[SEL] Humour

[Mike Royster]

Now that's a GREAT story!!!!!!!

MR
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dave Croft" <dave.croft at ntlworld.com>
To: "atis" <SEL at lists.stationary-engine.com>
Cc: "Old Engine" <stationary-engine at oldengine.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 06, 2006 7:10 PM
Subject: [SEL] Humour


>A certain person known on these groups (called Kim Siddorn) posted the 
>attached tale on the English engine group.
> I think it is worth repetition. 8^)
> Read the Instructions!
>
> A friend of mine once built a canoe.  He spent a long time on it and it 
> was a work of art. Almost the final phase was to fill both  ends with 
> polyurethane expanding foam.
> He duly ordered the bits from Mr Glasplies (an excellent purveyor of
> all things fibreglass) and it arrived in two packs covered with 
> appropriately
> dire warnings about expansion ratios and some very good notes on how to 
> use it.
>
> Unfortunately he had a degree, worse still two of them.  One was in 
> Chemistry, so the instructions got thrown away and the other in something 
> mathematical because in a few minutes he was merrily calculating the 
> volume of his craft to many decimal places and the guidelines got binned 
> as well. He propped the canoe up on one end, got a huge tin, carefully 
> measured the calculated amounts of glop, mixed them and quickly poured the 
> mixture in the end of the canoe (The twin pack expands very rapidly).
>
> I arrived as he was completing this and I looked in to see the end chamber 
> over half full of something Cawdors Witches would have been proud of.  Two 
> thing occurred to me, one was the label which said in big letters: 
> "Caution - expansion ration 50:1" (or something similar) and the other 
> that the now empty tins said "approximately enough for 20 small craft". 
> Any comment was drowned out by a sea of yellow brown foam suddenly pouring 
> out of the middle of the canoe and the end of the canoe bursting open.  My 
> friend screamed and leapt at his pride and joy that was knocked to the 
> ground as he started trying to bale handfuls of this stuff out with his 
> hands. Knocking the craft over allowed the end as well. A few seconds 
> later and we had a canoe with two exploded ends, a mountain of solid foam 
> about 4ft high growing out of the middle, and a chemist firmly embedded up 
> to his armpits in it.
>
> Round about this time he discovered the reaction was exothermic and his 
> hands and arms were getting very hot indeed. Running about in small 
> circles in a confined space while glued to the remains of a fairly large 
> canoe proved ineffective so he resorted to screaming a bit instead. 
> Fortunately a Kukri was to hand so I attacked the foam around his hands 
> with some enthusiasm.  The process was hindered by the noise he was making 
> and the fact he was trying to escape while still attached to the canoe.
>
> Eventually I managed to hack out a lump of foam still including most of 
> his arms and hands.  Unfortunately my tears of laughter were not helping 
> as they accelerated the foam setting. Seeking medical help was obviously 
> out of the embarrassment of having to explain his occupation (Chief 
> Research Chemist at a major petrochemical organisation) would simply never 
> have been lived down. Several hours and much acrimony later we had removed 
> sufficient foam (and much hair) to allow him to move again. However he 
> still looked something like a failed audition for Quasimodo with red burns 
> on his arms and expanded blobs of foam sticking everywhere. My comment 
> that the scalding simply made the hairs the foam was sticking to come out 
> easier was not met with the enthusiasm I felt it deserved.
>
>
> I forgot to add that in retrospect rather unwisely he had set out to do 
> this deed in the hallway of his house, it being the only place with 
> sufficient headroom for the canoe, achieved by poking it up the stairwell.
>
> Having extricated him we now were faced with the problem of a canoe 
> construction kit embedded in a still gurgling block of foam which was now 
> irrevocably bonded to the hall and stairs carpet as well as several 
> banister rails and quite a lot of wallpaper. At this point his wife and 
> her mother came back from shopping......Oh yes - and he had been wearing 
> the pullover Mum in law had knitted him for his birthday the week before.
>
>
>
>
>
> Dave Croft
> Warrington
> http://oldengine.org/members/croft/homepage
> http://community.webshots.com/user/crftdv
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