'plug' Override For External Lighting

[sparky3366]

Christ Almighty!!

I regularly come across the "6inch nail fuse" and other dodgy wiring too

Would that be the same as the three inch slow blow variety?

[Matt Ward]

Christ Almighty!!

I regularly come across the "6inch nail fuse" and other dodgy wiring too

One of the engineers on a previous company I worked for went to a callout to fix a vicon dome which was up a pole.

The mains fuse had blown, and continued to blow everytime the fuse was replaced. He ended up shorting out the fuse with some strands from a flex core because, quote "the dome will only draw the current that it needs". When the spur was switched on this time it didn't blow. Only thing was the dome at the top of the pole was now smoking heavily!

I don't know what the problem was in the end, but we obviously had to buy a new dome!

Matt

[arfur mo]

hows this one for crazy?

my older brother (siz years my senior) and his school chum were heavily into electicity and electronics (in the valve hey day era), at school wood work, his mate had made a table lamp on the lathe, so proud of his work he invited my brother who took along to see it working (life was just so exciting before the playstations).

so we go in and are shown the lamp which is working, being polite if bored we said the usual well done's "ah! but you have not seen anything yet he preens - this is a new design", and switches off the lamp picks up then go's about showing us no mains leads - now we are very interested, it's not battery and the bulb is definately a mains one, he even swaps it with another bulb. then puts the lamp back on the table in a different position switches on and it lights up.

my brother and me are totally vexed eventually days later gets him to explain the 'trick' -

he had installed 4 box shaped strip plates made from oxo tins (anyone else remember them?) onto a wooden table, making them alternatively live and negative and covered with a table cloth. on the lamp he had 2 nails one for positive - one for negative wired to the bulb which when placed on the table and punched through to the plates.

the nail tips having went through the table cloth make contact with the full 240 volt mains protected by a 30 re-wirable fuse - if it was not actually a nail, using some old twin twisted cotton covered reddy brown flex which was carrying the full mains to the table.

to hide it he had run it under the floor boards through a hole in the carpet from a socket some 10 feet away.

i was about 6 or 7 at the time, and in total awe at the sheer ingenuity of the 'magic' show, when i've thought back and often, to that day - i just shudder and thanked my dads teachings of "you can look but don't ever touch anything, in case you might break it and i have to pay".

regs

alan