Goofs & Blunders You Should Avoid.

Sounds very much like something I would do. Teach people to think about what they are saying. What's that old saw....."Make sure your brain is in gear before letting out the clutch on your mouth" or something like that.
 
Then there was Rawhide. He worked at GM on the third shift bar line. (Automatic Screw Machines) He slept a lot. He ran a bank of 4 1"-60 New Britains. Smash ups were inevitable. One set-up man decided to get even. The machine totally went down, drills, form tools. cut off blades, everything broke. When the machinists were done the set-up man went to work.

Changed all the tools and broken fixtures. Now to stock it up, this is where the fun began. Instead of loading it with the .967 solid stock, he went to the tool crib and cut off all the handles on the bad brooms. He painted them all black and loaded all the spindles with them. He finished the set-up and gave the machine back to Rawhide to run. True to form Rawhide engaged the spindles and went back to his stool and fell asleep. Than machine ran wooden outer races for the next 3 hours.

The parts were awesome, fit the gages perfectly. Ole Rawhide had some tall explaining to do. It seemed like he was upstairs for hours. Final total 1073 wooden cups.

The guys were telling these stories over and over again at the wake. We decided then and there to get together once a month. More to follow.

"Billy G"
 
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mephits said:
<Dusts off his ragged, abused bio-chem major hat> Pretty much anything which oxidizes readily can catch fire or explode in dust form. Note that this includes many forms of iron and aluminum. It has to do with mass-to-surface-area ratio. Oxidization is a heat-generating reaction (exothermic, to use the $5 term). If you have a big mass to absorb that heat and little surface area at which the reaction can happen, you don't get much except for the formation of an oxide film (i.e., rust or patina). When there's no place for that heat to go internally, all it can do is go out into the environment. In a pile this can quickly become a fire. Floating around airborne, this can go "boom!" Just yet another reason to keep your workspace clean!

[edited for clarity, 12/6/2016, 6:13 pm CST]
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Aluminium and Iron dust mixed together happens to make a thing called Thermite. Little spark and that mix will burn through anything. Very dangerous stuff.
 
SapperDave said:
Aluminium and Iron dust mixed together happens to make a thing called Thermite. Little spark and that mix will burn through anything. Very dangerous stuff.
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It's actually aluminum and iron oxide dust. The red iron oxide (Fe2O3) or rust, that is. I'm not sure that the black oxide (FeO2) or scale from hot worked steel reacts the same.
Edit: This was not intended as a correction on the spelling of aluminum/aluminium. Married to a Brit, I have come to accept either spelling.
 
Helicopters with HMM 161 carried 2 Thermite Grenades on every hop while in Viet Nam. The Crew Chief was the only one that had access to them. They were issued when the day began and turned in at days end. If a chopper went down and was not retrievable they were used to destroy it. I destroyed a CH 46 on one occasion. ($6,000,000 +) It didn't take long to reduce that chopper to a pile of nothing. Thermite is fast.

"Billy G"
 
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SapperDave said:
Aluminium and Iron dust mixed together happens to make a thing called Thermite. Little spark and that mix will burn through anything. Very dangerous stuff.
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Thermite needs a touch more than a little spark from my memory. I have heard that thermite users would also use a small amount of powdered magnesium to get the reaction started.
 
Chinook is a Army CH-47, Tony. A CH-46 is it's smaller cousin used by the Marines. It's a common mistake. The Army turned down the 46 because it was small. We had CH-46D models. We didn't have any trouble with size or payload. The GE-10 1400 horse engines were more than adequate.

"Billy G"


http://www.military-today.com/helicopters/ch46_sea_knight.htm
 
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