Happy new year to everyone, from down in the shed. If you’ve been taking time out to build over the Christmas period I hope it’s been productive. Today there’s an update to the WIP page of the Vulcan.

It’s become a personal Christmas Eve tradition to have an episode or two of James May’s Toy Stories on with lunch. So I’m down the shed with the Airfix episode while Douglas has a time out. (Ie, a kip on the sofa.)

Merry Christmas to everyone!

If you’re a Facebook friend you’ll know that for most of last year our longdog Ted spent hours down in the shed with me, until he died in early December. Yesterday Sarah and I adopted his successor, a beautiful Saluki cross called Douglas. It will be a while before he’s spending shed time with me as we are slowly getting him used to being indoors. He’s probably never lived in a house, despite being around three years old, and pretty much everything is a new sound or smell for him to process. His first 24 hours with us have been very encouraging, but it’s going to be a long process. Hopefully he’ll be down here hogging the spray booth like Ted did very soon. Here he is helping with a bit of Lego, and generally making himself at home.

Latibulisation level set to a million.

Head over to mfhmazda787.com for an update to the build of Model Factory Hiro’s 1/12 Mazda 787B.

After Friday’s fun I decided this was necessary.

Before last night the most serious incidents in the shed have been limited to the odd scalpel cut, some decal solution in the eye, and the time I super-glued my elbow to the cutting mat, and stood up without realising. (That was just a wound to my pride to be frank!) Last night’s incident is an order of magnitude more serious.

I’m sure everybody has heard of the potential dangers of LiPo batteries, and their combustibility. And I’m sure most people, like me, have thought them over exaggerated scare-mongering. Last night I found out just how true the stories are and how dangerous one of these things can be. I was just starting to think of installing the electrics in a radio controlled glider I’m building, and got to trying out the batteries and charger I’d bought back in the summer. The battery had been on charge for about an hour when I decided to call it a night and go to bed. I turned to check the display on the charger and saw the battery looking like this:

It really should be a neatly packaged ‘obloid’ and not swollen and ‘bursty’. It was also hissing quietly and giving off puffs of vapour. I thought I’d take a quick video to send of to the vendor to get a replacement when the hissing got much worse.

It was obvious it needed getting out of the shed quickly so I stopped filming and put my phone down on the bench, when the battery gave out a huge jet of vapour from the bottom left in the video, which immediately turned to a jet of flame, burning my left arm as I tried to open the door. Luckily I’d picked it up by the cables, or I’d still be in hospital! The flames spread to the rest of the battery with a loud ‘whoomph’ before I managed to get the door open and throw it out.

Here it is burning a hole in my lawn.

And what was left this morning

In the seconds before I got it out of the shed it spewed red hot ‘soot’ – hot enough to burn in to the back of my phone case and ruin it. I dread to think what would have happened had I not noticed it was swollen when I did, as I was seconds from shutting up to go to bed, while the battery was seconds away from exploding. I’d have lost the shed and everything in it, no doubt about it. And that would be as nothing to it happening in the house. This is the closest I’ve come to a fire like this, and it’s very disconcerting to imagine the consequences of a change in timing.

If you have a charger and battery like this then do what I’ve just done and bin it, even if you’ve used it umpteen times and it’s been OK. Don’t risk it. I consider myself very lucky that this has been limited to a burn on the arm and no damage to my shed.

Anyway, I’ll be buying my replacement batteries and charger from a reputable UK vendor, not cheap off eBay. I’ve also just ordered two fire extinguishers, one for the shed and one for the house. This incident has made me think seriously, for the first time, about how I’d deal with a small fire in the house. Obviously ‘get out’ is the solution, but an extinguisher in the house might buy enough time to stop further damage.

A productive afternoon down in the shed correcting the Vulcan’s main gear legs. Check the Work In Progress section for some pictures.

Today is the first official latibulisation. There’s sandwiches, beer, MotoGP, and a 1/144 Vulcan in the new Work In Progress page.

A quick test to check how the blog is linking to social media. @Hiroboy_Ltd got these add-on weld beads to me in 24 hours, their usual fantastic service.