Re: The first time in over 20 years.

[chasbo@xxxxxxxxx]

Back in 1965 or thereabouts I was drilling a hole for a wire from the
outside of the house just below a first-floor window towards the
inside of the house. I was mounting the bell box below the window.  I
eventually felt the bit turning, but not going any deeper.

I went inside the house and saw that I had drilled through the wall
and had drilled into a cast-iron floor-mounted radiator, tight against
the wall. I called my Dad, who drove many miles, saw my error, and
proceeded with pipe wrench to disconnect the radiator from its feed
pipe (don't recall ir it was steam or water).  He re-drilled the hole,
tapped it, and then with screw driver in hand he put a machine screw
in the hole; moved radiator back into position.

His motto was "Never make a mistake you can't fix."

And there was the time I was in a basement whose walls were
knotty-pine.  While drilling with a two-foot bit at a slight angle but
almost parallel to the wall I suddenly experiened water squirting at
me from the wooden hole, behind which was a copper pipe. Dad to the
rescue again.

Another time a customer called at the end of the day to say her
clothes dryer was not working and "did we disconnect it?" No we did
not, but the following day I discovered that in drilling a 3/8 hole
from a first floor door to the basement the bit had passed through the
center of the 220VAC dryer feed, and that we had also put a snake
through the hole and our wire was now also passing throught the 220VAC
line.  I never felt a shock when the bit shorted the 220.

And there was the employee who couldn't care much about anything.  He
was the helper, who thought he new everything.  He was in the basement
with two-foot bit about to drill up into an interior wall. The
basement ceiling was unfinished, no one was at home, the house was
empty of furniture, the customer had just purchased the house, and the
dummy was in the basement with this "lkethal weapon." Upstairs in the
kitchen was the senior installer who was to stomp on the floor if he
saw the bit come up through the tiled kitchen floo, in which case the
dummy would stop and realize he missed the interior of the wall.

Would you believe that when I arrived later in the day to check the
job progress, upon entering the kitchen I saw about six holes in the
floor, in a fairly straight line, each several inches away from the
previous hole, but each hole was getting closer to the interior wall?

I was ready to punch out both of them.  The senior installer was
incapable of managing the young know-it-all, who I fired - and
actually went into business for himself years later. Pity his
customers.
 On Fri, 6 Jul 2012 18:33:28 -0700 (PDT), Jim <alarminex@xxxxxxx>
wrote:

>Well, I did something the other day that I haven't done in over 20 - 30 years.
>
>I was drilling a window up to the attic and drilled through the roof.
>
>DAMN!!!!!
>
>Fortunately it was an older ranch that someone was renovating so after everyone had left, I was able to go back and tar the hole. Embarrassing!!