JohnD Posted February 27 Share Posted February 27 (edited) And people bemoan the advent of the H&SE! Edited February 27 by JohnD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rogerguzzi Posted February 27 Share Posted February 27 Hello All When I was an apprentice we use to use Carbon Tetrachloride for cleaning things!!!!!!!!!!! No masks etc or gloves !!! Roger ps and as for mixing up Asbestos powder for pipe lagging? (same rules applied?) pps that was after removing the old stuff to do a repair? ppps Still must have been good for me as I am still alive and just about kicking at 78.5 years Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedRooster Posted February 27 Share Posted February 27 33 minutes ago, rogerguzzi said: Hello All When I was an apprentice we use to use Carbon Tetrachloride for cleaning things!!!!!!!!!! We used to wash our hands in the stuff, no soap needed as the top layer of skin dissolved and lathered up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Escadrille Ecosse Posted February 27 Share Posted February 27 (edited) 5 hours ago, andymcp said: Fantastic for cleaning the carbon off the gas plug of your SLR (Self Loading Rifle) prior to inspection! Also used, in a re-purposed Burco water boiler, to de-grease C130 propeller hubs. The resulting fatality contributed to it's demise from RAF use.. Remember hearing about that one... A friend used to work at Barr and Stroud, the periscope makers in Glasgow. They had a heated tank full of the stuff for cleaning the periscopes before they went out and when they came back for overhaul. About 30 foot long and 3 foot deep. Although he does remember the time the Navy sent a periscope back for 'repair' and they could only get half in at a time owing to it being bent like a banana! 3 hours ago, JohnD said: And people bemoan the advent of the H&SE! I know. Taken all the 'excitement' out of life. Edited February 27 by Escadrille Ecosse Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedRooster Posted February 27 Share Posted February 27 6 hours ago, JohnD said: And people bemoan the advent of the H&SE! Now known as the fun police in my industry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeTRacted Posted February 27 Share Posted February 27 Carbon Tet was the go-to cleaner during my apprenticeship. Banned long ago. I did a stint in the 'plating shop' where they not only used a hot trichloroethane vapour bath for degreasing metals but also had an open cyanide tank for passivating cadmium plating. It used to make your skin feel slimy. Ain't dead yet....... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Escadrille Ecosse Posted February 27 Share Posted February 27 7 minutes ago, DeTRacted said: Ain't dead yet....... There is perhaps a significant element of self-selection confimation bias with this type of response. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedRooster Posted February 27 Share Posted February 27 27 minutes ago, DeTRacted said: had an open cyanide tank for passivating cadmium plating. It used to make your skin feel slimy. Ain't dead yet....... WTF Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeTRacted Posted February 27 Share Posted February 27 (edited) 1 hour ago, RedRooster said: WTF A common coating for metal parts in electronic assemblies was passivated cadmium plating, commonly known as cad-and-pass. Its sort of a yellowy colour finish with an iridescent sheen and gives anti -corrosion properties. The passivation process required the plated parts to be immersed in a 'cyanide' bath - I'm not sure exactly what the constituents were, its nearly 60 years ago and memory fades. Cadmium is now banned and the cyanide is obviously a major hazard but the process was commonplace back in the day, on 19-inch rack parts and other steel components. Edited February 27 by DeTRacted Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hamish Posted February 27 Share Posted February 27 Ha ha you are all wimps, as a kid I used to play with perchloroethylene. Mum had a laundrette with dry cleaning machines. We had a massive 45gal drum on a frame in the garage and I’d dispense it out of a little tap into gallon cans. The cans had a sort of loose disc in the top to stop it totally sealing !? I remember it being many times heavier than eg a can of petrol mum used to carry a wooden box of 4 gallon cans in the back of her chevette to the launderette. i found it melted plastic toys so i could have end of the world type battles. mum didn’t know about this aspect of its use !!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rogerguzzi Posted February 27 Share Posted February 27 Hello All I can remember chasing Mercury around the desk in the science labs at school when it we were being told it was a metal that was liquid at room temperature!!! Roger ps The Good old days? