the final connections. As he seemed somewhat green, I asked him if he was sure he knew what he was doing, "yeah man no problem, I've done 3 phase before"... After about 45 minutes of him coming back on the walkie talkie "I'm almost done" I went up to the roof to see what was going on. As I emerged from the stair bulkhead, I could just make out his silhouette, about 30 ft away, barely back lit by the penlight he was working by. I then I head him tell his partner "ok let's try it" a split second later he was engulfed in a blinding ball of blue plasma, with a report almost as loud as an M-80. At first I thought he was dead, the beam from my 4 D cell Maglite revealed a still body, eyebrows & lashes gone, his face and arms the hue of a bad sunburn, but then he began to moan a bit... As he was going into the ambulance he muttered "I forgot were the neutral gets connected"... There was nothing but small stubs of charred wire in the box, everything else was vaporized so there was no telling what he thought was the "neutral". Investigating further, I found they had not brought the proper breaker, instead they wired it directly to the 200 amp sub panel breaker! The other "electrician" said "we thought it would be ok for the test", The "incident" also blew one of the 400 amp fuses on the building mains. All in all, the guy was lucky, though he was temporarily blinded, he got out of the hospital the next day and returned to work a couple of weeks later.


----------



## MSD0

intjonmiller said:


> In that same shop I mentioned at the top, I was wearing my safety glasses under my welding hood. Guys were giving me a hard time about that, like it's somehow not manly enough to be careful. When one of them was grinding something nearby and I suddenly found myself watching a piece of shrapnel cooling just half an inch in front of my right eyeball I had an opportunity to show them exactly why I wear them. Nevermind the fact that the UV glasses prevent getting burned by the reflected arc light, they're also very useful when the helmet is up.


Had a coworker get a chip in his eye and attempted to use compressed air to blow it out lol. Let's just say it didn't turn out well.


----------



## master of none

MSD0 said:


> Had a coworker get a chip in his eye and attempted to use compressed air to blow it out lol. Let's just say it didn't turn out well.



did he ever find his eyeball?


----------



## intjonmiller

MSD0 said:


> Had a coworker get a chip in his eye and attempted to use compressed air to blow it out lol. Let's just say it didn't turn out well.


Oh no! Ow! I think the OSHA regulations about safety air nozzles are a little extreme, but to point ANY air nozzle right at your eye?? Wow. 

I once thought I had scratched my eye while restoring a motorcycle. I went to my ophthalmologist and he examined my eye under a microscope, and suddenly became rather excited.

Him: "Wow! I've never seen anything like that before! It's like a perfect glass sphere." 

Me: "Oh, that would be glass blasting media. ... Like sandblasting, but we don't actually use sand. I guess I got one of them in my eye."

Him, after carefully removing it with a cotton swab: "Can I keep it? I have a collection of things I've removed from patients' eyes."  

That hurt a lot. But it most likely got there by rubbing my eye. Can you imagine actually blasting your eye?? I'm tearing up just thinking about it.


----------



## MSD0

intjonmiller said:


> Oh no! Ow! I think the OSHA regulations about safety air nozzles are a little extreme, but to point ANY air nozzle right at your eye?? Wow.
> 
> I once thought I had scratched my eye while restoring a motorcycle. I went to my ophthalmologist and he examined my eye under a microscope, and suddenly became rather excited.
> 
> Him: "Wow! I've never seen anything like that before! It's like a perfect glass sphere."
> 
> Me: "Oh, that would be glass blasting media. ... Like sandblasting, but we don't actually use sand. I guess I got one of them in my eye."
> 
> Him, after carefully removing it with a cotton swab: "Can I keep it? I have a collection of things I've removed from patients' eyes."
> 
> That hurt a lot. But it most likely got there by rubbing my eye. Can you imagine actually blasting your eye?? I'm tearing up just thinking about it.


I've had the same thing happen with aluminum oxide. Didn't do a good enough job cleaning it out of my hair.


----------



## Mark in Indiana

Another electrician story:
Long hours are a recipe for disaster. At a refinery that I worked for before retiring, we had a scheduled plant wide shutdown for 2 weeks. Along with all of us, who were required to work 12 hour days, there were 200 assorted electricians, millwrights, mechanics, boilermakers, operators, and laborers. All journeymen! These guys & gals were required to work 16 hour days.

