I sustained a ding in the nose of my '68 Gordon and Smith “Hot Curl” the other day. Had a little “whoopsie” while putting it in the van. It was already repaired (badly) before I got it. So, time to do it right.
While mixing up a batch of lam resin today the tube of catalyst exploded in my hand. It had a small pinhole in the tip like I always make, but the pressure I exerted caused the tube to rupture along the edge. I got MEKP all over my hand as well as my legs and feet. It was a brand new tube. Due to a mishap with catalyst many years ago I knew I had to wash that crap off right away. Luckily I got none in my eyes.
When I was 17 (in 1967) I hitch-hiked about 30 miles with a bottle of catalyst in my pants pocket. The cap leaked and I wound up with a third degree chemical burn on my hip. I mean a real third degree burn. It ate through layers of skin and exposed raw meat. I still have the scar from it.
when I first started building boards at the Hickam Wood hobby shop in '62 they had a retail store next door that sold resins and other chems. Being a broke teenager, I was in need of catalyst, but no money in the immediate future, so I slipped a 4 oz bottle in my back pocket and walked out. about 45 minutes later my ass check was itching like an ant bite, but it kept getting worse. I went in the bath room and looked to see what was “biting” me, I had a 2 inch red spot where the catalyst was leaking out and soaked into my skin, I washed it the best I could and 2 days later a silver dollar sized spot turned brown and peeled away. I learned about bad karma that day
Too bad people have to make mistakes that could cause permanent damage before they learn to be careful. The reason I keep a sqeeze bottle of eye wash around… Worst I’ve ever done is drop a squeege in a bucket of acetone and have it splash into an eye. Never did that again, but was able to rinse right away so that burning pain didn’t last too long. We could all take a lesson from Walter White on lab conditions.
The common denominator here seems to be that, over time, the MEKP makes the plastic bottle brittle.
The moral to these stories is that MEKP will blind you very quickly so always have big containers of water on hand or plan how to get to lots of water in seconds. Not in a minute after you’ve rubbed your eyes and finished mixing the batch…but get your head in or under lots of running water in seconds.!
Its a wonder any of us have lived past 30 with the dangers of catalyst, resin, handling high powered tools with spinning blades and then taking on the big blue and its inhabitants on a piece of foam.