I'm curious how did you catch your bag on fire??
yeah, last thing i need is my entire bag going up in smoke at a show and evacuating the venue. :lol
Oh, it wasn't such a big deal when it happened to me last year...TWICE.
Queue up a response from Bean right about now.
Actually, I only caught my bag on fire once...I caught my tent on fire the other time. LOL.
OK, first experience was that I'd rigged up a battery cable in support of summercamp this past May. It was the 3rd or 4th set of the first day that the fire happened. I think my problem was that I'd used some old black electrical tape to isolate a pigtail and since the tape was old, it didn't hold like it should have. Honestly, don't know if that was the issue or not but I've had some issues with a roll of tape since, so I think that was it. OK, so it was kinda strange because the cable was supplying power just fine and it was the middle of a Cornmeal set. I can't remember why, but I reached into my bag and was trying to reposition something (maybe trying to untangle some wires) when all of the sudden FLAMES are shooting up from my friggin' gear bag. Obviously the battery cable had shorted. I yell something incoherent that probably sounded something like MOTHAFUCK and all I hear is Bean next to me saying over and over again...
holy shit holy shit HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT but not doing a goddam thing.
I'm unplugging shit at the speed of light as fast as I possibly can pulling it out of my bag without any regard to the flames...after all IT'S MY FRIGGIN GEAR!!! To hell with human body parts!
So, after the smoke cleared (literally) and I had developed a small audience, I determined that the only damage was to the top edge of my gear bag. The flames were just the melting techflex, cable insulation, and the edge of my gear bag. Fortunately, no actual gear was damaged. I got burned from yanking the cables out, but luckily the hot cable immediately cauterized the burn and honestly it didn't hurt much at all during weekend even though it looked a little nasty. LUCKY!!!!
Then, later this summer, I had an encore fire fighting experience at moedown. So, I like to bring a 12V marine battery to festivals with me for various camp electrical needs. I hook up an inverter and it's handy for various needs, like a small fan and whatnot. This year Bean and I got our camp set up, all the tents up and whatnot. After initial setup, chilled out with a couple of beers/pops and now it's time to start setting up the tent and bed. So I grabbed that battery, the inverter, and a little electric blower that I use to blow up my air mattress. I plugged the male member of the inverter into the female socket (kinda like a cigarette lighter socket in your car) of the battery terminal connectors and nothing happens. Hmmm...what's going on? Of course, since I'd already set my gear bag on fire earlier this summer, I figured I was an expert at diagnosing this type of thing by now. That's when I noticed that the male part of the inverter was missing the center pole. DAMMIT, without that center pole, I'm not gonna have any electricity for the weekend. That's completely unacceptable, so I set about finding a solution. AHA...it turns out that the hole in which that center pole formerly existed is exactly the same size as a penny!!! (Can you see where this is going?) So I ask Bean if he has a penny and he hands me a penny. So I put that copper penny , which is a GREAT electricity conductor into that hole and...POOF! Within a nano-second that cable and the interter and everything in between goes up in smoke and I have a SECOND fire on my hands. Fortunately this time I had everything in hand so it only took a micro-second to disconnect and there were no actual flames and I didn't get burned, but OMG the smoke was THICK!
I offered to make Bean a cable recently and he didn't respond to my offer...I'm not really sure why.
I'm thinking of starting a TV show...it will be a sequel to Tool Time Tim!
So that's the story. Bean can attest.