A new 40 foot conveyor was installed, powered by a 20hp, 3 phase motor. I was assigned to start this conveyor to ensure that the installation was complete. When I pressed the manual start button, the breaker tripped. I then locked out the circuit and immediately went to the motor to check the terminal box. After removing the cover, I saw that the ground wire and the 3 power wires were connected, but the power wires were not taped up!


----------



## intjonmiller

I started this thread with a story about a shop where I installed a walk-in (and then HURRY out!) powder coating oven. After I installed the oven structure (3' from the wall on two sides, to allow for access for maintenance, and to accommodate any fire code requirements and then some) the exhaust fan and motor mount, the furnace blower and mounts, and the spray wall (open air version of a spray booth because the owner was cheap) with its 24" coaxial fan and 7 HP 3 phase motor, etc., I had to hire a mechanical contractor or plumber to finish the gas train and install a triple-wall 8" exhaust duct, and an electrician to wire it all up. (The manufacturer wouldn't send the technician to do the startup procedure without signed statements from those professionals with readings for gas pressure and current capacity, and their state license numbers.) 

The other half of our building was occupied by mechanical contractors, so that was easy. But we had the hardest time getting an electrician to even show up. We finally got one and he estimated a day and a half for all the conduit and wiring (the control panel, with multiple VFDs and so forth, was very complicated). Great! Do it! 

I go about some other tasks I had taken on in the shop, letting him know I'm around if he has any questions. 

So I go check on him a few hours later and find that he has run the conduit to the spray wall, from the brick wall, AT CHEST HEIGHT. It didn't occur to him that at some point someone might need to walk through this path so wide a powered wheelchair could fit. I pointed out the problem and he was like, "Well why didn't you tell me?!" And I was like, "Because I didn't think I had to spell out something so obvious!" He tried to argue that it wasn't an issue and we could just go around the other way. Eventually I realized he was arguing because he had already snaked the wires and he would be short of he had to drop to ground level or raise it to the top of the structure and then drop down. I gave him permission to install a junction on the wall so it wouldn't all be wasted. He seemed very grateful (he would have had to eat the cost of a lot of wire otherwise) and the rest of the project went very well as he asked me any time he had any questions.


----------



## brino

Eddyde said:


> he got out of the hospital the next day and returned to work a couple of weeks later.



holy crap......hopefully at a new job, where he had less responsibility and could do less harm; "Would you like fries with that?"

-brino


----------



## JimDawson

About 20 years ago when I was a field tech for a large manufacturer of woodworking equipment, a local tech and I did an install of a machine.  The local tech did the wiring of the incoming power.  The incoming power connected to rail mounted terminal blocks in the control panel.  Apparently one of the standard terminal blocks was damaged so he grabbed a green/yellow (ground) terminal block to replace the damaged terminal.  One of the problems with doing this is that the ground blocks have an INTERNAL ground connection that connects to the rail.  So now we have one leg of  480 Volt 3 phase connected directly to ground.

I didn't really check what he was doing because I thought he was competent.  My mistake!

When we were ready and standing to the side of the feeder panel, I flipped on the 60 amp breaker at the feeder panel.  *The entire plant went dark.  *The 200 amp breaker in the feeder panel also tripped. 

The good news is that the plant main power distribution panel was equipped with a GFCI that was fast enough and had sufficient interrupting capacity that nothing blew up.   I suspect that the main plant power supply was in the range of 2000 amps, we got lucky that time.


----------



## Andre

Using a self feeding spade bit in the drill press in a piece of hickory not clamped down. It helicoptered (of course the spade bits had a hex shank so they wouldn't spin in the chuck) and hit my hand. Felt like it was broken in pieces but after a few hours the pain dissipated.

After that accident I literally hid that Craftsman 12 piece set somewhere in the house so I wouldn't use them again. I still have yet to find them..... even after 4-6 years....... I'll find them eventually...


----------



## John Hasler

brino said:


> "Would you like fries with that?"


Surely you wouldn't trust him with a deep fat fryer?


----------



## bosephus

in the mid 90's  i worked at a lime stone quarry not to far out of Elwood city pa  .   on the job we had a quite large 60 yard dragline stripping over burden .  
one night a couple fellows snuck onto to the property to steal some copper power cable .   

the first piece of cable they tried to steal  was one of three  7800 volt supply cables to the drag  .    im not real sure what the guy with the ax was thinking when when he swung it it into the cable 
but the big green flash that lit up the night sky  and killed him was quite impressive  .   his partner was found about 50 feet away  with burns over about 80% of his body  .


