So i start skinning a blank in my little car port shack with my recently added vacume set up to my planer. on my last pass doing the hull i do a pass off the nose, and suddenly WHAM the vacume sucks the powercord up like like a foot straight into the blades. BZZZZZZ
Electricity sucks! Got the worst shock of my life for a split second and before the circuits blew out. No jokes, I could smell my burnt nose hairs and I felt soooo slow for the rest of the day yesterday. now i have burrs on my planer blades (at least i can exchange them at clark) and no more power cord.
When you do something stupid, why hide it. Someone will get a kick out of laughing at you
Nothing to laugh at; I almost did it myself only yesterday. And three weeks ago I was cutting some eucalyptus branches for the fireplace and caught the skilsaw cord. No shock but I did have to patch it back together ;(
GFCI. If you don’t know what it is, find out, get one or several, and use 'em. Save a life, maybe yours.
i knew a kid in Middle school , junior high what ever you call it, who was an attention monger, used to get paper clips and stick em in sockets for fun. being zapped IS NOT fun, but when done dilberatly is reatarded.
No worries, man, you are definitely not the first and no way will ya ever be the last.
If your vac hose is coming off the ceiling, then you might want to try a trick Keith and I were talking about a while ago -
You see, you can get curly extension cords. Carrol makes ‘em, I think, and several others - check your hardware store. Which curly cords will wrap around a vac hose very nicely. And, voila’
Cord and vac hose are suspended from the ceiling, over your workstand, out of your way and out of harm’s way. Both are together, so this sorta thing isn’t gonna happen again either. Kinda like this crude sketch below where you have the cord and hose able to slide along a wire paralell to the ceiling, maybe use some rings or chain links or the like - idea swiped from something i saw in a very good metal shop a few decades back.
Of course, you will need to shorten the existing planer power cord considerably and put on a plug, but it looks like ya got a head start on that already.
See, everything is for the best, if ya look at it right.
Cord managment! well put! Ive been sanding floors for 20years and cord management is an art in itself! You havent lived until youve sanded over a 220 cord!!Ive done it twice(so far). The only damage was to the cord and my underwear!
hope your feeling alright now,that’s nasty stuff.I learned that you don’t grab your coil wire where it goes into your cap on your older American cars when they are running.After that the grass was a little greener and the sky was a lttle bluer.
Skeletor, I ran over my cord about two months ago and almost did it again last week… I didn’t get a jolt but it sure scared the heck out of me. I sure wish Hitachi/Clark made a cordless solar self vacuuming noiseless planer… now that would be something… :+)
My planer cord has a couple of grooves in the insulation. Didn’t go all the way through and I didn’t even notice it until…I don’t know how many times I used it before I noticed. Lucky so far. I’m much more careful. Mike
“Of course, you will need to shorten the existing planer power cord considerably and put on a plug, but it looks like ya got a head start on that already.”
Droll humor, LMAO Doc.
My childhood neighbor Rei, a hyperintelligent Japanese kid, and I ONCE set up a section of cardboard tube wrapped with wire and plugged it into a wall receptacle. No flames, so far so good. Rei hands me a piece of metal and says, “poke it through the center of the tube.” Okay, keep in mind I didn’t say I was the hyperintelligent one. So I poke the metal through the tube and KABOOM! Darkness. Rei was also the one who handed me a bullet casing and a hammer. No wonder my ears ring.
Mate , what can I say ?? GREAT thread !! [my favourite so far !]. Did you get photos of that ? have you ever seen the movie "Yahoo serious " ?? …that guy has GOT to be you , for sure !!
Thanks skels, you made my day again !
The “Mr. Magoo” award is coming your way soon !! [yes, by the way …I AM glad we didn’t lose you !!]
For a minute there, I thought this was going to be another " I dropped another paint can on the nose of my other new blank, reshaped it , then just prior to glassing it , I decided it would make a better kite than surfboard , so I used it for a kite , using the neighbours palings on their fence for a landing strip …" thread .
(You’ve outdone yourself ! Congratulations, buddy !! …no wonder 20’ waimea is a walk in the dark for you !)
I do something similar except I use various bits of my anatomy… I wear the the cord kinda like a feather boa (please don’t take the piss) I wrap it round my wrist/arm (on my working hand) then up over my shoulder and often down the other arm too, maybe more like kiddies mittens on string.
Actually, that’s how The Old Man taught me to do it too. Kinda like this - consider it a pretty good pic of me at work… cord around wrist, up over shoulders, back down and left hand holding the other end, so it can be kept well clear of the cutting area.
The ‘feather boa’ image is kinda ugly though… gotta come up with a better one. Laocoon wrestling a serpent, perhaps?
A while back, whilst shaping, I was wearing a long sleeve tshirt and I hadn’t noticed that it came untucked from my shorts…
Ever see in a movie where the guy gets to close to the super power vaccuum and it sucks his shirt right off his back? Well that was more or less me. The shirt was half off, and the half that was off my torso was sucked into the planer!!! I was walking around with half a shirt on and a planer stuck to my hip!
Had to cut the shirt off and spent the next hour getting the other half of it out of the planer. FUN!
