Repairing an Electric Stove

We say I am bad mechanic. I am bad at numbers. I am bad at cooking. I am the worst driver ever. I would like to narrate something that has disproved that I am bad at repairing things.

I have this electric stove at home. It has heating coils, which heat up when the power is turned on. It suddenly stopped working last month, I did not know why. I really felt like cooking and having homemade food, but was forced to eat out.

Last night I couldn’t sleep. I was hungry, and I had to do something about it. So I decided to repair the stove. I have a decent set of tools at home, though I never use them.

The whole underside of the stove was rusted and the screws were all jammed. I first oiled them, found the right spanner and screwdriver, and slowly opened it. It was after all a very simple apparatus. It just had a connection leading from the plug socket to the heating coils.

I carefully opened the socket, which had a lot of small screws and nuts. I made sure that I put the nuts and the bolts together after taking them out, lest I should lose them. I took the coils out, which were wound around a base of non-conducting material.

And I found that a soldering had gone off from one of the end terminals. If I put the coil in contact with the end terminal, the stove would work again. I don’t have a soldering iron at home. So I open the end terminal and I just tied the coil’s end around the screw.

Half the job was done. Now I had to put it all together. This is the most difficult part. Now you have to remember, and also use common sense and a lot of thinking in general. For its too easy to dismantle, but really difficult to undo a dismantling.

But I managed to do it, because the whole thing was organized properly after I had dismantled the stuff. The last of the things assembled, and I switched on the stove. And yes, success. It worked again. The coils were glowing orange.

Now I forgot to do one thing. I had used oil to loosen the rusted screws. I forgot to wipe the oil off. Now the coil was burning because of the oil. Dumb as I was, contrary to the dexter I had been during the past hour, I poured water on the flames that were growing. And you know what happened? I got an electric shock, and the fuse went off. No power at home!

Then I had to change the fuse in the main fuse carrier, then wipe the whole stove clean of water and oil, and then I made rice, then I made a spicy curry. And at 4 am, I was feasting on some well-deserved food!

So I wouldn’t agree as a fact that I am not good at anything. Just that I take the time to do things that I think I am good at. For the others, I just don’t take the time. An idiot is lazy, to think. A fool is someone who thinks he cannot do something he wants to do.