----------



## mcostello

7800 volts would tend to have a large arc.


----------



## uncle harry

mcostello said:


> 7800 volts would tend to have a large arc.



As a reference, back when I was in charge of our R&D lab at a large sign company we made a Jacobs ladder. We used 1/2 " copper water tubing, 2 pieces 6' long.  To power it we connected the tubes to the output of a transformer used to bombard neon tube units for processing.  The output of the transformer peaked @ 30,000 volts & nearly 1 amp.  The arc was as thick as a man's thumb. The gap at the top of the ladder was 11".  We made it a point to stay WAY back from that one !


----------



## TOOLMASTER

in a nutshell....





__ https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=264217210591361


----------



## master of none

It would be funner if it wasn't so true.   Rick


----------



## TommyD

The electricians wiring new and rewiring existing equipment have;

 Wired 3 of my 4 lathes correctly, the fourth ran backwards.
 Wired my surface grinder backwards, LUCKILY I way wary after the lathe wiring that I jogged the on switch, it ran inreverse unscrewing the lock nut causing the wheel to come off the spindle and bounce off the mag chuck. Luckily I had the table all the way back and it only hit the edge. The wheel was fine
 Wired my new punch presses for 480, too bad they were 240. The tech turned them on to go through the installation when the special item fuses blew.
 Wired 240 outlets under an air line drip leg.
 Didn't read the general notes and missed they were to wire receptacles for our new welders, we bought 3 each MIG and stick/TIG welders, and hardwired the stick/MIG welders making the MIGs unable to be used. Kinda defeated the whole purpose of them having wheels on them all.

Not bad for liscensed electricians, huh?


----------



## John Hasler

TommyD said:


> The electricians wiring new and rewiring existing equipment have;


Good thing that the government licenses and regulates these guys to protect you against incompetence.


----------



## MikeWi

Back in the 90's I had the job of designing the computer room at the new building my place was moving to, and hiring the contractors.  I drew up complete floor plans with physical layout, power consumption calculated, number of outlets for each leg from the UPS (it weighed 12K pounds), and the total number of btu's it would all generate so I knew how  many tons of cooling to buy.  We had a great electrical contractor that we used at the old location, and I hired them for the new one.  Turns out that the new location was in a different county, so a different branch of this contractor showed up to do the job.  It's difficult to adequately describe how awful this group was, but on top of being so slow that I wanted to buy a whip to move them along, they:

Decided that I wanted an unreasonable amount of outlets under the floor (they didn't understand "how we could have so many things to plug in") and put in about half of them instead.  I had to resort to power strips on move-in day to get all the 110v items powered up.  I left the company a few months later, but  I heard that it really became a serious issue later on.  This means that since someone is just picking a place to plug in now, they probably have too many items on one circuit which can cause the breaker to trip.

Installed the wrong receptacle at a critical location. (luckily I thought ahead and insisted the foreman and his crew be on hand for the move-in, so l got him to fix it right away)
Nearly wrecked a 1 ton printer lifting it from the ground thru a 4th story window by rigging it improperly, and even then it would not have got inside because the crane couldn't place it in the room, as the window space it was going thru started 18" up from the floor and it couldn't reach past it far enough.  I had the old computer room ramp (had to build a new one for code) still around and re-built it under the printer as it was hanging so we could set it down. They had volunteered to do the lift into the building because they had all sorts of experience...
My favorite is when they installed the 6 ton UPS for the room.  I can't remember the exact details, but essentially they had a spare power cable inside the cabinet and they didn't know what to do with it.  I made a logical sounding suggestion to splice it with another cable.  Can't remember why now, but it sounded right, but I was asking them why that wouldn't work.  I don't know anything about that kind of electrical work.  Next thing I know they're doing exactly that.  It worked fine, but why are they listening to me...


----------



## John Hasler

When I was at U of M hospital there were many instances of the staff electricans "improving" or "correcting" my designs.  I always got the "credit", of course, and there was never any money in the budget to do it over.  Never had that problem with the outside contractors, though.  They always either did exactly what the drawings said or put through a change order request (which was usually sensible and got approved).


