Badly Burned!!!

[D Crockett]

gentlemen I can give you some medical advise. keep a aloe plant around where you are casting. it is mother natures cure for burns. I once had a radiator blow up in my face at a gas station. and the attendant had aloe plants in a planter in front of the station. he grab some and put it on my face and in just a few minutes it was not burning. I did not blister or have any other effects from the hot water. I keep it all around my house all the time and put it on me when I get a splatter of lead on me. be careful and be safe casting D Crockett

[Smoke4320]

gentlemen I can give you some medical advise. keep a aloe plant around where you are casting. it is mother natures cure for burns. I once had a radiator blow up in my face at a gas station. and the attendant had aloe plants in a planter in front of the station. he grab some and put it on my face and in just a few minutes it was not burning. I did not blister or have any other effects from the hot water. I keep it all around my house all the time and put it on me when I get a splatter of lead on me. be careful and be safe casting D Crockett

excellent advise right there an actual aloe plant is very good at relieving burn pains especially when applied right after

[dragon813gt]

I didn't burn myself badly last week. But I still burnt myself. I was attempting salt bath annealing for the first time. Was using potassium nitrate at slightly over 1000F. First few cases went just fine. But one of them introduced me to the potassium nitrate fairy. There must have been moisture in the case. It was a cold morning and warm afternoon so I'm assuming the case condensed earlier in the day. The potassium nitrate fairy is not a woman you want to meet. I had my gloves off, which was stupid of me, and ended up w/ a few small burns on my right hand. There is BurnGel in my first aid kit and it helped but not like it normally does. So for anyone that's thinking about salt bath annealing, I can't recommend it for many reasons, make sure the cases are completely dry and that you have proper PPE on.

[HiVelocity]

Folks, this is no joke. I've had similar incidents and dodged hot lead in the process. We love this hobby so much, we get complacent, and end up paying for it somewhere down the line. One additional item I've added to my safety items is a heavy piece of quilted canvas I found somewhere that sits nicely across my lap. This has saved "the boys" a few times from a rogue hot cast bullet that missed its mark. Just food for thought. Im glad you're not burned more than you were. Be safe.

HV

[w5pv]

Always safety first

[Mooseman]

The best burn medicine i have used is Raw Honey...an old time remedy and if you google it you will see why.
I backed into a hot weld while repairing a gold dredge and it set my shirts on fire...before i knew it flames were removing my hair and my left side of my back was charring, even worse when I stopped dropped and rolled. I ended up with 1,2 and 3rd degree burns after I ripped my shirts off it was pretty bad. Called the GF and told her, since we live 150 miles from a hospital that could help, and she said put honey on it and wrap up in saran wrap. ASAP. My neighbor came over and helped apply the honey and wrap me up and tape it in place.
It was amazing that in a couple hours there was no pain and I slept on my back that nite as I rolled on it in my sleep. By changing the honey and dressing every 2 days I never got any infection and the burn healed so good the only sign of it is a scar about the size of a dime where the flesh was burned the deepest. Apparently honey on a burn turns to hydrogen peroxide and keeps out infection, while removing pain too. Im sold on Honey !

[stephen m weiss]

I really appreciate all the stories, especially the hard learned gear sets! I have made several safety improvements to my casting set up so far, and this thread was awesome for giving me things to think and act on. So easy to screw down the pot on my bench and add a gutter rail to stop lead from draining on my feet or the electrical cord. I am adding long sleeves and boots instead of shoes. Adding a full brim boonie hat to keep lead off my ears and out of the back of my shirt. Moving up the schedule priority of a casting oven.

[Forgetful]

I have a couple burns from zinc I'll never forget. The odd splash of lead doesn't really seem to burn much at all. I cast in slippers and they're about 10% coated in lead now, lol. Aside from the zinc burn, the only other bad burn I got was when I quenched a heat treatment, moving from the oven to the sink. I was using a folded towel to carry the basket by the handle I gave it.. Everything was going good until I realized I didn't take into account the huge ball of superheated steam rising towards my hand as I gently try to ease it into the water without disturbing the boolits. Dropped them and retracted my arm as quick as I could. Just the backside of my thumb got burned, from the knuckle to the nail. If I waited until I started to feel the heat, it would have been far far worse. It's a little scary the first time, the way the water violently evaporates. I now lower them in from the end of a pole.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Assuming that a honey-doo is something non-alcoholic, possibly the biggest factor in the OP's accident were the distractions and the haste. I've never worn gloves, and never had even a spatter burn from lead. I think a really secure grip on things is worth more. If I felt vulnerable I would wear Kevlar welder's sleeves, adjusted to cover part of the hand but leave the fingers free. I do believe in keeping things, not on the floor but fairly low, with a wide, flat pot on a really secure burner, and pour with nothing larger than the RCBS spouted ladle. If I was melting range or other scrap I would stand well back after starting the heat, and never add solid to liquid. You never know what is trapped in it.

