Saturday morning's jewelry class did not come without it's fair share of challenges. The goal was to finish assembling the 4 links to my bracelet. It was going to be a 5 link bracelet, but last week left me with one casuality. The links have 6 solder joins. Tricky.
I couldn't get my torch to maintain a flame that equal in size and strength. And as my frustration grew with the torch, the more likely I was to ruin my project. I turned it off and on numerous times, opened and closed the main gas valve to ensure that I had turned on the torch properly, but nothing seemed to work.
My bench buddy (Drake - our benches face each other) watched as I furrowed my brow, muttered under my breath and talked sternly to my project, hoping it would do what I needed it to do. He made a couple of suggestions which I tried, but still, no luck.
"I'm not using my torch. Do you want to switch benches?"
"Yes." There was no hesitating before answering that question.
We left our stuff at our respective stations and swapped sides.
The soldering went much better. Three links went without hitch. I was thrilled. Finally -- progress. And that's when it happened. A HUGE explosion. I looked up and saw one large ball of fire emerging from the torch in Drake's hand. I immeadiatly switched mine off. There was nothing to do but wait. He held the torch (or fireball) in one hand and tried to switch off the main gas supply. The main gas supply is never supposed to be turned more than a 1/4 of a turn. It took him 8 full turns to get it turned off. Once the gas was gone, the fire quickly extinguished itself.
Drake was left with a minor burn on his hand.
Black dust kept falling from the sky and lightly coating my workstation. We were all okay. Nothing caught on fire.... which is nothing short of a miracle considering the extra crap on my desk.
When the torch had cooled, the instructor went to examine it to find the fault. The tip wasn't properly attached. Minor error with major complications.
I think I remember him telling me to loosen one part of the torch, which I did. Funny enough, it was there that the seal wasn't tight enough, thus causing a massive explosion in his hands. Ooops. Big oops. Big Big oops. It's a good thing he still has his eyebrows, or I'd feel extra awful.
I couldn't get my torch to maintain a flame that equal in size and strength. And as my frustration grew with the torch, the more likely I was to ruin my project. I turned it off and on numerous times, opened and closed the main gas valve to ensure that I had turned on the torch properly, but nothing seemed to work.
My bench buddy (Drake - our benches face each other) watched as I furrowed my brow, muttered under my breath and talked sternly to my project, hoping it would do what I needed it to do. He made a couple of suggestions which I tried, but still, no luck.
"I'm not using my torch. Do you want to switch benches?"
"Yes." There was no hesitating before answering that question.
We left our stuff at our respective stations and swapped sides.
The soldering went much better. Three links went without hitch. I was thrilled. Finally -- progress. And that's when it happened. A HUGE explosion. I looked up and saw one large ball of fire emerging from the torch in Drake's hand. I immeadiatly switched mine off. There was nothing to do but wait. He held the torch (or fireball) in one hand and tried to switch off the main gas supply. The main gas supply is never supposed to be turned more than a 1/4 of a turn. It took him 8 full turns to get it turned off. Once the gas was gone, the fire quickly extinguished itself.
Drake was left with a minor burn on his hand.
Black dust kept falling from the sky and lightly coating my workstation. We were all okay. Nothing caught on fire.... which is nothing short of a miracle considering the extra crap on my desk.
When the torch had cooled, the instructor went to examine it to find the fault. The tip wasn't properly attached. Minor error with major complications.
I think I remember him telling me to loosen one part of the torch, which I did. Funny enough, it was there that the seal wasn't tight enough, thus causing a massive explosion in his hands. Ooops. Big oops. Big Big oops. It's a good thing he still has his eyebrows, or I'd feel extra awful.
Labels: Jewelery Class
2 Comments:
YIKES!!!
Oh scary. I did a jewellery making class last year and those gas torches made me quite nervous. Glad everyone is ok.
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