----------



## TommyD

John Hasler said:


> Good thing that the government licenses and regulates these guys to protect you against incompetence.



I work in a State facility, these guys are State authorized vendors that are doing ths work. I can only wonder where else and how many jobs they have messed up. To havethem come back to fix their mistakes takes forever.


----------



## karim

Not strictly machining-related, but many years ago, I worked for a local architect, and one of my jobs was construction administration, which amounts to periodically inspecting the contractors'  work to make sure it conforms to the approved designs.

One time I went to a residential site and from the street, I could see something terrible was wrong. The roofing contractor had missed the outer corner of the building with the hip-rafter by nearly 8". Instead of, you know, fixing it, his crew went ahead and framed up the roof, and then proceeded to sheath it, and had even started cutting & laying the 5-E crimp steel roof... even though by missing the corner by 8", the one edge of the roof was more than 1.5 feet  lower than the other side of the hip... guess they thought no-one would notice, LOL.

Another time, I remember we got a call on a hospital expansion project... the workers were supposed to be extending the parking lot, and had encountered a large (10') stone that needed excavating... Someone on the crew decided blasting was the way to go... and apparently had the right licenses, etc, because unfortunately he did have access to explosives... never got to see it, but I heard that the stone cracked into 3 major fragments, each several feet across... and sent them hurtling into the active parking lot they were extending... I understand they managed to total over 20 cars.


----------



## intjonmiller

That's incredible. My father worked in the explosives industry (designing packaging and delivery systems for emulsion-type commercial explosives, among other things). I've had many discussions with him about the different types of explosive energy. What this guy used was "bubble" energy, which displaces rock. What he needed (other than a more appropriate solution than explosives) was shock energy, which would turn it into gravel or dust, depending on the specifics of the rock composition, how it was bored, the explosive composition, and how it was packed. Getting that wrong in mining and "large scale landscaping" (turning mountain islands into airports, for instance) is VERY costly. Nothing like turning a load of coal into pure coal dust instead of usable (and far less dangerous, short- and long-term) lump coal. 

We went out to lunch today and he was telling me about some of those properties again, for context about one of his inventions. So funny to then read a real-world example of it being done wrong this evening.


----------



## jim18655

Most of the so called electricians know better and have the training but choose to ignore the codes and specs. Sometimes to try and save money or make more money for for their employer. They look good when they get done in less time or use fewer parts than in the bid. I worked with a lot of these guys over the years. They're the heroes of the company and get the gravy jobs and it's never their fault when they get caught. Usually the project manager or estimator is expecting the cost cutting measures. I'm proud to say i never played the games and the customer got what they wanted or what they needed if I saw problems or improvements. 
Glad I'm semi-retired and out of the field work.


----------



## intjonmiller

Cross-posting from another thread because this belongs here.  

Once I used JB Weld to do a thread repair on an aluminum motorcycle valve cover. I read a tip online about coating the screw in a thin layer of grease to keep it from binding to the epoxy. It was an unusual size banjo bolt for the oil feed line, so there was no helicoil-type insert available. 

A tiny bit of epoxy made it into the oil feed hole and I starved the engine of oil. But I didn't know until I finished my rebuild days later, around 1:00 am. I couldn't wait, as I hadn't had the bike together in months. I fired it up, put my gear on, and rode out into the night. 

For about 2 miles. Eventually the assembly lube proved insufficient and the engine siezed. And I got to push my 600 pound bike home for two miles, in July, in my full gear. And face my (now ex-) wife. 

I haven't used that stuff much since then. Kind of left a bad taste in my mouth.


----------



## kvt

Well I just had one,   Out in the shop using a small angle grinder with a wire brush to clean loose paint, and it caught an edge on the metal.   Pulled out of my hand hit the floor with the switch locked on.   Bounced up and caught my pant leg, went up my pant leg to about the knee before it fully entangled in the fabric.    Then spun until it stalled out.    Have a big spot on my leg now the is like road rash.   
Though I was being safe had on my leather apron but it goes behind it when it hit the floor and bounced.    also got my hand a little while trying to grab it to stop it on my leg.    Ouch.    that one hurt.


----------



## intjonmiller

I hate that. I'm sure you've replayed it many times since then, recognizing where you should have acted differently. And those rough abrasions really suck.


