What have you set fire to whilst welding?

[the snooper]

I accidentally put a soldering iron (a hot one) in my ear once - and did no damage at all!!

that is a strange one how do you accidentally put a soldering iron in your ear ?.

well i was in my garage the other day and i picked up my soldering iron and put it in my ear for a while as you do while i did something else and someone pluged it in crazy

 

[MrFluffy]

Hair whilst oxyacet welding, getting my nose right up to see what was going on, and didnt know it was on fire, but a spotter kept tapping me on the shoulder and eventually i stopped to see what he was on about and heard a woof noise as the flames went round.

Worst on a bike was in a mot bay, just built and it passed, but starting it to ride out, it backfired and lit its carburettor, tried to blow it out but the flames melted the petrol pipe and it got worse, so threw it on its side and stood back in panic, which lit the tank area up too. Went to grab the extinguisher, but had to promise to pay for the refill before they'd let me use it! Eventually got it out with the foam extinguisher after much cursing.
Rode it round for two years after still covered in the remnants extinguisher foam

 

[stucktoweld]

Angle grinder set fire to my jacket
Doh it was a fleece
doh carried on did it twice more?
proves fleece's keep you warm

 

[Grunty24]

OK, to explain about the soldering-iron-in-the-ear thing, I was sitting at a desk soldering something, then hung the iron on a partially open drawer. I dropped something on the floor and bent over sideways to pick it up and suddenly heard a noise of hair burning, but really really loud!! iron went right down my ear, a perfect entry, hot bit of iron is about 3 inches long, why is my ear drum still in one piece?

 

[the snooper]

ahh well i did wonder how you managed to do that whats the chance of doing that never mind not burning your self

 

[Bsmith]

My overalls loads of times, rags, charging battery went bang - I went skywards, motorbike petrol tank , all results of angle grinder sparks. My big one was a rock crusher engine which was covered in dust saturated with diesel, it was running at the time too when I was o/a cutting some holes for bolts nearby.

 

[Rubber Duck]

I burnt myself on the welding course I'm on.

Gas welding two bits of thin metal together, I wanted to move my grip further down the wire so instead of putting the end on the bench and pushing down it went on my leg!!!

A few choice words later, I now have a nice 1.6 x 2mm hole in my leg.

 

[Bigjoe]

When i was an apprentice mechanic at 17 i worked in a small garage in south east london and we had 1 mechanic about 40 and then an old fella Pete who was close to retiring,an astra mk2 failed the the mot one day ona few bits and needed small patch in the passenger footwell, so im under the bonnet doing odds and sods and Pete is doing the welding.....all of a sudden he says very calmly 'oh s***' you should maybe leave that and go outside (he's legging it at this point) then i see flames! so i leave rapidly and it turns out he managed to weld through a fuel line under the floor, fire service arrived 5 mins later as a result we had a completely burnt out car, a garage that looked like the black hole of calcutta and a bloody great hole in the roof! in January and it took 3 weeks to replace the roof and it snaowed every sodding day!

Joe

 

[Dave Gollop]

Sleeping Night Worker

Last weekend I was mig-welding some brackets and I happened to set fire to a bin (which was supposed to hold oil spill granules but had some discarded paper towel in it). No panic - I just up-ended the bin and out went the flames.

What's the worst welding fire you've ever had?

Many years ago now I was a class one gas welder in Battersea Power Station.
There was urgent work to be carried out overnight, so we had to cut out a high pressure steam valve by removing the welds at either end of this valve, using oxy-acteylene cutting. Unbe known to our party, three floors down a nightworker had made his bed for the night. The sparks and dross from the cutting operation set light to his make shift bed with him in it. No great damage except his sleep pattern. However since that night I have always check the complete area including below and above and this includes pits for rags, oil, chemicals and paint containers it was for me a good learning curve