Paul Burridge wrote:
Hi all,

Anyone got any high-current/low-voltage horror stories they'd care to
share? You know; where your messin' about with a car battery or
something like that and forget to take your watch off or whatever.

p.

This dates thirty years back: I was about ten years old. My father did
occasionally charge car batteries in the basement of our house. The
output of the charger was short cable with a broken cigarette lighter
plug. He did connect the battery to be charged with a pair of jumper
cables connected to it.
I was doing something in the room, when there was a big spark and some
smoke started to appear. I immediately disconnected the charger from the
mains as he explained to us that this was all we had to do to remove all
electricity from a device. I then went to search for him to tell him
what happened. When we came back the room was full of smoke and all what
was left of the jumper cables was some melted plastic. The copper was
all gone !

Markus