----------



## cjtoombs

Wire brushes on angle grinders were never a good idea.  I had one kick back on me and wound itself into the sweatshirt I was wearing.  scratched my chest up a little but mostly scared the crap out of me.  I walked into the house with the grinder still hanking from my chest, had the wife help me cut it loose from the shirt.  She got a good laugh out of it.


----------



## intjonmiller

Wives can really be jerks like that.


----------



## Steve Shannon

cjtoombs said:


> Wire brushes on angle grinders were never a good idea.  I had one kick back on me and wound itself into the sweatshirt I was wearing.  scratched my chest up a little but mostly scared the crap out of me.  I walked into the house with the grinder still hanking from my chest, had the wife help me cut it loose from the shirt.  She got a good laugh out of it.


I did something similar while working pipeline 40 years ago. 19 years old, working alone with a wire brush in an angle grinder, a tool which I never had used. I had on a flannel shirt with loose tails, front and rear. The brush wound itself into the loose tail in front and stopped half a second later just below my neck. If I'd had the trigger lock on I wouldn't be here today.


----------



## John Hasler

kvt said:


> with the switch locked on


That's always a bad idea.


----------



## kvt

Bad thing is this one the trigger auto locks on with out my help.  Cheap old HF one that have had for a long time. (one of thing from HF that has lasted good)


----------



## sgisler

They are dangerous. Have this to show for being in a hurry and wearing loose cuff gloves - bad idea. 


Got too close and the wire cup sucked the cuff in. Ouch. 
My last bad encounter, 20 years or so ago, when a wire cup caught in som scrollwork I was cleaning left me with a nice scar under my chin. Think about that day every time I shave. 


Stan,
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


----------



## John Hasler

kvt said:


> Bad thing is this one the trigger auto locks on with out my help.


Yes, I ve got an otherwise nice drill like that.


----------



## Steve Shannon

kvt said:


> Bad thing is this one the trigger auto locks on with out my help.  Cheap old HF one that have had for a long time. (one of thing from HF that has lasted good)


Why not remove the lock?


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## John Hasler

Steve Shannon said:


> Why not remove the lock?


Sometimes they build it into the switch in such way as to make that very difficult.


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## intjonmiller

This is why I prefer paddle switches.


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## TOOLMASTER

cjtoombs said:


> Wire brushes on angle grinders were never a good idea.  I had one kick back on me and wound itself into the sweatshirt I was wearing.  scratched my chest up a little but mostly scared the crap out of me.  I walked into the house with the grinder still hanking from my chest, had the wife help me cut it loose from the shirt.  She got a good laugh out of it.


ANY spinning wire brush sucks....hate those things...


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## TOOLMASTER

don't be this guy. chose your wooden beams carefully.

not to mention stay out of the engine compartment while lifting an engine..


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## RJSakowski

John Hasler said:


> Sometimes they build it into the switch in such way as to make that very difficult.


I had a Craftsman 3/8" drill from the sixties that had the lock button right next to the trigger switch.  It would frequently lock the drill on in use.  I finally cut it off flush with the housing; end of problem.  I could still use the lock if I wanted to but had to use a drill bit to push it to lock.


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## silence dogood

Steve Shannon said:


> Why not remove the lock?


The stupid trigger lock would sometimes get stuck on lock mode. So I cut off the plastic tab.  Now every time when I release the button, it turns off.


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## John Hasler

RJSakowski said:


> I had a Craftsman 3/8" drill from the sixties that had the lock button right next to the trigger switch.  It would frequently lock the drill on in use.  I finally cut it off flush with the housing; end of problem.  I could still use the lock if I wanted to but had to use a drill bit to push it to lock.


I had one (don't recall what brand) that had a two position trigger swittch (not variable speed).  If you depressed the trigger all the way it locked.  Depressing it all the way again released it.


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## kvt

Think that was an old Milwaukee  My dad had one like that,   1/2 Drive gear reduction,   T handle on the top,  and D handle on the back.   Problem I watch that thing break 2 2X4s out of a wall where they were trying to drill anchors.    The bit caught on the rebar, and the only thing that stopped it was it spun until it unplugged,   My dad refused to let me near that drill.