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zetecspit Posted February 27 Share Posted February 27 (edited) 1 hour ago, rogerguzzi said: Hello All I can remember chasing Mercury around the desk in the science labs at school when it we were being told it was a metal that was liquid at room temperature!!! Roger ps The Good old days? When I was at school I remember a tub with (probably) a gallon or so of mercury in it. We were allowed to float all sorts of things in it, lumps of steel, brass etc. During my degree we got let loose with Drager Tubes. And I tested for mercury at a local dentists when they made amalgam. The mercury vapour reading was zero. And I have a nice old Admiral Fitzroy barometer I inherited, that has a nice full tube of mercury. Not dangerous stuff if people are sensible. But that is the problem. Edited February 27 by zetecspit Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Escadrille Ecosse Posted February 27 Share Posted February 27 (edited) Cycanide and cadmium. Really not nice stuff! And perchloroethylene. There's a smell from the past. When I started working as a 'rocket scientist' the site I was was still making small quantities of paper nitrocellulose using the old 19th century displacement process (along with more modern guncotton, nitroglycerine and gun and rocket propellants). Imagine a huge room full of 4 foot square Belfast sinks filled with concentrated nitric and sulphuric acid mix (about 99% acid) in which rolls of paper are being nitrated. The sinks are completey open to the room and the occasional bubble will come to the surface to release a small puff of poisonous brown nitrogen dioxide gas which rises to join the general brown haze floating (hopefully) just above head height. No masks and you are entreated not to cough or rub your eyes as it might encourage the workers in the building to complain about the extract system. Then if this isn't bad enough once the reaction is deemed complete, the acid is 'displaced' by admitting water, very, very slowly below the more dense and highly reactive acid. Too fast and the two will mix with a violent exothermic reaction throwing out hot acid and a cloud of dense nitrous fume. And if you are realy unlucky leading to the rapid and violent decomposition of the 40kg or so of nitrocellulose paper in the vat. So you could be simultaneously poisoned, melted and burned to death! And perhaps a bit of blowing up too. The continuous nitration process was a lot safer but we still had the occasional 'deflagration'. And as the 'professional' grades like me didn't get much in the way of safety equipment beyond anti-static safety boots and safety glasses I was forever having my clothes riddled with holes from acid vapour and the occasional attack of nitrated skin. Like @JohnD says 'and people bemoan the advent of HSE'. Edited February 27 by Escadrille Ecosse 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andymcp Posted February 28 Share Posted February 28 The armed forces were late adopters of H&S regulations due to 'Crown Immunity'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hamish Posted February 28 Share Posted February 28 9 minutes ago, andymcp said: The armed forces were late adopters of H&S regulations due to 'Crown Immunity'. And can you imagine the Risk Assessment needed to intentionally blow some one up! the target - fine collateral Damage avoidance that the complicated bit ….. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andymcp Posted February 28 Share Posted February 28 During the Gulf War, the RAF had a 200 strong legal team 'in theatre' to assess any proposed missions for potential breaches of international law. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnD Posted February 28 Share Posted February 28 Those are all (?) Industry in previous age. In my previous age (youth) home made explosives were the thing. Weedkiller pipe bombs, fireworks, powdered metals etc. I suppose in this day, one shouldn't record the recipes, but "The Anarchist's Cookbook"? Pah! Kids stuff! That old blood pressure measuring device, the 'sphygmomanometer', was a graduated glass tube and a mercury reservoir with nearly 100 grams of the metal in it. On every doctor's desk! I found in a drawer that I had kept the mercury from an old broken one and not knowing how to dispose of it rang the local council refuse dept. Within minutes, a van arrived with two men in HazMat suits! They seemed ready to deal with a major incident and were quite disappointed to be handed a sealed tube of the stuff! John Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedRooster Posted February 28 Share Posted February 28 Best ditch your copy of the book. United Kingdomedit Possession of The Anarchist Cookbook without reasonable excuse has been successfully prosecuted under Section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnD Posted February 28 Share Posted February 28 We all (?) have a misspent youth! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Jones Posted February 28 Share Posted February 28 17 hours ago, Escadrille Ecosse said: Cycanide and cadmium. Really not nice stuff! And perchloroethylene. There's a smell from the past. When I started working as a 'rocket scientist' the site I was was still making small quantities of paper nitrocellulose using the old 19th century displacement process (along with more modern guncotton, nitroglycerine and gun and rocket propellants). Imagine a huge room full of 4 foot square Belfast sinks filled with concentrated nitric and sulphuric acid mix (about 99% acid) in which rolls of paper are being nitrated. The sinks are completey open to the room and the occasional bubble will come to the surface to release a small puff of poisonous brown nitrogen dioxide gas which rises to join the general brown haze floating (hopefully) just above head height. No masks and you are entreated not to cough or rub your eyes as it might encourage the workers in the building to complain about the extract system. Then if this isn't bad enough once the reaction is deemed complete, the acid is 'displaced' by admitting water, very, very slowly below the more dense and highly reactive acid. Too fast and the two will mix with a violent exothermic reaction throwing out hot acid and a cloud of dense nitrous fume. And if you are realy unlucky leading to the rapid and violent decomposition of the 40kg or so of nitrocellulose paper in the vat. So you could be simultaneously poisoned, melted and burned to death! And perhaps a bit of blowing up too. The continuous nitration process was a lot safer but we still had the occasional 'deflagration'. And as the 'professional' grades like me didn't get much in the way of safety equipment beyond anti-static safety boots and safety glasses I was forever having my clothes riddled with holes from acid vapour and the occasional attack of nitrated skin. Like @JohnD says 'and people bemoan the advent of HSE'. That sounds like the sort of work environment that gives Darwin a chance of cleansing the gene pool of the careless and unwary! Well survived that man! My first “real” job (after welding up scabby old Triumphs for money in distinctly primitive conditions) was in an experimental foundry making metal matrix composites. Injecting molten aluminium into heated dies at up to 14 Bar. There were occasional mishaps, sometimes spectacular, very occasional successes, much scrap produced and an awful lot of trying to salvage expensive machine components from a matrix of escaped aluminium. For this we had a 200L drum of concentrated caustic. Dumping 20kg or so of almost glowing press tooling covered in barely solidified aluminium into that produced a lively reaction, somewhat akin to Old Faithful. Getting the victim into it and getting yourself back out of range in time to avoid the splash back and fallout required cat-like reflexes! I don’t recall anyone dying or getting any major injuries, more luck than judgement though. In the accident book (yes, there was one!), the forklift was the most frequent offender. Mainly because it was used in many ways that it’s creators had neither intended or foreseen, and beyond its limits where they had. Hard, sometimes hazardous, usually extremely hot work. Very poorly paid but quite enjoyable in a masochistic sort of way and very educational! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Escadrille Ecosse Posted February 28 Share Posted February 28 1 hour ago, Nick Jones said: Hard, sometimes hazardous, usually extremely hot work. Very poorly paid but quite enjoyable in a masochistic sort of way and very educational! A lot to be said for all that Nick. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnD Posted February 29 Share Posted February 29 And now for something completely different. Son sent me pics of a car he saw in a tumble down garage off a suburban road in South East London. The bonnet badge is a giveaway, it's a Panhard, the firm originally known as Panhard et Levassor, and I think it's a 24CT from 1964. That was the last passenger model with the Panhard name, and must be one of the rarest classics (if it is a classic?) around. I fear that this one will never do more than contribute to the rusty stratum that marks the Anthropocene Age. John Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Jones Posted February 29 Share Posted February 29 Interesting spot and an interesting car. Does look a bit crusty. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Escadrille Ecosse Posted February 29 Share Posted February 29 1 hour ago, JohnD said: And now for something completely different. Definitely satisfies that criterion! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedRooster Posted February 29 Share Posted February 29 Back in the day it looked like this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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