Welder breaker

"Jimmie D" wrote

I'd be real careful. I've welded a long time, and it's incredibly easy to get a fire started. I've even done it on my own Levis. Rule # 1: If it can burn, I'll set it on fire.

Steve

Don't know about YOUR patio, but mine is concrete and it has lots of flammables around. Dry leaves, pine needles, woodwork, and just "stuff".

There was an old joke on the volunteer fire department I was with.

"We always get there in time to save the foundation and fireplace.

Even in a proper shop with a concrete floor, fires happen. And if you got your hood down, it has time to get ahead of you. Watch other people weld and cut and see just how far those sparks fly.

Be safe wherever you weld.

Steve

Nothing much to catch fire except a vinyl table and I hualed that out of the way after a few sparks hit it and melted inot it. No loss we were getting rid of it anyway. The rest is concrete planters and benches. There is the hot tub, but I stay away from that. The vinyl top on that the cost $500 to replace.

Jimmie

:) that's a good one.

Just last night I was cutting a lot of 2" square tubing on a chop saw and the guy I was working with commented about how the sparks were hitting a friend of ours who was working about 15 ft away. I didn't even understand what he was talking about at first because I didn't think the sparks were going more than about 5 ft. Not only was the deflector shield on the saw knocking most the sparks down to the floor, but we had another good sized piece of steel 1' x 2' set up to deflect the sparks behind the saw. But even with all that, about once a second, one spark would manage to find it's way all the way to the guy and hit him in the back. There were so many sparks falling around us, that I didn't even notice how far those few other sparks were flying. We do doing this at night outside with poor lighting which made the sparks really easy to see. But even then, I hadn't noticed how far a few of those sparks were going. In daytime, or in a shop with good lighting, it would have been really hard to see.

Basically, my point is that when working with things like chop saws, or grinders, or arc welding, if there's something that can catch fire withing

10 to 20 ft of where you are working, you better assume it's going to catch fire at some point. Don't assume the sparks are limited to only a few feet around you.