‘I, however, do have a workshop of my own. Few people venture there; it is a hotchpotch of hand and electrical tools, paint, outdoor clothing, screws, nails, nuts, bolts, gardening equipment and fishing tackle (lots of this stuff )‘
A strange title for a Piscatorial Raconteurs piece you may think but, as some of us like to tinker, it seems a fitting title, very fitting in my case. Tinkering, bodging, make-do-and-mend, refurbish, or even create, call it what you will, a percentage of Piscators will always try to maintain their own fishing tackle or, indeed, anything else that requires a bit of attention. I am one of this merry band and the title perfectly describes my attitude to my other pastime: bodging or, if you prefer, ‘puttering’.
It has become popular in recent years to hear about an organisation called ‘Men’s Sheds’ which, I think, is a sort of charity where men can go and either use the charity equipment to repair a personal item, or maybe even make something. I am a bit of a solitary individual, and whilst I do have angling friends, I am a bit of a loner where other activities are concerned, so I have no plans to visit any of these fine establishments.
I, however, do have a workshop of my own. Few people venture there; it is a hotchpotch of hand and electrical tools, paint, outdoor clothing, screws, nails, nuts, bolts, gardening equipment and fishing tackle (lots of this stuff ). Oh, plus other items that one day may just come in useful. I do suspect that had the powers that be the authority to enter and inspect, they would quickly close me down for some reason or another, maybe the main reason would be for my own safety, which is where the above title so well describes my own attitude to bodging.
It all started many years ago after I left the Army and we purchased our first house. It had a decent-sized cellar which I commandeered as a workshop, slowly building up a collection of both vintage and modern hand and electric tools. My fascination for tools was fostered by my grandfather who himself had a good,domestic, mechanic’s workshop; as a child I used to watch him work on diesel and petrol engines, and marvelled at how he repaired them using both commercially available and home-made tools.
I could never however fire up an interest in engines but wood, glue, paint and varnish all seemed to me to be the perfect medium to make or repair practically anything, with maybe a bit of steel-bending, hacksawing, drilling or tapping, even filing, thrown into the mix where appropriate. I suppose being a joiner by trade at one time did help a bit.
I will now recall a couple or so of the, shall we say ‘interesting’, incidents that have happened in my own personal ‘Men’s Shed’.
Back in about 1980, one of my other pastimes was speleology or potholing (or caving, if you prefer). I was in a club called The Yordas Society which had weekend meets in the Yorkshire Dales, a popular area for caving.
The club manufactured a lot of its own equipment, ascenders for climbing ropes, descenders for abseiling down them. The ladders which you might describe as ‘rope ladders’ but, more correctly,are called electron ladders were made of steel ‘cable’ and alloy rungs. As a result, my workshop was full of caving gear, clothing,helmets, ropes, ladders and personal ironmongery including carabiners, nylon slings, waterproof ammunition boxes and lead acid headlights, identical those which coal miners used to use.
These lead acid battery lights, which were identical to those used in our long abandoned coal mines by proper men, were also rechargeable and needed a proper electrically controlled charger for their voltage, a charger that had a mechanism to prevent overcharging. I could not afford a charger so I adapted a six-volt motorcycle battery charger by inserting a piece of an element from an electric fire in the positive lead from the charger to the battery to reduce the power input. Despite being no electrician this Heath Robinson arrangement seemed to work well enough, the lights always lit and had a good, long, battery life.
All was well until one day I went to work and forgot to switch the chargers off (I had never bothered to include a timer in the system). On arriving home the house was full of a horrible chemical smell and, on going downstairs, I saw that the battery that had been on charge was now giving off some sort of smoke, the battery cell had ruptured and was oozing all sorts of toxic solutions into the atmosphere and, worst of all, everything was red hot and probably about to burst into flames.
I managed to switch off the electricity and clear up the mess, narrowly avoiding a house fire I suppose. I never attempted to charge a miner’s lead acid battery ever again; I moved on to an acetylene-powered head-lamp with a built-in, emergency, battery light that was replaceable after the battery discharged. Even then, I suppose you could say that the acetylene head-lamp was a bit like having a pressure bomb strapped to your belt; if the system had not had a safety pressure valve incorporated in it I dread to think what could happen.
Onward to another minor accident…and fast-forward quite a few years. I was in my workshop, constructing something made of angle iron, it was a support for a crucible to melt lead in (more of that later). The angle iron was a bit rusty and I was wearing a pair of overalls, mainly because my long suffering wife was fed up with buying pairs of jeans after I had messed them up with paint and glue, and had filled the jeans with holes, brass and steel filings and goodness knows what else (this also had a habit of beggaring up her washing machine).
I had the angle iron in an engineer’s vice on my bench. It was a bit thick to cut using a hacksaw so I had my trusty angle grinder to make it a quick job. I had measured and marked up the angle iron, put on a pair of protective glasses, and was wearing leather glovesand overalls which were now covered in paint. Health & Safety first (???), I switched on the angle grinder and proceeded to cut the steel…
I was concentrating on getting the cut straight and completely forgot that angle grinders give off a goodly amount of flying sparks. I did remember, however, when flames appeared suddenly from a rather tender part of my anatomy, below the waist and above the thighs, let’s say. I dropped the angle grinder and started to clumsily beat out the flames on the burning overalls which were giving off a goodly plume of smoke.
