[Shop-talk] Next question: what the $%^& is this thing?

[Randall]

> Should I replace it with something?  I'm a big fan of not 
> having electrical fires (and the wiring on the underside of 
> the floorboards shows evidence of knob-and-tube through 
> modern insulated copper, just woven together--I need to just 
> re-do the whole house), so I feel like something keeping the 
> 220v circuit safe is a good idea. I mean, there's a 
> modern-looking whole-house breaker box on the other side of 
> the basement, but in the spirit of 'no electrical fire' I'm 
> willing to add some overkill.

IMO, just make sure the circuit is fed by an appropriate sized breaker in the main panel.  For a 220v circuit (in most house
wiring), you'll want a twin breaker anyway, so that both legs get disconnected if one leg gets shorted to ground or overloaded in
some other fashion.

As long as that is right, adding more fuses or breakers to the circuit is not going to improve safety at all.

-- Randall