Lye - A Cautionary Tale (don't open if squeamish)

[Frank Burkhead]

Yesterday I was working on the engine and brakes of a classic 1971 VW Bus. As part of the renovation, I had disassembled the motor and put all of the cooling tinware in a large flat plastic bucket for cleaning. I thought nothing of diving right in, as I've been cleaning auto parts as part of my job for years. I forgot to put on my gloves.

An hour into the scrubbing, my hands began to hurt. At first I thought I had cut them on the sometimes sharp metal, but when I pulled them out I realized differently. I was using Zep Industrial Purple cleaner. I have used it before, but in a weaker concentration. I didn't realize that the main ingredient was sodium hydroxide, or lye as we know it.

This morning my hands looked like this. It's going to take a while to heal.

OUCH!!!  :-[ :'(

[Frank Burkhead]

2nd degree chemical burns REALLY HURT.

[Karen Kale]

Oh my goodness Frank, how awful. I'm hoping for speedy healing for you!

[Frank Burkhead]

Thank you, Karen! I would be keeping my fingers crossed for the same thing, but... Well, you know...  ;)

My left hand is only lightly burned on the backs of and between my fingers. It's my right hand that took the real beating. It's currently slathered in antibiotic ointment and wrapped in gauze. I'm hoping it can come out of bondage in a week, but we'll see.  :(

[Roger Barfield]

Oh wow Frank, sorry that happened to you.  A speedy recovery to you for sure. :o

[Cheryl Watson]

Frank, sorry to see your poor hands? :(
Hoping they feel better soon!
(Do you have an Aloe Vera plant??? I always have one actively growing on hand. Has worked for me on both heat and chem burns)

I also buy nitrile gloves in boxes of 200.
Chem gloves for Lye Bath, Nitrile gloves are donned for almost all other tasks.

Doing restoration work on ANY type of object, CI or other, is very hard on the hands!

I decide the type of glove to put on the hands, based on which substances I am working with....
e.g.  Zip Strip will melt the nitrile gloves (that was a fun discovery - not), so the Playtex dishwashing gloves get pulled on over the nitrile... ;)

[Frank Burkhead]

Roger, Cheryl, thank you! [smiley=dankk2.gif]

 I was stupid, plain and simple. I didn't read the small print on the bottle until I realized I was in trouble. I had not used it for that long in the past, as the pieces I cleaned before with this cleaner had been oily but not caked with muddy old baked on grease like these parts were. Had I read the bottle, I would definitely have gone over to my CI cleaning station and grabbed my gloves.

Cheryl, I'm VERY familiar with Zip Strip and its like. When I worked at a shop restoring old Land Rovers, we used aircraft stripper to clean off the decades of military paint. I wore gloves, but it would frequently get on an unprotected spot of skin. Even washing it off immediately would leave a reddened area that hurt for several days.

Well, as this will be keeping me up late and out of work for a little while, I'll have some free time for research! [smiley=tongue.gif]

[Michael Carson]

I did that with bleach cleaning our first base housing. Everything had to be spotless and I was told bleach was the best cleaner for it. I feel your pain as I still remember how much it hurt and how long it seemed to take to heal.
I am a praying man so I have sent you a prayer. I am not a faith healer but prayer and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ has saved my son from deaths door at least twice.
Good luck, stay safe and may God bless us all,
Mike

[Shorty Thompson]

Here's to a speedy recovery .

[Jim Glatthaar]

A good lesson for all of us, Frank, sorry you had to teach or reinforce it for use.  Hope you can make a quick  and full recovery.

[Tom Neitzel]

Looks like you learn the same way I do Frank.  Burned my eyes glancing at an arc welder (feels like sandpaper under your eyelids if you want to know), had to have a sliver of steel dug out of the center of my cornea, driving a bar in the ground not using safety glasses (no nerves in the cornea so it didn't hurt - but scary), got 2nd degree burns on my eyelids after looking into a burning barrel to see why the paint can had not exploded, as it did (that skin is REAL tender, and guess how many times you blink in a day), stuck a screwdriver in my eye when putting on brake springs without the right tool - just flipped the eyelid inside out and slight scratched my eye - scared the socks off me though.  And that's just the short list.  I won't tell you about the time my brother and i made an electric chair and had to test it.  He tried it, not me. :o

I'm happy to say my brother is still around and I have all my fingers, toes and eyeballs, but just because of dumb luck.

I'm just finishing up putting the engine back in an old car  (should have been done long ago, but it is a case of - while I have it apart I might as well change this or that - got to do the ball joints and I'm done).

Two of the new tools that I now find indispensable are the blue nitrile gloves you can get at Harbor Freight and a digital camera.

My hands no longer have black cuticles or stink of cleaning solvent and the camera lets me take pictures of what the brackets and connectors should look like when I start to put stuff back together.

Heal quickly  :)

Tom

(by the way, I did clean the engine valve gear in lye.  When I took the gloves off I did find a pinhole and a red spot on one finger.  Felt kind of like a sliver, but took a few days to clear up.)

[Frank Burkhead]

Thank you, folks, for the good wishes and prayers. If nothing else, they certainly buoy my spirits!

Michael, I definitely feel your pain. Literally.  :P

Tom, those of us whose curiosity or haste overcomes our sense of safety will frequently suffer for our education. I once turned brass clock weight shells on a lathe and polished them with emery cloth. Even though I was wearing eye protection, the brass dust was instantly attracted to my eyes. It took days to clear. Years later I was pulling up a hardwood floor when I stopped and took off my safety glasses to wipe my forehead. A brief interruption followed, and I decided to finish the current job before doing the one I was just called to. I neglected to put my glasses back on. The very next swing of the hammer shattered the board and implanted 6mm of rusty nail in my left eye. Almost 9 hours of surgery later, I no longer had a lens in my eye. Three months of absolute, no-strain-at-all bed rest healed the eye but did not give me a new lens. I still do not have good vision in the eye.

Shall I mention the times I used to get my (then) long hair caught in VW fan belts during tune-ups? Or the work that has come flying out of the headstocks of lathes because I took too deep a cut? Or maybe the old Bug that caught fire when I started it because I missed the cracked fuel line? Oh my yes, I've had my share of "learning experiences". Usually they come about because I'm being rushed in my work and don't take the time to use precautions. This time was no different - I wanted to have the engine cleaned, reassembled and installed by the end of the weekend. Now I have to wait at least a week until I can even touch it again.

Ugh.

[Robert Bearfield]

     you are lucky, a lot of lessons exact a higher toll, either in more pain, more suffering, or money.
     some people think that i am a negative person, but, considering all the things that could have happened, that was a cheap lesson, and thats a positive.
    

[Tom Silver]

I've often heard that good judgement comes from experience. It's just that all too often, experience is the result of bad judgement. ;)

[Basilio Amaro]

Oh man, I hope you are feeling better.

Heal up well and quickly!

[David Whitten]

Frank,  Hope those hands are all healed.  I'm sure the 71 bus appreciates the sacrifice.  Thanks for keeping those oldies running.  I miss my 79 Westie and the coveralls I kept under the rear bench seat next to the jack stands, tools, and a fully assembled  fresh axle with baggies over the cv joints to keep the dust and dirt out (grease applied at time of swap out!).  Even had a spare distributer ready to slide in should I need it...those were the days!

Dave