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## MikeWi

kvt said:


> Think that was an old Milwaukee  My dad had one like that,   1/2 Drive gear reduction,   T handle on the top,  and D handle on the back.   Problem I watch that thing break 2 2X4s out of a wall where they were trying to drill anchors.    The bit caught on the rebar, and the only thing that stopped it was it spun until it unplugged,   My dad refused to let me near that drill.


I have a brother with permanent damage to the hinge of his jaw from one of those.  Drilling into concrete from on top of a step ladder where he worked.  The bit caught, spun the drill into his face, and knocked him out cold and of course, from the ladder.  He can't open his jaw fully, and the doctors say they risk far greater damage if they try to fix it surgically.

Not a fan of wire wheels either.  Besides the current complaints I'll add how the dang things seem to fling wires everywhere like a needle gun.


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## jim18655

Hilti TM7 has one the worst buttons of any drill I've used. If you hold the drill in your left hand it is almost  guaranteed to lock on. I always pop them out with a small screwdriver.


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## TOOLMASTER

YUP


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## intjonmiller

With a proper steel-cutting blade, and considering that he is wearing appropriate safety gear and standing as far as possible out of the path of the metal should it kick back, I don't see anything wrong with this. I've cut thousands of linear feet of metal (steel and aluminum, including 14 gauge steel) with those blades, and usually in a handheld circular saw. If the rollers on the panel saw like this one had been in better shape I would have happily used it in one of the shops where I used those blades.


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## dlane

Need one of these


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## intjonmiller

I've been posting in the POTD thread about the work on my mother's house. Here are some bozo discoveries along the way: 

There were four different circuits in use for different outlets in the tiny kitchen, not even including the oven. We're now running the wall outlets there on one outlet, which freed up a substantial amount for a new run to the garage, as the power situation out there has always been frustrating. We can do because...
The ceiling fan in the living room was installed by my mother's once-fiance. I won't pretend for one second that I was sad when she dropped that bozo. He installed it where, as is typical in older homes, there was no light fixture in the living room. We were rather impressed and entirely surprised to find that it was installed securely. We found that out when tracing all of the weird electrical arrangements. Instead of its power dropping straight down the wall from the outlet into the basement where there are no ceiling panels and exactly where the electrical panel is, it was run out over the garage and tied into a box just inside the attic access. The fact that it was tied up inside a box was another good sign, but it was the last one. From there it went out a foot, poked through the drywall (just the wire, no fixture of any sort), and over to the garage door opener, where it was spliced to a lamp cord of low gauge with wire nuts hanging out in the open air, then plugged into the same outlet as the garage door opener. So we're running a new line for the ceiling fan and another for dedicated power in the garage as long as we're already there. 
Just below the light/fan switch there was an outlet which my mother swears was there before she moved in, but my brothers and I are skeptical. You see, it came up through the wall that we removed, so we had to trace it back and remove it safely from the panel. It turns out it PASSED THE ELECTRICAL PANEL, snaked around into the utility closet, and got _spliced to a lamp cord of low gauge with wire nuts hanging out in the open air, then plugged into the same outlet as the water softener._ I mean both lamp cords were even white and of similar length. And of course neither had a ground wire. And both emerged in their final place with 12 gauge yellow romex, giving every impression of 15 amp safe capacity. Do you know what happens when you overload lamp cord with that kind of current and no ground wire? The one in the basement was in direct contact with the wooden joists. 
I have a Greenlee multimeter, 120 volt circuit wiring analyzer (tells if the ground wire is present/absent/weak, if the polarity is switched, if everything is okay, etc.), and non-contact voltage detector. They have served me well for over a decade. At the beginning of the demolition we used the voltage detector to turn off all the breakers to ensure that none of the wires we were working around were live. Near the end of the day, just barely after it got dark, my brother was about to pull the 240v line out of the floor. "Did we check this one?" "Yes, we did." "Let's check it again, just to make sure." So I handed it to him and he confirmed that it was not live. I even brushed it against my shirt as I always do, and it flashed and beeped from the static electricity, so I know it was working. Usually I also test a live circuit but we didn't have any nearby that were still live. So he went ahead and pulled the wire nuts off of and as he pulled the wire out of the old metal box it arced with a LOUD pop and tripped the 100 amp breaker. HOW?? He had just tested it! I saw him do it! He passed it along quite a bit of the wire, on both sides of it.  Fortunately he had on good gloves appropriate for the task. I can't get him to keep his safety glasses on his face, so he was fortunate that the box shielded him from any injury there. The detector still worked fine on other circuits after that, but I think I'm going to upgrade to the Milwaukee with a louder beep and an integrated LED flashlight. Crazy. 
There was a second 240v line just a few feet down the wall, which had wire nuts and electrical tape on the ends. Period. This is the other side of that same wall directly above the electrical panel. No idea why they didn't just remove it entirely, or why there were ever even two lines. Either could have been reached from the position of the range in the middle. Yet another potential house fire.


