Ever given yourself an electric shock?

A

Adam D

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722
Location
West Lothian
I have managed to do this a few times in the past. Sometimes intentionally and sometimes accidentally.

My first experience was with one of those electric fences you get to keep animals in. I was told by my friends that if I grabbed it really quickly then I would not feel anything. They lied to me and I ended up getting knocked on the floor, lol!

Next I moved onto mains electricity and twice ran over the mains cable whilst cutting the grass, d'oh!

The third time was again with mains electricity and the washing machine. It was not working, so I stuck my hand in, without turning it off at the mains, and I must have touched something live. It was not a pleasant feeling as my tongue stuck to the top of my mouth and my body started buzzing. Felt quite strange for a few hours.

Oh well, you live and learn don't you?
 
Loads. Working on cameras with built-in flashes was always a risk. We had a discharge resistor, but sometimes you'd forget and 'whack!', you end up throwing the camera to the back of the bench or your tweezers across the workshop.

It was usually 200v-300v and DC from the capacitor, so not really serious.

Electric fences: I have had plenty of people tell me stories about electric cattle fences, but every one that I have touched just sends a small 'tick' through me. Never had one anywhere near knocking me off my feet.

Ian
 
antdad said:
You lot never had fun with a piezoelectric lighter at school? It preceded the stun gun.
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Oh yes! I'd forgotten about those. I had a mate whose Dad ran an elecrtical shop, and he used to repair stuff, including lighters. I think we were all armed with them.

Ian
 
You lot never had fun with a piezoelectric lighter at school? It preceded the stun gun.
Click to expand...

Oooohh yes. Had a particular electrical wizz kid in our year who was permanently armed with the damn things.
You would be sat there happily working in class, next thing you know ZAP - Jumping out your seat and watching your pen fly like an arrow towards the history teacher.
Who i must add showed absolutely no belief that 'Electric Q' had just zapped me with a device.. and duly sent me to the corridor to think over my actions.

Bastard.

You rapidly learned not to sit next to him.. and if you had to, you watched his arm very closely indeed - any lateral movement prompted a ninja like response.
 
I was rigged up a cable connector to go between the ballast of a discharge light (metal halide) and the bulb/reflector which was over a coral reef fish tank. Alas I put the "male" end attached to the ballast and when I disconnected it one time despite it not being live the capacitors had sufficient juice left in them to give me quite a jolt.

Interestingly there are electric shock devices to relieve insect bites, don't use them on your finger tips :eek:
 
electric fence - yes

our rugby pitch was next to some fields the farmer kept his coo's in
went to retrieve some eggs during kicking practice
way over, no shock
way back, pulsed as my hamstring was on the wire
leg straightened at 1000mph and nearly blew my own kneecap off - hurt like fcuk


we also tortured one of the other lads at apprentice school with a Megger
got his fingers in some wire armoured cable and pulled it tight so he was stuck like a chinese finger puzzle
clamped that in a vice
put the crocodile clips on his lugs and wound the handle
:lol:

after that, anytime you heard the winding sound you dropped everything you were holding
file, hacksaw etc
then they got ones were you just pushed a button - no warning :?

happy days
 
3 in the morning, tired and emotional (aka banzai'd) on a mountain top in FIs making toast. Bread was stuck, so in went the knife apart - from the sparks the world turned black. The insulating effects of Spicey & Diet Cokes on the central nervous system are an under researched area of science I believe.

Cutting through Flymo cables? My son has followed me in mastering the art - we do have a circuit breaker now though :?
 
I suppose I've had quite a few in my time... but I have such dry skin on my hands that I tend not to notice too much... mains shock to me is just like an involuntary shudder in my finger tips.

When I was at university I got a whack across the back of the head for holding a 1M resistor in parallel with another something to temporarily half the resistance... I gave the lecturer the dry skin, high resistance thing so he got the ohmmeter out that showed me as "open circuit"... then he got a wind up megger out (for testing electrical insulation) croc clipped two fingers and started winding the handle like the clappers - still showing open circuit, then a drew an arc between the handles of the croc clips and then he believed me :lol:
 
When I started as a mechanic the initiation rite was to take the condenser off an ignition and connect just the lead to the middle HT lead, sit it on some plastic and turn the engine over a few times to charge the condenser. Then touching only the body take it down to the part dept and put it on the counter and ask for one of those; as soon as the parts guy picks it up and touches the lead and body at the same time they get a 25,000V shock (but only milli-amps), still a good jolt none the less.

Seen a few parts guys leap the counter and chase an apprentice for a good half mile, we should have used these methods in our commonwealth games training, completely undetectable afterwords. Nothing like a hulking red faced guy chasing you to make you cover the 100m in Olympian times.
 
Week I moved down here in 1980 a guy just along the road got killed when he sliced through the power cable to his hedge cutter ................... Guess sometimes we may learn and not live.

JohnnyO.
 
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