Charles Darwin Swing and Miss Funny
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 | A swing and a miss for Darwin when man cutting up old gas tank fails to ensure it has no gas in it (wmur.com) |  | 24 | |
| More: Dumbass, Suffering, old gas tank, animal welfare group, old gas station, construction worker, Tuesday night, United States, inhumane conditions | ||||
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4011 clicks; posted to Main » on 08 Jun 2016 at 10:41 AM (6 years ago) | Favorite | share: 
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Source: https://www.fark.com/comments/9173635/A-swing-a-miss-for-Darwin-when-man-cutting-up-old-gas-tank-fails-to-ensure-it-has-no-gas-in-it
Meh. Earlier, while wearing just swimming trunks, he cleared a 30ft hornet's nest, and before that cleared a drunken house party of armed ninjas using just a lolly stick. And sharks evacuate the area when he goes swimming.
CSB
My roommate in college wanted to help out a fellow friend by fixing a hole in his gas tank. He had access to the school shop and could weld. They removed the gas, then removed the tank from the car. They washed it out a few times with water. And then as he was welding the crack shut the entire gas tank exploded in his face. The glass in the weld helmet shattered into his eyes. They forgot about the gas vapor in the tank. Eye surgeon had to be called on his vacation to return and do emergency surgery on both eyes. He was able to remove all shards. My roommate was then bandaged and blind for a week. I would take him to the supermarket and lead him into endcaps, girls, old ladies, displays. Good times! /CSB
Just watched that BBC show on the most dangerous things in Victorian England.
Exploding toilets! There are no pictures. Trust me. So here's a cover from Steampunk instead.
"He was just trying to make an afterburner for his car.", or "In a Pinto you don't need a welder to do this."
DrSheetz: CSB
My roommate in college wanted to help out a fellow friend by fixing a hole in his gas tank. He had access to the school shop and could weld. They removed the gas, then removed the tank from the car. They washed it out a few times with water. And then as he was welding the crack shut the entire gas tank exploded in his face. The glass in the weld helmet shattered into his eyes. They forgot about the gas vapor in the tank. Eye surgeon had to be called on his vacation to return and do emergency surgery on both eyes. He was able to remove all shards. My roommate was then bandaged and blind for a week. I would take him to the supermarket and lead him into endcaps, girls, old ladies, displays. Good times! /CSB
I have heard that the places that do weld gas tanks do it when they are full of water.
BitwiseShift: Just watched that BBC show on the most dangerous things in Victorian England.
Exploding toilets! There are no pictures. Trust me. So here's a cover from Steampunk instead.
[img.fark.net image 250x345]
They didn't yet know that waste piping and sewers contain flammable gasses like methane and need to be vented.
People used to work on gas tanks in situ by running the car exhaust into the tank. Theory was the exhaust had little oxygen.
Well one of the first things they teach in welding class is to make sure that you wont...
1. Electrocute yourself
2. Burn yourself
3. Cut something with flammable materials in it.
I guess this person didn't make class that day.
This is why you *crush* old gas tanks, not cut them up.
It would seem pretty obvious to me to make sure that there is no chance of any sort of flammable vapors anywhere NEAR an open flame, let alone a welding torch.
It is an amazement to me that people are still so stupid.
This is why I refuse to do any welding on cars. Their parts on or off the vehicle.
It doesn't matter I don't know how to weld or use a torch.
I refuse.
Don't try cutting a gas tank with the exhaust method. Full of water is better. Must be all the way full. Lots of experienced welders won't touch them. Flammable vapors are a beyotch, there's a case of a guy blowing himself up cutting into an empty drum that had mint oil in it.
It looks like he was making saw cuts. The way that they are supposed to do this is (1) make sure there is no liquid fuel left in the tank, (2) really, make sure there is no liquid fuel in the tank, (3) put dry ice, or dry nitrogen gas into the tank, (4) run a flammable vapor meter and verify you are well below the LEL, and then (5) start cutting. As you vent the tank, you recheck the LEL and look for liquids again. And again.
/No, I am not in the UST business
//Transportation, and we've had some removed
Cheron: People used to work on gas tanks in situ by running the car exhaust into the tank. Theory was the exhaust had little oxygen.
What happens if the car backfires when you are doing that?
Stainlesssteelrot: Don't try cutting a gas tank with the exhaust method. Full of water is better. Must be all the way full. Lots of experienced welders won't touch them. Flammable vapors are a beyotch, there's a case of a guy blowing himself up cutting into an empty drum that had mint oil in it.
if you cut a tank filled with water, the water becomes a contaminated hazardous material that will need disposal. EPA and API have plenty of publications out there to vapor free USTs/ASTs to make them safe to work on.
