Using a finger to find hot (not mine).

I was reading Bob Katz's post about power and someone mentioned using a finger to find phase. That reminded me of when I watched a man from Con Edison come into the building where i have my studio. The building is an old Sewing factory and has massive mains - something on the order of 3000amp service into the building. We were talking and he said he uses a finger after he's licked it to find out if a line is hot and that just freaked the hell out of me. How does that work? Understand that I am not ever going to do such a thing, so admonition or disclaimers are not applicable here. I stuck a key in an outlet standing on wet slate as a two year old and I have ever since had a great respect for Mr. Shock. ..He used to come into my room at night and make noises and generally made it hard to sleep.

Reminds me of my granddad who worked as electric motor repairman he did that as well.....thats the oldschool way :grin:

Morten

That's how my dad does it. He will even put his fingers across 240. When I was working with him, I was even able to test for voltage this way. Too much of a wuss now though.
People that work with their hands develop some pretty severe calluses. So, sometimes he would even have to push his finger into the wire of buss bar even harder. The harder you push the more you get!

So.. How are they not killing themselves? :shock:

Keeping index finger to ground with middle finger to sense voltage or something similar? Still seems like a hell of a way to work, imo.

[quote author="moogah"]So.. How are they not killing themselves?[/quote]

Surface area and shock times are small, maybe? I mean, it's not like they're gripping live wires in their fists for 15 minutes...

Best,
Al.

Man, that last post brings back some bad memories of trips to transmitter sites, battling underbrush and snakes with machetes, dodging a swarm of angry wasps hiding inside the ATU cabinet, etc. Oh yeah, and trying not to get killed by high-powered transmitters, transmission lines and towers, of course.

I remember spending a whole day working next to a powerful FM and feeling really loopy after a few hours. There was also a 1kW AM in the room but I doubt that had anything to do with it. (Aside from the power difference between those two TXs, the dimensions of your body are of course much closer to half- or 5/8-wave resonance at FM broadcast frequencies than at AM--unless you're the Jolly Green Giant).

The only transmitter site that I ever enjoyed working at was Armstrong's tower in Alpine, NJ. It was a country club compared to the remote mountaintop jungles where transmitters and towers are usually situated.

Sorry for the OT. Carry on...