{"id":621,"date":"2005-12-28T05:42:53","date_gmt":"2005-12-28T10:42:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/69.50.194.231\/~vqplgdbg\/?p=621"},"modified":"2005-12-28T05:42:53","modified_gmt":"2005-12-28T10:42:53","slug":"insomniac-theater-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/?p=621","title":{"rendered":"Insomniac theater again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Have some kind of a head cold, I think, and it’s harshing my mellow. I managed to get around four hours, or maybe a bit less, but it’s kicking my ass. I have work to do!!<\/p>\n

Anyway, as I lay in bed staring at the ceiling and wondering if I’ll be able to get to sleep my mind drifts off to my days at the steel mills. We’ve been discussing job hazards, and I remember some of the job hazards that walked on two legs. <\/p>\n

One guy in particular, I hated to be paired with. Hs name was Frank, and he was a huge asshole. His wife committed suicide to get clear of him, he was such an asshole. He was a walking accident, and I tried to steer clear of any stupidity he became involved with. <\/p>\n

So on one particular day, the lead man assigns me to Frank (I was in the fourth year of my apprenticeship at the time) and we went out to a piece of machinery to do some repairs.
\n
\nWhat we were repairing was a Farval<\/a> system on a guide car at the Coke plant. Farval makes contained high pressure grease systems for industrial machinery, and this specific one had failed due to improper application (it had been filled with a low temp grease that had solidified in the lines in the high temperature application)<\/p>\n

So we get to the job (Frank never told me what we were doing) and realize, we havent’ got flare nut wrenches so i offer to run back down to the shop and get them. “Nah” frank says “we’ll just burn the lines off” I object to this on the grounds that we would be burning lines full of high pressure, flammable grease, and he basically said ‘you’re afraid of a little fire now?” (In his defense, he’s right. The coke plant I worked at, there was hardly a day in five years that I wasn’t either 1: on fire, 2; working next to a fire, or 3: partially immersed in flames.) We had flame suits on, as you had to working on the topside, so frank figured it wasn’t an issue. <\/p>\n

Me, I stood back.
\nSo Frank sparks an acetylene torch (a ubiquitous fixture all over the mill) and starts to heat the first piece of tubing. Being intrinsically lazy, he does so in the most comfortable position, at eye level. Not being interested in immolation myself, I back away. <\/p>\n

So I’m watching from the side as Frank heats this piece of tubing. It’s 1\/4″ ID, and there’s about thirty feet of it, and it’s under about 200 psi, which is abot to increase exponentially. Frank is heating at one spot, and he’s cursing because the spot is not getting hot. Of course, the reason for this is the grease inside, it’s convecting the heat away and warming a thirty foot stainless pipe. As he heats I can see the heat spreading up the pipe, the paint is burning off as far as ten feet away, and still the spot he’s heating isn’t getting warm.<\/p>\n

Finally, the spot starts to brighten a bit, which means the fluid inside has changed state, and become a hot, pressurized gas. I’m not sure how much pressure has been built, but I’m guessing it was in the thousands of pounds.<\/p>\n

Frank sees the spot and hits the oxygen (which is stupid as hell, because stainless won’t burn and he knows it, it’s just a reflex) so he has to go back to normal heat, and he rests one hand on the frame of the machine as he plays the acetylene flames over the tubing.<\/p>\n

Then, finally, the tube glows white again, and Frank leans in to see how it is progressing. We’re not at the gas end of the battery so we’re not wearing respirators, and he’s just got on small round welder’s glasses, not even goggles. A pinhole opens in the tubing, and from my vantage point, I can see a jet of flame spurt out of the pipe approximately ten feet, with frank’s head directly in it’s path.His whole head from the neck up is engulfed, and he ducks out of the way as quickly as he can. He turns to me and takes off his helmet- his hair has been all burned away except for the “x” pattern where the hard hat straps have protected his head. he has no more beard, no eyebrows, no eyelashes. The hair in his nose (which had been nearly thick enough to braid) was gone. <\/p>\n

He ran down to the clinic where they determined he’d been in the flame just long enough to do a bit of damage to his nasal sinuses, but nothing serious or lasting. His hair was another matter, and for a very long time afterwards he couldn’t grow a beard or a full head of hair. The ‘x” pattern of hair on his head stayed prominent for a long time. most people thought, “couldn’t have happened to a better guy” but I saw it happen, and I wouldn’t have wished it on anyone. On the other hand, he did it to himself, so I don’t have much sympathy either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have some kind of a head cold, I think, and it’s harshing my mellow. I managed to get around four hours, or maybe a bit less, but it’s kicking my ass. I have work to do!! Anyway, as I lay in bed staring at the ceiling and wondering if I’ll be able to get to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}