What did you do with your boat today.

[GBW]

2 minutes ago, Hack_Fisherman said:

Im eyeing up a helix sonar. I hope it lasts like my old humminbird portable. Still ticking almost 15 years later

I just got me a Helix 5 Chirp DI GPS unit (won it) and I cannot wait to use it to replace my old 525.  I have already had to contact the warranty dept. with a concern I had and they shipped me a new part no questions asked.  I have tinkered with it from time to time as I set it up as a portable unit and it looks easy to use.  But if I was to go spend a LOT on a new unit I think I would like to go touch screen.  So much faster to mark spots vs looking for a button.  

[Crimsongulf]

This isn't mine, but I am trying to help a neighbor straighten out this mess.

 

[AKRISONER]

11 hours ago, Old Ironmaker said:

That was me until I turned 40, right around the time I met my lady. There was no need to be buff anymore I guess because I scored big time when she decided to let me into her life. It was a Beauty and the Beast. 52" chest, 34" waist at 210 pounds, me not her, come on. Here's what happened. I won't go into great detail.

3 of my guys and I were working to determine where we had water infusion into one of our Blast Furnaces, there were 4 teams of 4 above the casthouse floor on the stack of the Furnace. We had what is referred to as an "iron breakout". We were unable to get to fresh air for a few minutes that seemed like a few hours. The air was thick with approximately 300F to 500F gases, rust coloured iron oxide, massive levels of carbon monoxide and very little oxygen if any. 2 of my guys suffered severe 3rd degree burns to 80% of their bodies and never returned to work. One of our mechanical foremen suffered a heart attack, he was off work for a few years. 2 of our contractors fell off a 3 stage scaffold when the slag pit exploded and that resulted in several broken bones to the 2 construction workers. I didn't get a scratch on me. Why no one was killed still baffles the experts.When the furnace was secured some of the guys were passing around cigarettes, I took one. 

Jesus, your story sounds exactly like an accident they had in Flin Flon in what my dad called “a reverb” in the smelter.
 

hes not sure who got the idea, but rather than waiting for the slag to cool enough to perform maintenance work, someone decided it was a good idea to use water in an attempt to cool the furnace floor off faster. A crack formed in the slag floor and water poured into the molten slag below making a combination of steam and hydrogen. It blew up like a bomb killing a bunch, burning the rest. One of the guys was my parents friend’s son who was a summer student doing grunt work over the summer to pay for his education. A horrible story.

went fishing again today in the old tinner. Kinda funny how I spent two years taking that plain 14 foot Starcraft with an 88 suzuki Into a fishing machine. Using fairly minimal resources When I finally finished tweaking stuff and fixing it up getting the thing rigged exactly how I liked it,I bought a bass boat lol.

who would have thought that all of that work that I put in a few years back would pay dividends some day. There’s no way I would have ever guessed that there would be a day where I couldn’t launch my boat, yet here we are. With the contractors home for the weekend I saw one boat in about 3 and a half hours. Fishing wasn’t as good today, the bait maybe moved a bit but more importantly the wind was just absolutely howling causing my float’s drift to be a little quicker keeping me out of the strike zone and struggling to mend my line to stop the wind from  pulling my float all over.

 

[Old Ironmaker]

18 hours ago, AKRISONER said:

Jesus, your story sounds exactly like an accident they had in Flin Flon in what my dad called “a reverb” in the smelter.
 

hes not sure who got the idea, but rather than waiting for the slag to cool enough to perform maintenance work, someone decided it was a good idea to use water in an attempt to cool the furnace floor off faster. A crack formed in the slag floor and water poured into the molten slag below making a combination of steam and hydrogen. It blew up like a bomb killing a bunch, burning the rest. One of the guys was my parents friend’s son who was a summer student doing grunt work over the summer to pay for his education. A horrible story.

 

 

I'm actually familiar with that fatality. It's was tragic. And without being a Monday morning QB it could have been avoided. Working under the Industrial Safety Act for Mines and Mining Plants in Ontario I had access to all MOL investigations even before I took a job with them and used them for our monthly safety meetings as often as I thought necessary. You don't want operators frightened at work rather than fully aware. Molten metal, slag and water do not go together. Even though slag is far less dense than metals it can also cause massive failures as well when in contact with water. You can actually pour high volumes of water onto molten running slag and nothing will happen but don't pour slag onto a puddle of water, boom. At Flin Flon hot metal was mixed with the slag. Simply due to the 2300F plus temps of molten metal and it's density when metal covers water it is turned into hydrogen in less than a millisecond and you basically have a hydrogen bomb and those Atoms are flying around so fast eventually with enough velocity to break through the metal and result in a massive explosion. All metal producing vessels whether a small crucible or massive 8000 Ton a day Blast Furnace all have to be cooled by water to protect their construction. The water cooling members after time may eventually leak and water infusion into the furnace causes scaffolding and localized pooling of the hot metal. Water covers the molten metal and an explosion may occur if you get a perfect storm within the furnace resulting in all the hot metal and slag to "breakout" of the furnace. 

OK' boys. Smoke em if ya' got em'. 

As far as your old tinner holding memories well I get it. I think more and have more great memories about the very first car I bought at 18, a 67' MGB for 500 bucks that I kept held together with bailing wire and duct tape. It was far more fun repairing and driving it than dropping the 50 grand for a new vehicle I have no real connection with other than it taking all my money. 

Edited April 19, 2020 by Old Ironmaker

[AKRISONER]

20 hours ago, Old Ironmaker said:

. And without being a Monday morning QB it could have been avoided.

lol used some old stelco language on me. What does that mean?

Im not surprised you heard what happened. My dad had a crazy story about doing work in on of the furnaces when he first started as a junior engineer. Basically as he described it, the furnace was lined with brick hung on pipes tessellated together. After a certain amount of time the fire was so hot that the bricks would wear down and need to be changed. When that work needed to be done it was basically all hands on deck to get the bricks re-hung as quickly as possible to minimize shut down time. Every able body person worked the graveyard shift to hang the bricks as quickly as possible and then get the hell out of there. 

As he described, the work needed to be done so damn quick that they actually wore large blocks of wood on their feet that the soaked in water to insulate their feet and keep their shoes from lighting on fire. He said his feet smoked when he walked. Well in my old man went to work when suddenly he realized he was beginning to feel faint. He says all he remembers is thinking, holy crap if i faint and land on this floor, im dead. Thats the last thing he remembers. He woke up in the hospital. his co workers described that they began to see him run and then he dove off of a 6 foot platform down onto a concrete floor below the furnace floor. He walked away basically unscathed. Turns out he had gotten food poisoning from the mess hall after they provided them all dinner before their work for the night. They were eating the leftovers from the day shift. A mixture of that hot environment and the sudden onset of food poisoning nearly did him in.

I feel like I am safe assuming that this kind of crazy dangerous work doesnt occur anymore.

[Old Ironmaker]

Akrisoner said "I feel like I am safe assuming that this kind of crazy dangerous work doesn't occur anymore." It doesn't other than in 2nd and 3rd world countries. Automation and better refractory and cooling technology has replaced putting people in harms way. In some cases, Coke Ovens however haven't changed much since WW2. 

At Flin Flon they saw evidence of water leaking for several days and decided not to shut down and deal with it.