Inspired by my recent solder station mishap, I thought it might start a thread where we can share stories about setting our hair on fire, almost burning the house down or generally just doing stupid stuff while trying to build things.
I’ll start: When I was a young teen, I needed an extension cord. I didn’t have one, but what I did have was an extension cord made for ceiling lamps. In Sweden, these use a small round 3-prong connector, which is different from what is used for regular wall plugs.
The thing that I needed the extension cord for had a power plug that I could unscrew from the cable. Same thing with the lamp extension cord. So I unscrewed one end of the lamp extension cord, then I put the wall plug there, and the small 3-prong thingy went on the end of the cord I wanted to extend. So now I had a longer cable, which worked great.
At some point later, though, I ended up unplugging this extension cord, and got my first taste of 220 volt. Turns out that I had made what is sometimes called a “suicide cable”; a cable with prongs at both ends. Luckily the voltage only went through my hand, and only briefly, but it’s not something you easily forget, and I haven’t made that particular mistake again…
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