Which wood turning hazard is your highest priority?

[Mobyturns]

I think you may be confusing an Engineering Control with an Engineered Product.

Perhaps in strict OHS jargon, so I ask - What practical engineering controls are available to eliminate / minimize low mass / high velocity particles from impacting the face or eyes for hand wood turners?

In production wood turning with auto copy lathes etc the operator is removed from the hazard and shielded by screens perhaps also fitted with door interlocks etc. Such engineering controls are not practical for hand wood turning.

The pathetic screens (engineering controls) fitted to some wood lathes neither protect the wood turner from low mass / high velocity particles, or small to medium sized flying objects. The screens may help with large flying objects if the screens remain fitted for more than one session of wood turning. They are however very effective at obstructing vision & getting in the way though.

[BobL]

Just using a mask (even a fully filtered head covering) for woodturning is completely at odds with the well established hierarchy of control.

Hierarchy of control is not something dreamed up by a bunch of OHS nancy boys but following a serious long term study of a wide range of industrial accidents and despite some anti-common sense implementations it is responsible for a large scale reduction in work place accidents and improvements in work related health issues. That's why nearly every country uses this method and the more it is used the more confirming the results seem to be

After getting belted about the head and shoulders with (bits of) workpieces your next most likely risk in wood turning is not health threatening - its far worse - its becoming allergic to wood to the point at which you cannot be anywhere near raw wood or wood dust. This afflicts about 1 in 10 people in some form.

All masks (even full face masks) are a poor form of dust control in a workshop and should only be used as an addition to other engineering controls like dust extraction. More importantly they may not protect you against developing a wood allergy.

Nose and mouth only masks expose eyes, and all masks expose the remainder of the body.

Wearing long sleeved shirts and pants is not really going to help. Every time you move in a wood dust fog your clothes act like bellows and pump very fine dust in and out of gaps under your clothing to the point where all your clothing including underwear are saturated with fine dust and it is this level of skin exposure that can lead to the development of an allergic reaction.

If you wear a mask while turning ,and then stay in the shed you turned in after you remove you mask, you are exposed to the same dust fog for many hours afterwards. If you exit the shed and stay in the same clothes your body turns from a sucking to a puffing bellows so you then emit fine dust from this clothing for days thereafter. Being usually warmer than its surroundings your dust saturated clothes and body turns into a walking plume of fine dust which rises upwards past the orifices in your head where you will breath it in.

So best practice dictates that masks should only be worn.
- when there is nothing else available
- after appropriate engineering controls like dust extraction have been employed
If only masks are worn, operators should leave them on till they leave their shed and change their clothes and take a shower.

I have performed many dust measurements while turning. The most profound one is where I can turn in front of a running 6" dust extractor port and while there will be many large chips and spaghetti flying all over the place the amount of sub 5 micron wood dust detected is the same as the background air outside my shed. In other words the level of fine wood dust is below detection levels. Once I did that I threw my mouth/nose mask away and just use a face shield - its way more comfortable.

[Tim the Timber Turner]

I think I will give up wood working and take up a new hobby watching the grass grow....

Jim

I'm with you Jim.

With all this safety talk hijacking our woodturning forum I'm scared to go near the lathe in case I get hurt.

Seriously guys, there is a safety forum and I think your debates and in depth analysis belong there.

Then we can all get back to posting about our wood turning and those that want to, can follow the debate on the safety forum.

That's what I think.

Cheers
Tim

[Mobyturns]

I'm with you Jim.

With all this safety talk hijacking our woodturning forum I'm scared to go near the lathe in case I get hurt.

Seriously guys, there is a safety forum and I think your debates and in depth analysis belong there.

Then we can all get back to posting about our wood turning and those that want to, can follow the debate on the safety forum.

That's what I think.

Cheers
Tim

Tim I have no problem with the moderators moving the threads, but judging by the number of viewers and the number of forum members who have accessed them I think it is of interest to a lot of wood turners.

Feel free not to read these posts.

[Tim the Timber Turner]

Moby

19 minuets mate.

What took you so long?

Yours in jest
Tim

[Mobyturns]

Moby

19 minuets mate.

What took you so long?

Yours in jest
Tim

Gees I'm slowing up I have this running in the background while I do other things, like loading up a Tablet for my trip to the NZ wood turning symposium.

Honestly I apologize for & wish this thread had not become bogged down in pedanticism, OHS terminology or polarized it on one particular hazard. I was hoping to gain an insight into how wood turners view the short & long term hazards & risks in their work shops & on their typical projects. May never really know now as I guess some are turned off.