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## John Hasler

intjonmiller said:


> Usually I also test a live circuit but we didn't have any nearby that were still live. So he went ahead and pulled the wire nuts off of and as he pulled the wire out of the old metal box it arced with a LOUD pop and tripped the 100 amp breaker. HOW?? He had just tested it! I saw him do it! He passed it along quite a bit of the wire, on both sides of it. Fortunately he had on good gloves appropriate for the task. I can't get him to keep his safety glasses on his face, so he was fortunate that the box shielded him from any injury there. The detector still worked fine on other circuits after that, but I think I'm going to upgrade to the Milwaukee with a louder beep and an integrated LED flashlight. Crazy.


You should never rely on those detectors to assure you that a circuit is not hot.  That is not what they are for,


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## intjonmiller

I thought that was precisely what they were for. If not that then what?? They aren't sensitive enough to trace a wire that is behind a wall.


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## intjonmiller

I mean if it can't reliably detect 240v 30 or 50 amp current when in contact with the wire insulation, then what good are they for anything at all?


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## Eddyde

I only trust a solenoid type electrical tester. You can see, hear and feel when in contact with an energized circuit.


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## TOOLMASTER

mcostello said:


> 7800 volts would tend to have a large arc.




stings too...


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## intjonmiller

Eddyde said:


> I only trust a solenoid type electrical tester. You can see, hear and feel when in contact with an energized circuit.


You can do that with your bare hands!


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## rdean

you might want to rethink the kitchen outlets.  If all are on one circuit then if you use the toaster and say a microwave oven you will trip the breaker.  The National electrical Code recommends and many local and state inspectors require multiple circuits.

Ray


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## intjonmiller

The old kitchen had a separate circuit for EVERY outlet, and another for lights. Major overkill, and made it difficult to do any electrical work, like replacing an outlet or switch, because every time you thought that breaker was off it wasn't yet. The new kitchen is in another room. Now the outlets in the area that used to be the kitchen are on one circuit. One is in a coat closet (battery charger or whatever is needed), one is on the outside of that wall, and one on the wall adjacent to it. Not going to exceed the current rating unless she decides to set up a bunch of power tools she doesn't own or know how to use, in her living room, and doesn't use the outlets on the other walls of the room.

The explanation about moving the kitchen is in the POTD thread. I didn't explain fully here.


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## Eddyde

rdean said:


> you might want to rethink the kitchen outlets.  If all are on one circuit then if you use the toaster and say a microwave oven you will trip the breaker.  The National electrical Code recommends and many local and state inspectors require multiple circuits.
> 
> Ray


Yes I believe the minimum is 2 circuits for wall outlets in addition to dedicated circuits for each appliance.


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## Eddyde

intjonmiller said:


> One is in a coat closet (battery charger or whatever is needed)


As far as I know, an outlet in a closet is a code violation.


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## intjonmiller

Not something I have ever heard, and if it's a violation to have one in a large, walk-in closet (pictured in the POTD thread) then I'll risk it. Too much utility in having it, no point in not.


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## intjonmiller

In fact, many apartment laundry units in closets would be against code then, among other examples I can think of having seen over the years, including when I worked in construction. I'm betting that's just a myth.


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## John Hasler

intjonmiller said:


> I mean if it can't reliably detect 240v 30 or 50 amp current when in contact with the wire insulation, then what good are they for anything at all?



There was no current in his circuit: it was open.  But basically, they are unreliable.
http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/198360/how-does-a-non-contact-voltage-tester-work


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## John Hasler

intjonmiller said:


> The old kitchen had a separate circuit for EVERY outlet, and another for lights. Major overkill, and made it difficult to do any electrical work, like replacing an outlet or switch, because every time you thought that breaker was off it wasn't yet.


