my son made a wreck of my shop light

November 13, 2004, 08:20:15 PM

My oldest boy mason who is 12 has been messing around with melting aluminum in his homemade forge. Yesterday he must have made an error in trying to warm up in the garage.

I have an duplex outlet mounted on the cieling right beside one of my overhead lights.
one plug in usually powers my cieling mounted heater.
one powers my self winding / retracting shop light cord.

there is a 3way adaptor on the end of my shop light cord and mason decided to plug up the heater to that.

today,,,im needing the shop light so i grab the cord but notice the heater is hooked up to it,,im like WTF!!! I unplug it and plug it in to the receptical where it belongs.
I pull on the cord leading it to my cougar cause im doing my yearly tranny filter change. Suddenly smoke pours out of the little round black thing a ma jig that winds up the cord. I notice that the outter jacket on my cord is melted everywhere.

the guage wire in the shop light cord is the same guage as what the heater is so im like,, what when wrong here..... It then dawned on me..

anytime you run electricity in circles that many turns,, it will give off heat and magnetism. I guess he suceeded in two things today....

he melted aluminium with a wood source
and
created a resistor or inductor

all i know is im lucky the garage did not catch on fire.

Re: my son made a wreck of my shop light

Reply #1 – November 14, 2004, 05:25:57 PM

does he still own a forge?