A word of warning to all.

[Mike Nichting]

I'm sure all of you are aware not to work with high voltage when you are tired or don't have complete focus on the job.

The same is true when doing any of the more dangerous things with stompboxes, at least in my case :-)
I was etching PCBs the other night while I was holding a conversation via email with a resident of this forum and it was late and I was getting tired.
 I burnt my fingers so bad I had to go to the hospital for treatment. This was 2 days ago and the pain is still quite bad and it is hard to type with my fingers all bandaged up,. :-)
I burnt my fingers while I had water heated to boiling in a pan. I put my bowl of etchant on top of the pan to keep it hot while I etched the boards( i guess this would be a water bath method of sorts). I have a ceramic top stove and had my metal stirring knife on the burner next to the pan for about an hour just heating up and sure enough I grabbed it without thinking.Now, I didn't mean to have the knife on the burner and on a ceramic top stove the burner is as level as the rest of the stove so it's not like it was UP on the burner.
I wasn't thinking but I sure woke up as soon as I grabbed the knife that was of medium high heat.

 So please take it easy when you are tired and turn off the soldering iron or stove or any other potentially hazardous thing when you don't have full concenttration on what you're doing.

I got complacent and got burned, figuratively and literally~!!

Be well all,
Mike N.

[Bill Bergman]

Ouch!!!! Hope it heals soon.

[Mark Hammer]

So, uh, not much finger-picking over the next little while, eh?

I'm not sure if I have any fingerprints left from all the times I reached for something related to or near the stove which I absent-mindedly didn't stop to evaluate as hot/not-hot.

To avoid such tragedies (and I live by the B.B. King glucose monitor ad where he says "These 10 fingers are all I got"), your etchant does *not* have to be that hot.  The Brownian movement in the etchant bath only requires a bit of heat to work, and movement of etchant doesn't need to extend much beyond the actual surface of the board for fresh etchant molecules to repluce used ones.  You can easily produce this just by pointing a 25-40W gooseneck desk lamp at the back of the board from a safe distance of 6", while floating/suspending the board on top.  One trick I learned recently for suspending it is to drill a few small holes, one in each corner, and stick in a toothpick (or portion thereof) to hold the board above the "floor" of the bath.  As long as there is a means to circulate the etchant, a way for used etchant to fall out of the way away from the board, and a clean board to start with, that's really all you need.

Sorry to hear about the mishap, man, and hope the healing is speedy.  I find cracking open a vitamin E capsule and rubbing the goop on burnt areas helps to speed up healing, and zinc ointment also helps, but neither of them make things restore themselves nearly as fast as we'd like.

[BillyJ]

That SUCKS!!!
I hope you heal well my friend....burns take a while to heal...
Yuck. I have had a bad second degree burn that....well...anyway that is a real bummer and a good reminder for everyone.
Hope you will heal quick!!!!

[Paul Marossy]

Or being in a hurry. A few times, I was trying to unsolder something, and the soldering iron slipped and grazed fingers on my left hand. It instantly turns your skin white and of course hurts. Fortunately, none of these incidents have been really serious, but the potential is there.

[Peter Snowberg]

Here is hoping for a speedy recovery!

When I was young, our house had a roof fire. The cause is still unknown (might have been fireworks), but I'm paranoid about fire for life. Knowing that paper burns at 451 degrees F while the iron is always heated to 550-600 degrees has always given me respect for the heat there. After too many times of wondering, "did I unplug the iron?" I decided to do something about it.

I picked up a bathroom fan timer (a mechanical one) and put it in a two gang electrical box along with an outlet and a plug. Now the iron has to be reset every half hour as a safety measure or it just turns off.

-Peter

[Ansil]

ouch i understand, hope you get to feeling better, it isn't cheap and it doesn't go on painless but it does make you heal like the undead,   if you can get ahold of it.   electric eel slime.  
no i am not joking but it isn't easy to get ahold of it and isn't as painless to use but if you put a way huge magnigfying glass over a cut and put this crap on it you can watch the skin knit itself back together, like a bad scifi movie.  cost about 20$ for a tub of similar size to noxzema.  i couldn't tell you where to get it though as we did an expirament in jr high i didn't believe my teacher when he told me of the healing properties of this ie miracle salve.  so i volunteered to cut my self and apply this crap..  well i am a believer and no scar to prove it.  

ps  mark"
I'm not sure if I have any fingerprints left from all the times I reached for something related to or near the stove which I absent-mindedly didn't stop to evaluate as hot/not-hot. "
according to my doctor friend at the burn ward "un less you chemically treat the fingers to something acidic or burn them with something bad enought to require a skin graph the fingerprints do grow back un modified"

thought i would drop that little info, as unfortuenatly i have tried to burn my finger tips off and well it didnt' work.  or atleast i don't have the pain thrsehold to get to that point of a skin graph.  lol

[Arn C.]

Sorry to hear about your burn Mike!  I hope for a fast recovery for you!