Had a bit of a swing-and-miss here when I was a kid. In a vacant lot up the street, some older kids had a car club centered around and old 40s car. Another kid wanted to see what was in the gas tank (the cap had been removed) so he started lighting matches. Around the third one, we heard this WHOOSH and heard him start crying. Seems he found out what was in the tank. Lucky for him he only singed his eyebrows and hair with some light skin damage.
DrSheetz: CSB
My roommate in college wanted to help out a fellow friend by fixing a hole in his gas tank. He had access to the school shop and could weld. They removed the gas, then removed the tank from the car. They washed it out a few times with water. And then as he was welding the crack shut the entire gas tank exploded in his face. The glass in the weld helmet shattered into his eyes. They forgot about the gas vapor in the tank. Eye surgeon had to be called on his vacation to return and do emergency surgery on both eyes. He was able to remove all shards. My roommate was then bandaged and blind for a week. I would take him to the supermarket and lead him into endcaps, girls, old ladies, displays. Good times! /CSB
That is what fiberglass is used for. I repaired a hole in a tank and it lasted the life of the vehicle.
Slotty-Botfast: Well one of the first things they teach in welding class is to make sure that you wont...
1. Electrocute yourself
2. Burn yourself
3. Cut something with flammable materials in it.
I guess this person didn't make class that day.
He missed all the classes. He was not a welder. Well, maybe, but a welder with a saw.
Officials said the worker was cutting up the tank with a saw when it exploded. The tank still had some gas inside.
/former welder
DrSheetz: CSB
My roommate in college wanted to help out a fellow friend by fixing a hole in his gas tank. He had access to the school shop and could weld. They removed the gas, then removed the tank from the car. They washed it out a few times with water. And then as he was welding the crack shut the entire gas tank exploded in his face. The glass in the weld helmet shattered into his eyes. They forgot about the gas vapor in the tank. Eye surgeon had to be called on his vacation to return and do emergency surgery on both eyes. He was able to remove all shards. My roommate was then bandaged and blind for a week. I would take him to the supermarket and lead him into endcaps, girls, old ladies, displays. Good times! /CSB
in my youth i had an idiot friend who's Mom said he was "accident prone" but truth told he was the kid who truly thought he could jump from roof top to roof top and would go for it despite everyone's objections. more than once Pete came in handy as a prop, like the time I was selling candy bars for the 8th grade trip to WashDC and here Pete had just ignored all the safety precautions on a old do it yourself candle making kit, turning himself into a mass of burned flesh and bandages. there are not many kids like this per neighborhood. Dennis Leary has a wonderful Xmas stand up special in which he describes what happened (in the past) to children of this ilk, and how we need to return to those days for the betterment of all mankind.
sinko swimo: DrSheetz: CSB
My roommate in college wanted to help out a fellow friend by fixing a hole in his gas tank. He had access to the school shop and could weld. They removed the gas, then removed the tank from the car. They washed it out a few times with water. And then as he was welding the crack shut the entire gas tank exploded in his face. The glass in the weld helmet shattered into his eyes. They forgot about the gas vapor in the tank. Eye surgeon had to be called on his vacation to return and do emergency surgery on both eyes. He was able to remove all shards. My roommate was then bandaged and blind for a week. I would take him to the supermarket and lead him into endcaps, girls, old ladies, displays. Good times! /CSB
in my youth i had an idiot friend who's Mom said he was "accident prone" but truth told he was the kid who truly thought he could jump from roof top to roof top and would go for it despite everyone's objections. more than once Pete came in handy as a prop, like the time I was selling candy bars for the 8th grade trip to WashDC and here Pete had just ignored all the safety precautions on a old do it yourself candle making kit, turning himself into a mass of burned flesh and bandages. there are not many kids like this per neighborhood. Dennis Leary has a wonderful Xmas stand up special in which he describes what happened (in the past) to children of this ilk, and how we need to return to those days for the betterment of all mankind.
There are not many because either they die or become seriously deformed; and because the rest of us learn quickly from their mistakes, and if we need someone to try something risky, we call them first. "Hey, I wonder what happens when you tie a rope around a train trestle and jump down into the riverbed?" Dunno, but call ol' Pete first, let him try it.
When I was in high school, our nearest neighbor, Dave was maintenance shop foreman for a logging truck company. One day he had a new guy that he assigned to weld a patch on a diesel truck fuel tank. This guy was extra cautious, and nervous, and he washed out the tank, very conscientiously. He sat down to begin, struck his torch alight, touched it to the tank, and our neighbor, Dave, snuck up behind him with a hammer and a sheet of steel. KA-BLANG went the steel, the torch went up in the air, and the tank got kicked across the shop deck. The poor kid about shiat his pants.
/oh yeah. Dave was an asshole
And then there was the scrapyard hereabiuts that had the summer student cutting up old artillery shells and guess what happened.
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