Workshop Safety Gear - Don't lose your faculties

Description

Do you want to live life without sound or sight or 10 fingers? Protect them! In this episode of House of Hacks, Harley presents basic workshop safety gear and some rules that everyone should follow to stay safe while making things. Topics include safety glasses and other eye protection, hearing protection and other lesser thought about items.

16 quick safety tips

Shop Hacks on dust collection and air filtration

Here at House of Hacks we do tutorials, project overviews, tool reviews and more related to making things around the home and shop. Generally this involves wood and metal working, electronics, photography and other similar things. If this sounds interesting to you, you may subscribe here.

If you’re interested in learning more about the House of Hacks' values, here’s a playlist for you.

And here’s the most recent video.

For a written transcript, go to Workshop Safety Gear - Don't lose your faculties

Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0 by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing"

Transcript

[Norm Abram's voice] But before we use any power tools, let's talk about shop safety.

Be sure read, understand and follow all the safety rules that come with your power tools.

Knowing how to use your power tools properly will greatly reduce the risk of personal injury.

And remember this, there is no more important safety rule than to wear these, safety glasses.

I'm sure many of us remember Norm's sound advice from back in the day.

While an important start, workshop safety gear goes far beyond just safety glasses and we're starting right now.

Welcome to the House of Hacks.

If we're just meeting, I'm Harley and I make stuff out of wood, metal and sometimes other materials.

And sometimes I talk about other issues, such as today, for National Safety Month, I want to talk a little bit about shop safety.

To start, I want to acknowledge that if you watch some of my videos, I wouldn't be surprised if you found violations of some of what I talk about today.

In the home shop, ultimately, you're the only one responsible for your own safety and you have to make the judgement call about what to do and how to do it.

In my opinion, the two most important pieces of safety gear are eye protection and ear protection.

Anytime a power tool is used, or a hand tool with high forces, such as a hammer or a press, eye protection is critical.

Since I wear both glasses and contacts, I have solutions for both.

But even if you don't wear corrective lenses, it's a good idea to have both on hand in case you have visitors that stop by and need some.

And, while they're better than nothing, prescription glasses are not safety glasses.

In addition to safety glasses, for some operations, particularly if flying particles are involved, like using the lathe or a grinder, I like to have a face shield.

This provides additional protection for the eyes as well as some level of protection for the rest of the face.

After the eyes are covered, the next most important thing is ear protection.

This is something that for some reason doesn't seem to get as much attention, but in my opinion should.

This is something that I kind of got upset at Norm for, for not mentioning it more often in his show.

Our eyes are super sensitive and we know immediately when we get something in them, but hearing damage is much more insidious.

It tends to happen without us being aware of it and it's cumulative over time.

Many small instances of too much noise add up until it's significant.

Since we adapt as it worsens, we don't notice it until it causes problems in our interactions with other people, and by then it's too late.

So in addition to safety glasses, another must is either ear muffs that go over the ear or ear plugs that go in the ear.

I have and use both.

Ear muffs I use for shorter operations where I only need them for a limited time.

They're easier to put on and take off but they are more bulky and hot.

If I need hearing protection for an extended period of time, I personally prefer ear plugs.

They're a little harder to put in but they're more comfortable, they're not as bulky and they're not as hot.

I get a box of 200 disposable pair for about $20 a box and I use them not only in the workshop but also in the yard for yard work and when riding the motorcycle.

Another piece of safety gear that's not talked about as much as the first two is breathing protection.

Primarily involving wood working, like hearing damage, dust is one of those insidious things that causes damage over time.

I've heard reports of people that have gone without breathing protection for years and have no visible problems until one day they develop an allergy to either wood or wood dust that makes doing their hobby or profession either undoable or very uncomfortable.

One way of protecting your breathing is with filters and masks.

This can be anything as simple as a dust mask to a respirator or even something battery powered that provides positive pressure ventilation.

Examples of the last one, while expensive, also sometimes have built in eye protection and hearing protection.

In addition to dust, respirators should also be used with chemicals, but be sure that the filter you're using is appropriate for the chemical that you need to filter.

And also, dust respirators may not filter out chemicals and vice versa.

Another form of breathing protection is with really good dust collection.

Tony over at Shop Hacks has this down to a science and a really optimized system.

His shop air while he's running his table saw has a lower particulate count than the outside air.

Another unrecognized hazard, and something I'm become more aware of, is jewelry.

Anything loose can get caught in equipment, particularly things that rotate, and something that would have been a simple brush with the equipment becomes a serious injury.

Since I wear my wedding band all the time, I rarely think about taking it off when I come into the shop.

And this is something I've been thinking about: I need to do more proactively.

I've also thought about the option of getting a silicone ring and wearing it most of the time and only wear the gold band for dressy occasions.

Shop dress code is another item that's not talked about too much but is a safety gear concern too.

Briefly, a couple items...

Wear cotton. It's less flammable than synthetic material and not as prone to melt into your skin if something hot hits it.

Wear close-toed shoes or boots. Again, hot flying metal or falling off-cuts aren't going to penetrate leather. Never wear sandals or flip-flops.

Nothing loose. Always short sleeves. Make sure everything fits well and no ties.

I'd love to hear in the comments what you consider essential safety gear. Did I miss anything critical?

I'll see you in this video where I talk about 16 safety tips in two minutes.

And after watching that video, when making things remember...

Perfection's not required. Fun is!

