You're kidding. That's it? Of all of the machinists and wanna-bees in this place and we get 6 stories and a few comments?
Sheeesh. Personally, I liked the story about the exploding drum and I have one for the Darwin awards that relates. I suck at story telling, but what the heck - nobody else is pitching in, so here it goes:
Frequently at my full time job, we have a problem with the operators over tightening the drum faucets into 55 gallon steel drums. When they get stuck, the operators will roll the barrel to the maintenance shop to have the faucet removed by our resident gorilla.
It's not at all uncommon to have the threaded hub in the drum (the bung) break away from the lid and start spinning, making it very difficult to remove the faucet. The maintenance secret was to throw a little liquid steel (weld) on it to keep it from spinning so the faucet could be unthreaded.
One particular drum thrust our eldest maintenance-man into the OSHA hall of fame. Upon receiving a drum with a stuck faucet and a spinning hub, he opted to break out the torch and perform a little fusion. The drum had previously contained an Acetone based paint thinner.
The resulting explosion blew the lid off the drum (thankfully for him) – this is about all anybody knows as he was doing this in the space alone at 5AM. But – we do know that it punched a nice hole in the wall and the roof before it came back down. The fire ball set of a sprinkler which tripped the water flow sensor which resulted in the Chesapeake Fire Department to be dispatched. Being a chemical company, this was quite an incident.
He suffered moderate hearing loss in one ear and his hair got a new lease on life. Other than that, he was fine; especially after his unexpected vacation – courtesy of management. Policy prohibits hot work on drums.
The names have been omitted to protect the guilty. Plus – Don’s a good guy and I wouldn’t want to embarrass him again.
Scott