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Darwin Awards
2015 Slush Pile

This item was recently submitted by a reader.
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DIY Electric Chair

2015 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance

This past fall, I enrolled in a Welding Certification Program at my local community college. Welding is a dangerous profession, and there are dozens of ways to carelessly jump the gene pool, but is also increasingly lucrative, leading to lots of new people exploring the trade. Of course, as with any such influx, there are always a few with Darwinian potential, and thanks to one such individual, my instructor and I had a new whopper of a cautionary tale handed to us.

One day, I arrived to class to see one of my classmates, whom I will call Dan, seeking help from the instructor. He had just bought a welder to practice with at home, and was having trouble striking an arc with it. My instructor tried to run him through the set-up process, becoming increasingly perplexed as he ran down the list with Dan claiming he had done everything correctly. When he was asked where he had clamped the grounding cable, which is supposed to be clamped to either the piece you are about to weld, or to the workbench on which you are working, that is where Dan dropped the bomb.

He did not have a metal welding table, and had not yet brought out the metal he had been intending to practice with, so he had clamped the grounding cable to the only metal surface available; the stool on which he was seated!

Luckily for Dan, he'd been trying to run his welder on a busy circuit, which overloaded when he tried to start his welder. Had he succeeded in striking an arc, the current would have passed through him on it's way to the grounding wire, turning his brand new welding setup into a homemade electric chair!

Dan eventually dropped out of the welding program, to the relief of all, and now my instructor has another useful tool in stressing the proper use of grounding cables.

Submitted on 05/15/2015

Submitted by: Dylan Thompson
Reference: October, 2014

Copyright © 2015 DarwinAwards.com

Great? 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 Awful?
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Candi said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
.........you. are. kidding. me. The whole POINT of a grounding cable is to... argh. Thanks, Dylan!


James said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
A fool with an arc welder is all too often his own executioner! Thanks Dylan!


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