Installing a Fire Extinguisher - Fire Safety in the Shop

Description

June is National Safety Month. In this episode of House of Hacks, Harley shows how to install fire extinguisher to help increase fire safety in the shop. In addition to fire extinguisher installation, he'll take a look at the classes of fire extinguishers and see how well some old extinguishers work even though they expired years ago.

Four pack of fire extinguishers (Amazon affiliate)

References:
Wikipedia page discussing fire classes.
Describes how the different classes of extinguishers work.
Contains the PASS acronym.

Here at House of Hacks we do tutorials, project overviews, tool reviews and more related to making things around the home and shop. Generally this involves wood and metal working, electronics, photography and other similar things. If this sounds interesting to you, you may subscribe here.

If you’re interested in learning more about the House of Hacks' values, here’s a playlist for you.

And here’s the most recent video.

For a written transcript, go to Install Fire Extinguisher - Fire Safety in the Shop

Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0 by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing"

Transcript

Fire extinguishers are a great thing to have around both the home and workshop.

Today at the House of Hacks I'm going to see how well these old fire extinguishers still work and install some new ones.

In the process I'll also talk about the different types of fire extinguishers that exist and what I choose to replace my old ones.

Welcome to the House of Hacks!

If we're just meeting, I'm Harley and I make things out of wood, metal and other materials. I also talk about other workshop related topics.

Since June is National Safety Month, today I'm going to talk about fire safety in the workshop.

I have these old fire extinguishers that I've had for a number of years that tend to float between the workshop, the garage and the utility room depending on where I'm working.

But they have a few problems.

First, fire extinguishers are only good for so long. The contents in them have a tendency to compress over time and make them less effective. These fire extinguishers are over twenty years old so they're long past their expiration date.

Secondly, they're really small. Even in their prime when they were brand new, they wouldn't have put out much of a fire.

And finally, they're not rechargeable. This means that, since they're expired, they just have to be thrown away.

To remedy these issues, I got a four pack deal of these new fire extinguishers off Amazon. I'll leave a link below in the description if case you're interested.

These are 1) new, 2) rechargeable and 3) much larger.

By getting a four pack, I'm able to place them strategically around the property in places where fires are most likely to occur.

As DIY projects go, installation is pretty simple.

One thing of note though, the Amazon description says they come with wall hangers.

This isn't quite true. They have a loop on the extinguisher to hang them from but no actual wall hardware.

So I went down to the home improvement store and picked up a pack of simple hangers to hang them from.

Here in the shop, I'm going to put it here on the wall with other personal protection gear.

One right here easily accessible from the stairs, next to the furnace in the utility room.

One here in the utility room that's immediately adjacent to both the kitchen and the garage behind me.

And conveniently, there's a stud located right in the middle of the wall.

And here in the garden shed, I was thinking of putting one right here next to the door.

Here in the shed we have fuel and oil and grass clippings and hot engines.

Seems like a really bad combination and a great place for a fire extinguisher.

There are 5 classes of fire that extinguishers might be designed for.

Class A fires are normal combustibles. Things like trash, wood, paper, and plastic.

Class B fires are where the fuel is flammable liquids or gas. Around the workshop, petroleum based products are the common combustable.

Class C fires are where electrical components are the source of ignition. Things around the workshop include sparking motors, transformers and extension cords.

Class D fires where a combustible metal is actually burning. Examples of these types of metals are things like magnesium, titanium, and aluminum. The latter being what would most commonly be found in the workshop.

And the last class is K where combustion is in the kitchen from a liquids used in cooking. Fats, greases and oils are the typical examples. This is actually a special case of class B that was created for the special and unique properties of kitchen fires in the commercial environment.

The new fire extinguishers are designed for classes A, B and C since these are the most common combustables that are going to be found around the home. I figure we're not going to need anything specialized for the kitchen since we're not in a commercial environment where we have the large quantities and specialized equipment that that class was designed for.

Let's head outside and see how the old fire extinguishers work.

OK, we're out here in this controlled environment: the fire pit.

The fire's starting to go and we're going to test out these old fire extinguishers.

I've never actually used a fire extinguisher, so I've don't have any personal experience with it but there is a handy acronym that's used to describe how you're supposed to use them and it's PASS.

P is Pull the pin.

A is Aim at the base of the fire extinguisher.

S is Squeeze the handle.

And the other S is Sweep across the base of the fire.

The idea is you want to aim at the fuel that's providing the fire, not the flames themselves.

So let's let this get going a bit better and we'll give it a try.

Well, the smaller wood seems to be going really well. I don't know if the big wood is actually going to catch fire. It's large enough, it's kind of getting charred but I don't know that it's actually going to combust itself.

So, let's give this little small guy a try.

So, I pull the pin. It's got a little lever here on this particular one.

And the idea is we aim at the base of the fire and squeeze the handle here and sweep across.

So here goes nothing.

Well, there you can see. Even though that 20 year old fire extinguisher worked fine on this little, tiny small fire of course.

It's still a little bit warm. It didn't cool it down, but it did extinguish it and I can still hear the wood kind of popping a little bit, but it does seem to work.

Like I said, that was for a small fire. It was... so like on a kitchen, it'd probably work fine. You saw that it only lasted for a couple seconds, so I don't think it would have done a real good job for anything of any significant size.

At this point, I'm not going to use the other one because I'm guessing it's probably still fairly decent shape and I'll end up putting it somewhere just as a backup.

I’ll see you in the playlist that's on the screen right now of tips and tricks for the workshop.

When making things, remember...

Perfection's not required. Fun is!