At the same time I was shouting for my wife, who was upstairs, to come to my assistance. The smoke set off the fire alarm in the workshop. Ruth in her good sense either did not hear me or, more likely, thought I was just having an ‘episode’ with something that was not going particularly well, as she was well used to hearing various vocal sounds of irritation coming from my workshop and normally did not respond.
Anyway, I rushed into the kitchen and threw a bowl of water over myself and did manage to put out the flaming overalls. The burning had also gone through to my jeans underneath and I had narrowly missed giving a much loved part of my anatomy a heat treatment it would never forget. After the flames had been extinguished I switched off the fire alarm, removed what was left of the overalls and threw them into the bin along with my, now charred, jeans. Setting off sans bottom-half attire, I strode upstairs to get dressed again. Ruth was in the bedroom three floors up and, as I walked in a state of undress, she looked up and just said: “They are either in the wash or the bin, I suppose. Let’s say bin.” I then told her what had happened; the look I received said it all.However, a few days later a heavy parcel arrived addressed to me; it contained a welder’s leather apron. Ruth obviously did not want the house burning down, although I’m not sure how much concern she had for my manly bits.
On to the crucible
What did I need a lead melting crucible for, you may ask? Well, in addition to being a freshwater fisherman, I also do rather a lot of sea angling, both from the boat and shore. Sea anglers use rather large lead sinkers, or weights, if you prefer. These weights are quite expensive and are regularly lost due to the fishing lines snagging on the seabed. As a good Yorkshireman with an aversion to spending money, I decided to make my own leads. I had made these for years by melting scrap lead over a paraffin ‘Hipolito’pressure stove in a neighbour’s garage but decided instead to make a lead-melting area on my outside bench, opposite the back door of our house.
Lead gives of toxic fumes when melted and I thought it would be safer making sinkers in the open air where the fumes could disperse. I had made a small crucible support constructed out of angle iron, as above described, and had screwed it to the wall above my outside workbench. Years before, I had made a crucible from an old, stainless steel, jelly dish with a steel tube handle that I had rivetted on; crude but it worked.
The angle iron crucible support was screwed to the wall at the exact height to facilitate me putting a gas blow-lamp, powered by a propane gas canister, beneath it; I had moved into the twentieth century! On this particular I had been given a large amount, by weight, of old scrap lead, including pounds and pounds in weight of old .22 air rifle pellets. I had all the scrap lead in an old, plastic, sink bowl and simply had to scoop the pellets and scrap lead out of the bowl into the crucible using a large spoon. What could go wrong?
I had done this many times in the past years with no more problems than the odd burn to my hands or a bit of a scorched beard so, today, with my new setup it should be a piece of cake. In addition to the new lead melting setup, I was wearing the nice,chrome leather, welder’s apron my wife had bought me after my latest episode. I think she thought it was a safer, or maybe cheaper, option than using more pairs of overalls anyway.
I scooped a goodly amount of scrap lead and pellets into the crucible, lit the blow-lamp and placed it underneath. Meanwhile, I got on with preparing my lead moulds whilst the lead melted. Soon the lead had melted sufficiently to pour into the lead mouldso I scooped the scum from the top of the melted lead and poured a perfect sinker. I levered the sinker from the mould and put another scoopful of scrap lead into the crucible and, turning my back on the crucible, popped the newly cast sinker onto the stone flag pathway to cool, then…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>BANG !!!<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
The lead in the crucible suddenly and very forcefully exploded behind me. The molten lead flew everywhere and had shot a good six feet into the air, covering the wooden door frame and glass nearby with hundreds of splashes of molten lead. I had my back to the crucible and had been leaning forward, putting the hot sinker onto the stone slab path to cool, which was very lucky because had I been facing it the splashes of red hot lead would very probably have hit me full in the face. As it happened, it hit my back and the fleece I was wearing had lead melting through it in hundreds of places down to my next layer of clothing. I was wearing my flat cap and that was covered in lead splashes as well. Quite how I had avoided getting any molten lead splashed onto my uncovered neck I shall never know…
The blowlamp had melted lead streaming down it over the gas canister. In a split second all sorts of thoughts went through my mind, including the thought that the hot lead might make the gas canister explode as well so I grabbed the blow-lamp and threw it as far away from me as possible and retreated into the doorway of the house. When there was no further explosion I ventured out and picked up the blow-lamp; it had gone out but was still emitting gas from the nozzle. I turned it off and went to view the carnage.
My wife Ruth had heard the explosion and ventured downstairs to see what was happening. She walked out of the back door, looked at me, crouched over the blowlamp with a good eight ounces of melted lead all over the now terminally damaged fleece and cap, lead splashes everywhere and simply said: “Fat lot of good the leather apron did. I hope you are going to clean up this messbefore turning and walking back inside.” Her concern for me was quite touching.
As a postscript I will add that I have always been scrupulously careful not to have any water anywhere near when I am melting lead; water and hot lead do not mix and can explode with horrible results, so I was confused as to what exactly had caused the explosion. I checked through the lead pellets and was, shall we say, a little surprised to find mixed in amongst the pellets a number of live blank caps as used in a starting pistol; it was no wonder the lead went off with bang!
There were many more similar incidents over the past forty years to those I have outlined above. In retrospect I find them amusingalthough at the time they were anything but amusing. I will hopefully include more in future issues of The Piscatorial Raconteurs entitled:
How Not To?
You must be logged in to post a comment.