06-01-2010, 11:41 AM
1
Bad Apprentice!
It was 1962 and my second day as an apprentice television engineer. The boss gave me the supposedly harmless task of dusting out the back of a TV. He fixed me up with vacuum cleaner and a dry 1" paintbrush and went off to see to something else. I plugged the vacuum cleaner into the nearest power point and made a start. It was good watching the valves and chassis appear as the thick layer of dust was removed. However, the vacuum cleaner seemed in need of replacement. It just didn't seem to run up to speed and couldn't have sucked the skin off a rice pudding. I carried on doing the best I could. Who was I to complain.Pretty soon a strange smell pervaded the air. I had a look around and noticed, with interest, a pool of dense grey smoke coming out of a box at the back of the bench. It was a kind of 'heavy' smoke that crept across the bench top and then fell onto the floor.
"Hello" I shouted hoping someone might hear "He-lp" The boss came in, quickly sized up the situation and unplugged the vacuum cleaner. I'd plugged it into what's known as an isolating transformer. This is a safety device designed to run TVs under repair conditions and maybe a soldering iron as well. They only have limited current capabilities and I'd certainly exceeded it by using it to run a 1000 watt vacuum cleaner.
The expensive transformer was a write-off and the smell in the workshop lasted for days. It could have been worse I suppose. Might have lost the bench...or even the whole workshop! Well...nobody told me I shouldn't plug a vacuum cleaner in there did they? But what a good start to a new job!
06-01-2010, 02:15 PM
3
Re: Bad Apprentice!
I made a couple of other mistakes along the way but ended up doing the job for 33 years (including the appenticeship). The company was called Rentaset when I started. Then it merged with Radio Rentals and for a while, the two companies went under the name of 'Radio Rentaset' until it was changed to Radio Rentals. I think Radio Rentals was the dominant partner in the merger because it was owned by Thorn.!0 of those 33 years were spent self-employed.
06-01-2010, 11:38 PM
6
Re: Bad Apprentice!
Workshop safety standards weren't as strict as they are today. The bench tops were made of lino on top of chipboard. These rested on Dexion (a sort of angle iron with holes in). It was pretty convenient for hanging hot soldering irons on. I lost many a pair of trousers because of this. I'd go up to see what sort of fault was being worked on by one of the engineers. A hot feeling around the thigh accompanied by a burning smell meant that his soldering iron was hanging unnoticed on the Dexion and I had leant against it, so ruining yet another pair of trousers. In the end my Mother said that she couldn't help out with the cost anymore, so patches were the only answer. All of my trousers ultimately had patches on, usually somewhere between the fly and trouser pocket.
That wasn't the only trouble that the Dexion benches caused. The bench top and therefore the Dexion was roughly at the height of the male naughty bits. This meant that if an electric shock was received, the spark went in through the finger and headed for the nearest path to earth. In this case that meant out through the 'male anatomy' to the Dexion. I think this is where Disco dancing had its origins.
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