Yesterday evening I saw an example of fractal wood burning on a show. That sent me down the google rabbit hole to find out more.
What I found was that people have been shocked and electrocuted using it to burn wood. I didn't have a lot of time to read to answer the 'Why/how?' questions of the dangers.
After reading a dozen articles with warnings none provided answers.
Can someone share the answer? My guess is that people touch the wood while it's connected to the electrical source of 2k volts. The wood seems like its no different than a bare wire in the circuit...of maybe I'm wrong
This morning I went back down the rabbit hole. There are LOTS of articles about how to fractal burn and just as many about how to build a burner, followed by just as many about how dangerous it is.
It took a while to get a bit of clarity.
My understanding, right now, is that the current is passed through the piece of wood which is energized. No different than have a bare electrical wire. Who would use an extension cord made of uninsulated wire? Or one wrapped in masking tape?
My guess is that people setup their burner and wood on uninsulated tables, turn on the juice and now have electricity flowing into everything. Touch part of the circuit and the electricity jumps to this bag of calcium and salt water we have as a body. ZAP!
If anyone has a better idea of how people are getting electrocuted with this process please post.
I would not recommend trying to make your own system to do the fractal burning. The AAW will not allow any demos at any AAW clubs, or any sanctioned events. If EVERYTHING is not perfect the outcome can be deadly. I would take all warnings against fractal burning seriously.
“its no different than a bare wire in the circuit.”
I do not think you could be more wrong if you tried.
A bare 120 volt wire can sometimes kill a person but more often than not the person escapes with a shock, suspect that is why it was chosen. 2000 volts with a few amps is definitely a killer and not a play thing.
I would not consider playing with that voltage without a pair of UL listed gloves and maybe boots. Not having shopped for them I would think that you would need a few hundred dollar budget.
You do understand the display and demos of Fractal burning is band from all AAW clubs and events do to the death of a member.
I must admit I am attracted to the work and even though I have some training and understand the dangers better than most I have not tried it or throw out the HV transformer I have in my stash.
Over the years I taught many classes to tree workers about working around electrically charged lines. I've learned so much along the way.
Most importantly...I'm an arborist not an electrician so I watch the minimum approach distances.
I'm still not clear exactly how people are getting shocked though. I watched videos of a plank of wood with spikes in each end. then the cables are clamped on and the pattern starts burning. My understanding is that the 2,000v is passing through the wood and burning up some of the wood. Id the wood weren't insulated some of that 2,000v is going to find its way to ground. Might go through the workbench or stand that is supporting the wood. If the person wasn't taking proper precautions they could bet electrocuted. But...I'm just guessing, I haven't found anything that describes HOW people are getting killed or hurt.
Lock one hand behind your back before you touch anything full of dissatisfied voltage-even a failed light bulb-because you will almost certainly die soon if you don’t.
Electricity is neutral. It doesn’t want to kill you, but it will if you give it a chance. Electricity wants to go home, and to find a quick way to get there-and it will.
Electricity is always homesick. It is lonely. But it is always lazy. It is like a hillbilly with a shotgun and a jug of whiskey gone mad for revenge on some enemy-a fatal attraction, for sure-but he won’t go much out of his way to chase the bugger down if ambush looks a lot easier.
Why prowl around and make a spectacle of yourself when you can lay in wait under some darkened bridge and swill whiskey like a troll full of hate until your victim appears-drunk and careless and right on schedule-so close that you almost feel embarrassed about pulling the trigger.
That is how electricity likes to work. It has no feelings except loneliness, laziness, and a hatred of anything that acts like resistance…like a wharf rat with its back to the wall-it won’t fight unless it has to, but then it will fight to the death.
Electricity is the same way: it will kill anything that gets in its way once it sees a way to get home quick…
Zaaappp!
Right straight up your finger and through your heart and your chest cavity and down the other side.
Anything that gives an escape route. Anything-iron, water, water, flesh, ganglia-that will take it where it must go, with the efficiency of gravity or the imperative of salmon swimming upriver…And it wants the shortest route-which is not around a corner and through a muscle mass in the middle of your back, but it will go that way if it has to.
You are missing a major step. The wood is treated with a conductive solution of salt water or baking water solution. Plain dry wood is an insulator. To make it conduct electricity, you add the solutions. Dead men tell no tales, so what they did wrong is their last thought on earth.
Impossible to say without specific details concerning actual incidents. The difference between data and anecdote is in those details.
Anything above 1000 volts AC can be very dangerous. As I recall, rubber linesman's gloves require inspection frequently because a small hole in the glove is enough to create a path at the voltages they deal with. However, it should be remembered that they are also working around very high current capacity equipment too. The ignition coil for cars produces very high voltage, but at such low current that the shock is unpleasant but not especially dangerous (unless you have a pacemaker, according to the usual medical warning).
