Tom Eagar LNG welding sunburn incident

En route to a New Orleans conference in the early 1980s, Tom stopped at Alcoa in Pittsburgh, where they were developing a 600-amp gas tungsten arc process for welding 4–8 inch aluminum on LNG ship spheres. Holding the torch ungloved for 15–20 seconds gave Tom a UV sunburn on the exposed lower half of his hand (the torch shielded the upper half) — a vivid demonstration of arc radiation losses and aluminum's reflectivity.

If you stand next to a gas tungsten arc, you can get a sunburn. I went to a conference back in the 1980s in New Orleans, and I had stopped in Pittsburgh the day before at Alcoa, where they were welding these great big liquid-natural-gas container spheres for LNG ships. They had to weld four-to-eight-inch-thick aluminum for these huge spheres. They developed a welding process they could use up to 600 amps and really put metal in there and make these big thick welds in aluminum. They asked me to look at it. They gave me a handheld torch — didn't give me any gloves — and I held the torch and watched this plasma arc, watched it for fifteen or twenty seconds. The next day at the conference, I had this big red burn on the lower half of the outside of my hand, and I thought, how'd I get a burn? It was all red like a sunburn. It was a sunburn. Aluminum, very reflective, and a 600-amp radiation in fifteen seconds — I had gotten a sunburn from holding it. The reason it wasn't on the upper part was the torch shielded it. They should have given me a glove to keep from getting sunburned. In fifteen seconds I developed sunburn, which didn't show up until the next day.