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Dandy Campers

Dandy Trailer Tent / Folding Camper Enthusiasts. Dandy Trailer Tent/Folding camper the best for all year camping


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    Tow Itch
    Tow Itch
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    Post by Tow Itch Sun 28 Jul 2013, 4:47 pm

    I do despair at the number of campers who manage to top themselves with barbecues inside their tent or awning. Then again I'm amazed at the instructions from some body that sets itself up as an authority only to use term CO2 for carbon monoxide. (CO is Carbon Monoxide CO2 is Carbon Dioxide)

    I'd guessed it was just a preservation of the gene pool but this one is beyond me. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
    How can a GP not realise the risks in lighting a fire with petrol.

    Any other either blindingly obvious methods, or more subtle ways in which you can kill or seriously injure yourself camping?
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    navver


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    Post by navver Sun 28 Jul 2013, 9:55 pm

    I have to say when I was a boy, I poured petrol over a fire, before it was lit, then carried the can with the lid off some distance away. I think I put the lid on then but it was a long time ago.

    I went and lit the fire and the flames shot through the air to where the can was. I think I must have put the lid on because all there was, was the trail of fire and no more.

    Frightening how the vapours form and ignite. Never done anything so stupid since, but then I had no idea. It was long before elf and safety was invented and children could climb trees and swim in the river.

    peridot
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    Post by peridot Sun 28 Jul 2013, 10:12 pm

    I think there's a real problem in that because safety is so rigidly applied and enforced in all workplace and public environments, people begin to feel in some way invulnerable and believe that nothing is going to harm them. There is so little exposure to risk for the average person that they loose the ability to assess and manage it with often tragic consequences.

    Not camping exactly and I don't know if it's staged or genuine but I always wince at this photo:

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    Also leisure pursuit related is the story of the canoe and the expanding foam that has been around for a long time and may just be true:

    A friend of mine once built a canoe. He spent a long time on it and it was a work of art. Almost the final phase was to fill both ends with polyurethane expanding foam. He duly ordered the bits from Mr Glasplies (an excellent purveyor of all things fibreglass) and it arrived in two packs covered with appropriately dire warnings about expansion ratios and some very good notes on how to use it.

    Unfortunately he had a degree, worse still two of them. One was in Chemistry, so the instructions got thrown away and the other in something mathematical because in a few minutes he was merrily calculating the volume of his craft to many decimal places and the guidelines got binned as well.

    He propped the canoe up on one end, got a huge tin, carefully measured the calculated amounts of glop, mixed them and quickly poured the mixture in the end of the canoe (The two pack expands very rapidly). I arrived as he was completing this and I looked in to see the end chamber over half full of something Cawdors Witches would have been proud of. Two thing occurred to me, one was the label which said in big letters: "Caution - expansion ration 50:1" (or something similar) and the other that the now empty tins said "approximately enough for 20 small craft".

    Any comment was drowned out by a sea of yellow brown foam suddenly pouring out of the middle of the canoe and the end of the canoe bursting open. My friend screamed and leapt at his pride and joy which was knocked to the ground as he started trying to bale handfuls of this stuff out with his hands. Knocking the craft over allowed the still liquid and not yet fully expanded foam to flow to the other end of the canoe where it expanded and shattered that end as well. A few seconds later and we had a canoe with two exploded ends, a mountain of solid foam about 4ft high growing out of the middle, and a chemist firmly embedded up to his armpits in it.

    At this stage he discovered the reaction was exothermic and his hands and arms were getting very hot indeed. Running about in small circles in a confined space while glued to the remains of a fairly large canoe proved ineffective so he resorted to screaming a bit instead.
    Fortunately a Kukri was to hand so I attacked the foam around his hands with some enthusiasm. The process was hindered by the noise he was making and the fact he was trying to escape while still attached to the canoe. Eventually I managed to hack out a lump of foam still including most of his arms and hands. Unfortunately my tears of laughter were not helping as they accelerated the foam setting.

    Seeking medical help was obviously out of the question, the embarrassment of having to explain his occupation (Chief Research Chemist at a major petrochemical organisation) would simply never have been lived down. Several hours and much acrimony later we had removed sufficient foam (and much hair) to allow him to move again. However he still looked something like a failed audition for Quasimodo with red burns on his arms and expanded blobs of foam sticking everywhere. My comment that the scalding simple made the hairs the foam was sticking to come out easier was not met with the enthusiasm I felt it deserved.

    I forgot to add that in retrospect rather unwisely he had set out to do this deed in the hallway of his house (the only place he later explained with sufficient headroom for the canoe - achieved by poking it up the stairwell. Having extricated him we now were faced with the problem of a canoe construction kit embedded in a still gurgling block of foam which was now irrevocably bonded to the hall and stairs carpet as well as several banister rails and quite a lot of wallpaper.

