Fun at work.

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So at work, we have a beat up miller bobcat 225, and had a rented Miller 400D or whatever.  The only way to burn 3/16" 7018 on the bobcat is to crank it right to the max. (5/32 is great, but if you can run 3/16" and save time, so be it!)  If I'm working in the rail yard at work again tomorrow, I'll take some pictures of my welds.We were welding lugs onto a skid/vessel (going to China, but shipping from western canada to the eastern US coast Via train) and welding lugs onto a shipping car.  There are 3 total to ship.  It wasn't a bad day, but the deck of the train car was far from pleasant.  the thing had so many gouge marks from previous use, that it made welding through carbon and whatnot fun.  The guy I was working with had the worse side and he had to lay "butter" passes to get something decent to weld onto.But back to the fun, at some point while refuelling the welder with a jerry can, I slopped some gas onto the pantleg of my coveralls without my knowing.  I jumped back up onto the car and proceeded to continue welding a lug onto the saddle the vessel was sitting on.  I flipped up my lid, and looked down after realizing my leg was getting warm.."Holy sh*t!" I blurted.  My leg wasn't just smouldering, but it was flaming and sizzling and popping quite nicely in the wind!  I tried tamping it out and with little success, jumped off the traincar so I had more room to move around, and bunched up my coveralls and with my GLOVED hands, smothered the flames.  Lucky for me, I got on it before it started burning the covy's.  After tamping it out, I noticed that there was no damage to the coveralls.  I drove back to the shop (a block away) and changed them out, but still...So the lesson to be?  Don't pull a me, and be aware of even the simplest of tasks.  If you tip a jerry can too much and don't realize that it's full enough to come out the vent hole, double check to make sure you didn't spill anything on yourself! Last edited by mb_welder; 04-15-2008 at 07:31 AM.
Reply:Glad to hear you are ok.  I know it gets cold up there in canada but setting your self on fire seems a little extreame to me to stay warm.Note to self: Gas can + arc welder = fire. Ok got it. Lesson noted. I don't know how many times I gotten gas on myself filling small equipment like my demo saw. I usually hardly notice, but then again I don't weld for a living FT. It makes complete sense to me, but I could honestly see that happening to me too.