That tickle could just as easily been enough to stop your heart! Never work on electricity in your bare feet.
I do understand the safety issues there, and my bare feet in this case had to do with my assumption the ground rod was doing more than it is apparently doing.
The ground rod is primarily for protection during lightening strikes...don't count on it for an effective ground.
I actually knew it was for lightning, and I am going to have to get the idea of it being an overall catchall out of my head. I thank you.
Either install an equipment grounding conductor with the feeders or bond the neutral and equipment grounding conductors in the small panel to give the fault current somewhere to go. Personally I would install an equipment grounding conductor with the feeders
I understand, and I thank you.
Question #1: What about this from early-on here ...
You can install the breaker, but you have what appears to be another problem. Is there a green screw next to the white wire in the top-right corner of the panel in your photo?
??
If I am understanding correctly, bonding that small panel in my workshop is not a good idea since a problem at the house could send stray current on down the line and leave a heart-stopping tingle waiting on my metal switch cover.
Question #2: Would an equipment grounding conductor along with the feeders actually be any better than what I already have? It seems to me that the problem I had yesterday would still be possible since the ground rod at the house is likely no better than the one at the workshop.
I'm surprised you went so easy on lee with such a blatantly hazardous situation.
We used to have that kind of problem here, but he has learned there is just no need!
Obviously the metal conduit did not provide a ground path sufficient to trip the breaker.
The conduit coming into the workshop is plastic, and it goes to a junction box since the feed was too short to reach the panel. So, the metal conduit you see is only grounded to the workshop's new ground rod ... and all of this work got started because I was getting a tickle from the table saw. When I first got to this house a little over a year ago, only one leg of the feed and the feed's neutral came into a receptacle on the wall and then there was a spider's nightmare going out from there. I ultimately discovered three of four receptacles with the black and white reversed, and someone had used a 3-way switch with one terminal going to ground (even though there really was no ground anywhere) for the old fluorescent light over the workbench.