Every breaker should have a number.  Every outlet should be labeled with the number of the breaker controlling it.   The label can be behind the cover in a residence.  It's also useful to make a map and put it in the panel.


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## John Hasler

intjonmiller said:


> I mean if it can't reliably detect 240v 30 or 50 amp current when in contact with the wire insulation, then what good are they for anything at all?



There was no current in his circuit: it was open.  But basically, they are unreliable.
http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/198360/how-does-a-non-contact-voltage-tester-work


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## intjonmiller

They were ALL open. The devices attached (such as an outlet, where the circuit is still open when you stick the prong of the sensor in the receptacle) had been removed a week earlier. They work anyway, on the hot side.


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## Eddyde

intjonmiller said:


> In fact, many apartment laundry units in closets would be against code then, among other examples I can think of having seen over the years, including when I worked in construction. I'm betting that's just a myth.


I know for sure it's against code here, because it's a common request from my customers who want to add an outlet in a closet, the electricians quickly point out that it cannot be done legally. A washer dryer installed on dedicated circuits would be okay as those don't count as general use outlets, also closet could become a "laundry" when the job is filed. That being said, most of those installations are probably done illegally.


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## Eddyde

intjonmiller said:


> Not something I have ever heard, and if it's a violation to have one in a large, walk-in closet (pictured in the POTD thread) then I'll risk it. Too much utility in having it, no point in not.


I imagine the reasoning is, closets sometimes get crammed full of stuff and some electrical device plugged in there could easily get buried and overheat....  Also, the codes were probably implemented long before the wave of rechargeable devices, thus no reasonable need for an outlet in a closet was envisioned. 
I don't think there's any problem in having an outlet in a closet as long as proper sense is used.


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## Eddyde

intjonmiller said:


> You can do that with your bare hands!


Ha Ha, been there done that... Seriously, those no contact testers are junk, if you are going to do electrical work get a proper solenoid tester, sometimes you don't get a second chance.


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## intjonmiller

The fact is it has worked reliably for a decade, it worked on every other circuit in the home, and it's still working right now. It is *science*, not dark magic. There is a reason why it would not work in one situation when working in every other. The question was about identifying what it was about that specific situation which caused the failure. 

Incidentally the products are all listed as being precisely for this purpose, by reputable manufacturers including Greenlee, Milwaukee, and Klein. They are a standard tool used by every professional electrician I have ever seen (a limited selection, granted, but still representing at least a couple dozen professionals by now) in every grade of work (including low voltage DC, contrary to the demonstrably false claims made in the stackexchange discussion, ironically by the very person who also claimed that they are so unreliable). Perhaps there is something they knew about when to trust them and when not to, but I didn't know to ask at the time.


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## intjonmiller

John Hasler said:


> Every breaker should have a number.  Every outlet should be labeled with the number of the breaker controlling it.   The label can be behind the cover in a residence.  It's also useful to make a map and put it in the panel.



Yep. It also should have a ground wire connected to every outlet and light fixture, and not be wired through lamp cords plugged into other outlets. That's precisely why I posted this in precisely this thread. Because it was a bozo that wired it up, and did not label the breakers. We have corrected that as we have traced and/or replaced the wiring.


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## intjonmiller

Eddyde said:


> I imagine the reasoning is, closets sometimes get crammed full of stuff and some electrical device plugged in there could easily get buried and overheat....  Also, the codes were probably implemented long before the wave of rechargeable devices, thus no reasonable need for an outlet in a closet was envisioned.
> I don't think there's any problem in having an outlet in a closet as long as proper sense is used.



Without an actual code citation it's just tribal knowledge and myth. After you stated that earlier I searched and all I found were more anecdotal claims, and one guy who actually cited a section of the NEC which lists closets among the places where a particular outlet wiring rule applied. The rule was not "don't wire an outlet in any of these places." 

The most logical explanation I can think of is that some electrician at some point didn't feel like doing the work to install an outlet in a particular closet and claimed that it was against code (or in some more specific rule it was against code, but it was mistakenly applied to all closets) and it's just been passed around that way ever since. It wouldn't be the first time a "code" was "cited" for such purposes.


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## Eddyde

I asked my electrician, he said it is definitely not allowed here in NYC but is allowed under the NEC.


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## intjonmiller

That makes more sense. NYC is nuts.  (I lived in The Bronx for a while.)


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