    At this point his wife and her mother came back from shopping......
    Oh yes - and he had been wearing the pullover Mum in law had knitted him for his birthday the week before.
    Tow Itch
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    Post by Tow Itch Sun 28 Jul 2013, 10:29 pm

    Both of those are round (Not the term I used for twin genital spheroids) but reduced me to tears. Do we do lifting bricks in a barrel next!
    mike
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    Post by mike Mon 29 Jul 2013, 6:11 am

    I have my own Darwin award,bought one of these for my compressor

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    Making a trellis for my stepdaughter and noticed i had not stapled one join,holding the trellis i stapled it,straight through and two fingers stapled together,didn't hurt going in but pulling it out was different.
    Tow Itch
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    Post by Tow Itch Mon 29 Jul 2013, 9:12 am

    Know of something very similar to that Mike. In the 1980's self and 2 mates rented a house. Unfortunately the owner lived next door. His property was much larger and included space where he could park two 16 tonne vans that were used for deliveries to the two or three shops that he owned.
    His son (in his 20's) was out one day re fitting timbers to the bed of one of the trucks. We heard nothing as did our neighbour but he eventually got curious about the lack of apparent activity and not seeing his son in the yard. When he found his son the lad appeared to have lost the power of speech. This was because he had been screaming at full pitch for several hours. His son had erred in his use of the Hilti Gun and nailed his foot to the floor of the truck.
    The father whose name was Tom had often been referred to as "The Tank Engine" from that point on the son became "The Baby Jesus."
    peridot
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    Post by peridot Mon 29 Jul 2013, 10:31 pm


    OUCH! to both of those stories.

    Back to the petrol theme - I lived in Derby at the time this happened and knew two of the people who had to move out of their house because of this idiot who decided to store petrol in plastic dustbins - [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] Mind you, they considered themselves very lucky indeed!

    There are a number of instructional videos on Youtube for would be Darwin entrants, such as -





    Tow Itch
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    Post by Tow Itch Mon 29 Jul 2013, 11:31 pm

    I knew what was coming with that wall but it was still an involuntary Argh! As the lad kicked through.

    What is it about aspiring pub arsonists? This one was in a town near to me.

    Tow Itch
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    Post by Tow Itch Tue 04 Feb 2014, 12:51 pm

    This one was contained in an email full of Darwin awards photos most of which were photoshopped I hope.
    This is just that bit more subtle.

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    jake001
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    Post by jake001 Wed 05 Feb 2014, 1:36 pm

    Surely the earth would be more effective if it was wet  Darwin Awards 9639063 
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    navver


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    Post by navver Wed 05 Feb 2014, 10:02 pm

    How stupid; fancy using a 6mm2 cable. Everyone knows it should be 10mm2.
    Tow Itch
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    Post by Tow Itch Thu 06 Feb 2014, 2:03 pm

    navver wrote:How stupid; fancy using a 6mm2 cable. Everyone knows it should be 10mm2.

    Thank you. Just wiping away a tear . That just caught my funny bone.
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    navver


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    Post by navver Thu 06 Feb 2014, 8:55 pm

    Could you put the tears into the bucket, it will help. There's many a spark wetted the earths with another bodily waste product to improve the reading.
    Tow Itch
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    Post by Tow Itch Mon 02 Jun 2014, 8:38 pm

    Not As Dangerous As You Might Think

    Feeling Brave/Stupid

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    So this picture is generally accepted as being posed and with no power on but if it was for real would it be that dangerous?

    Am I stupid or what? Well watch this film. Because of the contents it now requires that you sign in.

    I await the views of our brighter correspondents.

    peridot
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    Post by peridot Wed 04 Jun 2014, 11:32 pm


    I was going to say "what an idiot" or other disparaging comment (not you TI ... the chap in the video  Very Happy ).

    Then I remembered the voltage multiplier device I used to play around with to test instrumentation in a previous role. That could generate 20kV on an open bench  pale 

    We had to stay back 'after hours' to use it not just because it infringed every health and safety rule known to man, but the harmonics it generated shut down every computer in the building when it was switched on. I'm probably not the only one to have come closer to a Darwin Award nomination than I would like to think.

    Anyway, it's all about the electrickery getting back to earth. I imagine that should the live wiring come into contact with the pool water the people in there are not going to add much to any path back to earth that might exist so would probably feel nothing. It might be a different story if they then climbed out of the pool and put one wet foot on the ground with the other still in contact with the water. Although water is a poor conductor, the volume of it in that pool presents lots of parallel paths for the current (a massive cross-sectional area) and the person exiting the pool would nicely complete the path to earth  affraid 



    peridot
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    Post by peridot Fri 12 Sep 2014, 12:08 am



    Some people get irked when the lift doors close in front of them, others are happy to wait patiently for the lift to return.

    This gentleman was so affected by the experience that he decided to make sure it would never happen to him again.


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