But once I was repairing a roof with molten pitch, much hotter than boiling water so that it would give me time to work. I spilled it over the back of my hand, and part-way round the front. I got to cold running water quickly, but it hurt like fury, not immediately, but as it started to blister, and the pitch coating prevented the blisters from expanding.

I was up all night running cold water over it to dull the pain, and it stopped hurting as the blisters were freed up. In hindsight I wonder if I would have done better to hold my hand in as warm a place as possible, to let the pitch expand. By morning I was able to drive myself ten miles to the hospital emergency room, where the staff thought I was tremendously brave to make light of the pain, but by that time there was none at all.

They covered it with Flamazine ointment (possibly a different name in the US), and taped the hand up in a blue plastic glove, without dressings. It produced fluid liberally for the first week or more, and that is the trouble with burns really. There is no danger of infection directly from something as hot as that, but they are far more likely than a cut to take up infection from anything they touch, and it would have been impossible to keep dressings on that hand unless they were changed hourly or so. My hand, on final removal of the last glove, looked like something from a ship sunk by fire a month ago, with plenty of pitch fragments left. But it recovered to normal miraculously fast, with no loss of feeling at all. I still wonder if I would have achieved complete freedom of movement, and such slight scarring, with the treatments of even a few years earlier.

[NavyVet1959]

I'm pretty diligent about wearing some sort of protective gear -- cotton shirt, jeans, shoes that are not covered by the pants legs, leather apron, leather arc welding gauntlet style gloves, glasses (prescription). I still get the occasional burn though, but they are fairly minor. Usually it's because of having gotten a tear in my welding gloves and not noticing it until I pick up something and find out that I have no leather between my hand and the hot object. There's also the case of picking up something after I've been welding on it and before it has cooled sufficiently. The good thing about the heavy gauntlet type gloves is that you can just shake your hands and toss them off since in these types of cases, they have gotten so hot that *they* are also causing the burn. Then run into the kitchen and get some ice and rub it on the burn places.

[John Allen]

I started wearing a leather apron and a full face shield. I have always worn the nomex gloves but as I get older I have realized mistakes happen and figured a little extra protection was not a bad idea.

[62chevy]

If you ride a motorcycle you will dump it on the road it's just a mater of when. Ask me how road rash feels and bruised bones. I road for a lot of years but only dumped it once.

[grumman581]

If you ride a motorcycle you will dump it on the road it's just a mater of when. Ask me how road rash feels and bruised bones. I road for a lot of years but only dumped it once.

Ask me how a compound fracture and a severed limb feels... Yeah, I've had some memorable motorcycle wrecks...

[smokeywolf]

Most folks become more cautious with age. This is one of the reasons it is said that, "Wisdom comes with age". I will not use or waste money on safety equipment that is unreasonably priced or will make the job I'm doing too difficult to still be enjoyable.
Basic safety gear like glasses, face shields, gloves, aprons, boots, fire extinguishers and first aid supplies are all reasonable and practical expenditures and not at all difficult to use. Many people don't foresee needing gloves, face shields or boots. The whole purpose of safety gear is to protect you from the unforeseeable.

smokeywolf

[mold maker]

Bike only road me once in over 20 years. Road rash hurts lots worse than injured pride. But both heal in about the same time.
Tensile fairy left a splotch melted into the center of my safety glasses once, along with a stylish silver splattered shirt. Both incidents could have been avoided in hindsight, but neither left serious consequences.

[gwpercle]

Use Aloe, not the stuff in a bottle but the juice/jell squeezed from the plant leaves ,
It won't even blister. Honey is a great antibiotic, naturally occurring ( that's why honey never spoils), but if you can apply aloe when the burn happens , and keep some on that spot , it will heal with no blister or scar.

[buckwheatpaul]

Whitespider, I am glad that all worked out because it could have been much worse.....your life lesson is well received as a training aid for our old casters as well as the young whipper snapper rookie casters.....Thanks for the post! Paul

[40-82 hiker]

Just saw the post, and haven't read them all... So sorry if I am repeating others.
I won't repeat what many have said about safety.

After cooling the burned flesh with water to stop the burning process:

Onion juice has sulfur and quercetin in it which will help stop the pain and prevent blistering to a certain extent depending on how badly the skin is burned. Get an onion sliced quickly and rub it over the burn or squeeze the cut onion section over the burn and gently rub it around. I was a welder and I used this a number of times over the years with kitchen burns or burns in my home shop if they were bothersome. Never kept an onion at work, though...

Tea (unsweetened) has tannic acid in it that is good for taking the hurt out of burns and promote healing.

Honey is good for soothing burns, water it down somewhat... It also has antibiotic properties.

Potato juice is good for relieving the hurt. Just rub a fresh slice over the burn, or squeeze as with onion.

All of these are home remedies that supposedly work, but your mileage may vary. I have used onion and it works, but again each to his own.

[NavyVet1959]

I usually just take an ice cube, run it under some water for a couple of seconds to give it a wet surface, and then put it on the burnt spot, moving it around a bit so it doesn't freeze the skin. Might not be the best solution, but it's something that I can quickly grab.

[4719dave]

You are a very lucky man .SAFETY FIRST ....