So I guess the question is, what is the current capacity of the system driving the burning? With people kludging up systems at home, the answer could be all over the place, accounting for a great deal of vagueness in the warnings you find in discussion of the subject.
A very dangerous fad that has taken many lives. I am surprised that we are still hearing about it.
If you follow the link you will see it being done and in the news report of the guy that got killed doing it. You can buy the outfit to do it, but it appears that many make their own.
The only way to get shocked is to make yourself part of the circuit in some way you had not foreseen.
At this point it seems clear you are going to do this. I am torn if I give you safety advice you are more likely to do this if I do not give you any advice it make your death more likely.
Note it only take a 0.1 amps to kill you if it flows thru your heart it will stop and you will need much more current than that to burn your wood. So this work requires lethal voltages and currents.
If you keep your left hand in your left back pocket and somehow become part of the circuit the current is less likely to flow thru your heart and kill you thou your right arm is likely to burn just like the way you had hoped to burn the wood. It is likely when your right arm is burning you will not be able to control your muscles so you will remain part of the circuit and continue to burn until you happen to fall over and maybe break the circuit or someone finds you and disconnects you. So if you want to survive do not try this alone and keep one hand in your pocket.
If you want to reduce the risk of getting shocked buy quality linemen’s gloves and boots keep the spotlessly clean and store them carefully while understanding this equipment does not make you safe it just lowers the risk and someone would be a fool to work alone.
After I had written this I saw where you said “It won't be me messing with this I know.” I hope that is true but I also understand there is something about this work that calls me. The more this work is shown and discussed the more tempted I am.
It is, mostly because humans tend to go with the "bigger is better" philosophy when buying equipment. I've seen phd scientists do this quite irrationally when spec'ing computer boards for instruments - embedded systems that don't need to be huge.
A quick search came up with the article abstract in the link that attributes ~25 deaths in 4 years. Of course, we have no idea how many people are successfully doing this work, so that 25 may be a large or a small proportion of the total, but given human nature I would still discourage people from trying this without first acquiring significant knowledge of electricity.
I often jokingly ask "what could possibly go wrong?" - good thing to ask seriously in this case, answer is you could die.
..but it's part of the something for nothing woodworking trend now. Using a trick more or less and then filling with epoxy.
I feel sorry for the people who have died from it as I'd imagine they don't have "near miss" experiences and probably feel comfortable.
(one search for it on youtube brings up a zillion references - it looks exactly like the kind of stuff that spreads quickly on social media because it looks easy).
One of F.I.L.'s buds was a supervising lineman for PP&L (in PA). Guy told me he'd rather work on a 30,000v transmission line than home wiring. When I asked him why he explained that home 110v AC operates at 50 to 60 cycles per minute, so it's easy for a shock to match and disrupt your heart beat rhythm and stop it without leaving a mark on you. He wondered how many who died from a heart attack were actually electrocuted plugging in a toaster or such.
Take a moment and read ALL of what I've said and not read anything into it first.
I've never said I was interested in building the transformer or doing the burning.
I understand electricity well enough to know I don't know enough. As an arborist I've worked around charged lines for most of my life. The guy who taught me to climb was a lineman for Bell System...yes, Ma Bell...back in early '70s. I've taught EHAP classes to hundreds of arborists. Along the way I've learned so much from utility arborist mostly, and some residential, like me, to stay away.
Again...I'm NOT building a transformer for burning.
get killed by high voltage. Years ago, when I was working at Metropolitan Water District here in So. Cal., we had an electrician killed by touching a circuit he had just disconnected. Issue: there was a big capacitor in the circuit that discharged through him.
that kind of voltage and current is way past my pay grade. At age 4, I put a bobby pin in a 110v outlet. I actually remember seeing the burns on my finger and feeling a level of fatigue for the better part of a day that I haven't since then - bobby pin melted itself into the carpet after I dropped it.
And that's peanuts compared to what they're doing. No way.
The pattern is called a fractal, however it is made. In this case the pattern is produced by an idiot trying for the Darwin award. I know enough about high voltage discharges to know where they go is unpredictable unless you are an expert in this field.
Lightening hits the top of a ridge. At the bottom is a spring. One the side are 12 cows. They all die. Why?
The conductivity of a cow is better than dirt. Current from the top of the ridge is headed to water/ground. It finds the cows front feet, passes through the cow and out the hind feet and on to the spring which is a "ground".
Woodworkers are better conductors than wood, I'll bet.
..dad used to shake his head any time we saw cows huddling under a tree with storms coming.
The odd pasture tree here and there was common where I grew up as shade for cows (big old trees with a huge canopy). Twice when he was a kid, local farmers went out after storms to find a group of dead cows under and around those trees.
Not sure how anyone would be certain holding one of those electrodes that they couldn't create a path of least resistance one way or another at some point.
