I think gloves and goggles will suit you.
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Yeah, that has been mentioned today by a few family members. 
That will be a mean 7.2V Battery! My nikon runs on 7.2V and with that battery it will have enough juice to run a lifetime.
You probably mean 16s/2p.
I am busy building a 100ah 16s2p bank (10.2KWh) with a 200A BMS. I will wrap my spanners. Thanks for the warning.
No picture of your pants?
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Thanks, fixed - 2p/16s. The pants are fine.
This amazing calm settled over me.
1st thought: Spanner … DO NOT DROP IT! Felt nothing at the time, the adrenaline took care of that.
2nd thought: Before the spanner even contemplated hitting the tiles, I checked for and remove 1 globule of molten spanner from a cell … no damage.
THAT would have been a disaster. 
What followed … I cannot repeat it here … I think I may have made new paragraphs using only swear words.
The good thing from all of this, is now I have the “formula” for THIS configuration, next time it will be 100% safer, I now know where to start connecting … and what is to be left for last!
Always a silver lining, with humor, after a fiasco like this.
Ps. One thing I learned before. When I install or move/remove cells, the bank is completely wheeled away from the system. Jip, it is on wheels.
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This is quite smart. Whenever a big ****-up happens you need to ask yourself “why” a couple of times.
Why did this happen? Was the dog in the way? Get the dogs out next time. Were you tired? You’re a dad working on a hobby – you’re always tired. Etc, etc.
Many people shortcut to “I/you have to be more careful next time”, but the important part is “How can I be more careful next time?” and “Which tool is trying to kill me?”.
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Glad you are relatively unscathed and thanks for the painful example of what to double check.
At work we publish an after incident report on any and every injury, as a lesson to all of what to look out for.
Always best practice to review and learn from any mistakes.
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Hou kop!
Geen sweefkop! (I’ve always liked that word)
Mine started early… In boarding school. Planned on wiring a small radio to the mains, but my room had no plugs. So I managed to get a light fitting, the old brown bakelite bayonet type, wired it and plugged it in the light socket after fitting a Y to have both the light and the radio connected.
Plugged the light back in and made sure the light switch was off. It was a piece of flex. Proceeded to, no tools available, bite on the twin flex wires and do the teeth strip of the insulation. At about that time my room mate came back and switched the light on… I still have the cracked front tooth from then, was about 11 or 12 at the time.
Battled a day or so to get all the copper and soot from my face and mouth, no amount of brushing of teeth helped.
Later, early 1980s, had a TV to repair, duly hooked up the Scope and started to probe, Big Bang and Scope moertoe. It was earthed.
Last thing recently, shocked myself silly on another light circuit, no earth leakage then, and did not get the light switch after testing about a zillion times for live. This time no testing and a good zap and flex burned…
Groetnis
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I find myself often working on mains voltage equipment without isolating the supply first. Pure laziness for sure but if you know your body isn’t earthed by touching anything you can strip and connect a live wire to a terminal without being aware that it’s live… 
Sarel, biting on a 220v connected flex, man, that was creative and rather unfortunate. 
Now THAT is what I’m talking about, sharing WTF not to do. Learn from others’ mistakes visually.
I’ve been told to wrap the spanner, and I did wrap it. The part that was “missed”, both sides are used all the time … so that teeny detail “slipped” through the cracks, making the wrapping of it rather useless.
What I also took away from this … leave wisely chosen points unconnected so that when something still goes wrong, you have a “2nd level” of protection.
Like in this particular case:
- After compressing the cells, I should have tightened the cell busbars. I double and triple-check all connections, caught that as I checked the bank one last time.
- Should not have connected the positive pole to the positive busbar, until I needed it connected, the last part before installing. Having connected the pos busbar whilst tightening the cell busbars with a spanner, not both sides insulated … “perfect storm”.
- Don’t bend over a bank if your back is “off” from moving /checking 280 times 134 x 6kg cells. I batched matched the cells between all the buyers so that we all have near-identical ah/ohm cells.
- If you wake up and think of excuses why not do it something THAT day, listen to the voices.
Ps. I left out,
I needed to cut a piece of Duracryl, never done it before - and never will again. Being 16 cells per bank x 2 each 96kg, I needed a “slippery” bottom so that when I compress them, the cells can “slide”.
I tried to use a jigsaw. As I was holding it in my right hand (before it got incinerated), I sliced my left palm a good 2 cm right into one of the folds with the blade trying to move the wires out of my way, was not plugged in. Should have listened to the voices then already.
Classic!
Not me, but the pole box outside my property decided to let out the magic smoke at midnight last night. Of course, I only realised the ramifications once batteries hit 10% this morning and the system shut off. Now waiting for enough sun to be self sufficient again 
I can’t even guess what might be installed in this enclosure…
Possibly transient suppressors??
Remembered to look at my cameras, unfortunately pointing too low to get the actual fireworks, but we can see (and hear) the sparks:
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Didn’t know you played cricket 
Now THAT is Letting the smoke out!
Never done it on that scale … 
Did this short trip the mains supply? Looks like no lights went out in the street…
Everything downstream of the pole went out (including my house).
Weirdly (concerningly), at 8am the next morning, it coughed again, and the mains came back on.
No one has opened the box yet, but the mains are working…
Probably they simply reset the breaker and hoped for the best…
Those sparks were caused by metal being vaporized so there will be damage in that enclosure for sure!