To add to the "burn war stories":

Here one of the worst burns I have had.   I have had many other minor burns but this was the worst for me. But I am fortunate as I have never severely burnt my chording hand.
I repair machinery at a manufacturing company.   Anything from computers, electronics, to pnumatic, mechanics, etc....
I was working inbetween to melting pots(about 6 inches apart and the pots stand about 4 feet high) for aluminum and both of the pots were still hot(1500 degress fahrenheit).   I had taken one of the sides of one of the pots off,  I was reaching in between the pots to do this, and I had to spray some electrical degreaser on the heating element lugs where the wire connects(power was off).   Unfortunately when I picked up the cleaner from my maintenance dept., there were two identical cans beside each other, the one I use(non-flammable) and the other (highly flamable).  Being in a hurry, I looked right at the one I was supposed to pick up and but somehow picked up the other one.
    I went to the pot and began spraying the connections.  Well, the excess liquid dripped down to the bottom of the pot and finally the intense heat set off the liquid and a wall of flame rose between the melting pots about 8 feet high, 4 feet deep and 6 inches wide.
   The flames burnt all the hair on my face and the hand that I was doing the spraying with was totally fried to the point skin was hanging off my hand.  After some major pain killers , cool bandages and a lot of liquor the pain fianlly subsided.  Took close to 6 months to totally heal.
    Never be in a hurry, and if you are tired, be extra cautious!

Still Alive and Rockin'
Arn C.

[petemoore]

That way it's heating up as I continue, and hot bout the time I have a couple things ready to solder.
 But more imply it's off as the lights when I'm done.
 I keep the Iron in a brickhole. And it enough length on the cord that it wont touch the floor anyway [this also keeps it from beating itself against the floor]. Don't try catching it when it falls...

[idlefaction]

it sucks about your burns, man, but i couldn't help but giggle about the fact that you had the knife on the stove.

here in new zealand, we use those for 'spotting' mj    more than once i've had bad burns due to picking up spotting knives that were too hot!  so, i sympathise.  (i've never been to hospital for it tho.)

[ExpAnonColin]

I've grabbed a soldering iron twice not knowing it was on... still got scars!  I have a station now, which will help, but jesus.

-Colin

[aron]

WOW, take care and hope it heals SOON!  

[jimbob]

Ouch...i can reate to all of those w connect the dot burn marks from diff projects..  Get well

[MarkB]

I'm the guilty one who was distracting Mike from his heat-related duties...

Not to make light of the situation (burns SUCK), but after he got home from the hospital, whacked out on pain meds... he wrote me some BIZARRE emails..  pain meds and typing do not mix, apparently.  I felt bad laughing so hard about it  (the emails, not the burn), but just couldn't help myself.

Get those fingers healed up, Mike!  
"-)

PS.. Jrjk jiyyyyl Li3jlk sssss

[Mike Nichting]

Thanks all~!! Well, it makes me feel a little better to know that I'm not the only one who has burnt himself. I mean I have burnt myself many times over with the soldering iron but DAMN that knife was HOT~~!! :-)

Yeah, I was HAMMERED when I got back from the hospital~!!  I think I was sending Mark emails in ,my sleep and they were f*cking hilarious.

 I now have to type with my ring finger of my right hand and it's quite tricky. On a good note the PCBs turned out good~!! :-)

 And I found out that Demerol is an awesome pain killer.

 Thanks for all the well wishes guys~!!  I only meant to share the story for those like me that get a little lax with things that can hurt ya'.


 I knew there wqas a reason I love this forum~!!

Be well all,
Mike(ouch) Nichting

 PS- htyr ddfr dsmn  cuut y  oK??..> - that is a sample of the email that I sent Mark to tell him I was home from the hospital and was OK :-)

[C Bradley]

Or being in a hurry. A few times, I was trying to unsolder something, and the soldering iron slipped and grazed fingers on my left hand. It instantly turns your skin white and of course hurts. Fortunately, none of these incidents have been really serious, but the potential is there.

You noticed that too, huh?    :lol:

I've done that a time or two on my point-to-point tube amps. I once stuck my 40W iron into my index finger, left hand. Yow! It cauterized the wound (of course :roll: ) so it didn't bleed, but it still hurt like hell! It took about a week to get back to where I could play again, and two to three weeks more to get back to normal.

Chris B

[william]

while i was finishing up my GT-2 I was eager to try it out.  So I plugged it in and spent the next hour or so playing.  After a little while of this I dedcided to head to sleep.  I was putting my suff away when I remembered I hadn't put the iron away either.  So I reached it to put it away, and sure enough, it was still on.  Only I didn't realize that untill a litlte less than a second after I had clasped my hand around it.  burned a good portion of the palm of my hand, so you have my sympathies.
But it was worth it to have the gt-2

William.

[jimbob]

For lack of embaressment and shamelessness, I'm honest to admit that I drink quite heavily when I work on my projects.But, I do pay the price. Burns, Poor soldering, and many others things I'm sure others can relate to. But, I enjoy the hell out of this hobby. I wake thinking about what's next; daydream during working hours, imagining the different supplies I'd like to own but dont have the money for, and besides all the negative things that go along with something like this , there is nothing else i enjoy more than learning and searching for the perfect tone and sound. Will I ever find this pot of gold? I dont know. But, I would rather suffer through the burns, lack of funds, my wife complaining about the mess i make with parts strung everywhere than anything else/ Well of course there are a few things out there that we all can say--"hmmm, well"

To all..It really is worth it. Otherwise we wouldnt do what we do..The search of the perfect tone..I know i can't let it go.