Arc welding with 12volt batteries

[BartmanMN]

Did you know that you can ARC weld with your trolling motor batteries?  Well I found out the hard way as I was tightening the nuts on my trolling motor batteries and the ratchet handle fit perfectly from the negative terminal across to the positive terminal of the other battery. 
Instantly arc'd my ratchet to the Lead terminal on my new battery and melted a small chunk off the terminal while burning a groove in my ratchet.

Very scary and a excellent lesson learned.  Maybe I should have stayed with my wing nuts.    Battery is fine, but I think I will stick with my spark plug changing wrench, which is vertical rather than horizontal when working with those nuts again.

[h8go4s]

I did something similar years ago and burned a divot in my wedding ring. That's one of those lessons you only need to learn once.

[delcecchi]

And now you know why rings and watches are a bad idea when working with electric stuff. 

 

[Rick G]

Have a good friend that had a similar experience years back with a 24v system. Only he had his wedding ring on, the ring melted and burned his finger so badly they had to cut the partialy melted ring off his finger

[BartmanMN]

I believe it Rick.  It happens so quick that you don't even know what happened.  It's pretty scary stuff.