Wether other turners read it, think I'm a nutter or a DH doesn't bother me. My motives are purely to keep safety as a reasonably current topic so that turners don't continue to turn in bliss. Not scaremongering, just raising awareness. Hopefully more may stop and think a little about their workshops & projects before they put themselves at high levels of risk unnecessarily. As hobbyists we can pick up a lot of helpful stuff from industry mumbo jumbo. If it helps keep a few established or newbie turners out of harms way I'm happy.

I have witnessed plenty of very good & experienced turners & ones that I respect for their skills & knowledge who ignore wearing PPE and doing things that would have an OHS inspector closing a workplace down. At times incredibly risky or dumb things but they have the benefit of knowledge & experience & of knowing "what they can get away with." Maybe its a generational thing, maybe they left work before the OHS stuff started in earnest? I guess if they have lived this long without serious injury they must be doing something right or have been incredibly lucky. That is what I am trying to tap into.

Moving forward hopefully we can avoid the pedanticism and get a few newbie & experienced turners to add worth to the discussion.

For those who already have contributed to both threads or choose to participate further I thank you for your contributions. Even negative feedback is helpful for my purposes.

It has been slow news days for a while.

[JDarvall]

Wonder what the stats are on woodturning accidents causing damage to the family jewels. Does anyone wear a cricket box when they turn ?

[JDarvall]

I have witnessed plenty of very good & experienced turners & ones that I respect for their skills & knowledge who ignore wearing PPE and doing things that would have an OHS inspector closing a workplace down. At times incredibly risky or dumb things but they have the benefit of knowledge & experience & of knowing "what they can get away with." Maybe its a generational thing, maybe they left work before the OHS stuff started in earnest? I guess if they have lived this long without serious injury they must be doing something right or have been incredibly lucky. That is what I am trying to tap into.

I think to increase your chances of improving awareness of safety issues, one has to be careful to not tell people how to suck eggs in the process.

How does a OHS officer juggle that one ?

Nobody likes to be meddled with on their own property. If a bloke came into my property and started trying to 'fix' me, I'd be telling him to eF off. Well actually I wouldn't. I'd probably say nothing and wait for him to leave. But I know plenty who would…..

if it carried on long enough I'd be tempted to pickup the closest thing I could swing and belt him across the head…..well, actually I would never do that. But I'd be considering how good it feel for a couple of seconds. ….instead probably end up saying ' fancy a cup of tea'.

[BobL]

I agree, it's pity when things get bogged down and I apologise for being one of the "bogglers". And as I have posted before the greatest overall risk faced by woodworkers is their weekly drive to the hardware store.

One more thing before I butt out
In a comprehensive dust survey of wood workers done a few years ago, apart from construction carpenters who have limited control of their work place, turners were the type of wood workers who had the greatest exposure to wood dust. After knowing this I find it somewhat bewildering that turners who spend 20-30-40 hours a week turning and have spent tens of thousands on their sheds, lathes, bandsaws, grinders, tools etc and yet still turn with just a cheap paper mask. I can understand why a weekend warrior who spends a few hundred on a lathe to turn on their back veranda for a couple of hours a week might do this but why risk developing an allergy to your favourite hobby for the cost of decent dust extraction?

[BobL]

I think to increase your chances of improving awareness of safety issues, one has to be careful to not tell people how to suck eggs in the process.

How does a OHS officer juggle that one ? . . . .

I agree. At work I was a initially a youngish Head of Department that had to enforce OHS rulings on folks 20 years older than me. Some OHS rulings were truly daft and some were not strong enough. My approach was to use what I call "the South Italian Solution", a method employed on stubborn people. Basically it involves managing the situation whereby the recalcitrants eventually think that what they were required to do OHS wise is their idea. its slow and painful but when they finally get on board they are zealots who help convince other deniers. Of course it didn't always work and in some cases folks had to be threatened with something nastier, but using that method we had at least as good a compliance as others areas who used more draconian measures and heaps more agro and discomfort.

[artme]

For a minute there Bob I thought you had Mafia connections!!!

[BobL]

For a minute there Bob I thought you had Mafia connections!!!

Well I am of italian extraction.

This reminds me of driving in the alps with my uncle. We're driving along a narrow winding road on the side of a mountain and in the valley just below us on massive concrete towers there is a magnificent new looking autostrada with not a single car on it. "Why are there no cars on it and were does that go?" I asked, and my uncle says "nowhere"! "What????". He says, "See how the Autostrada crosses the valley and goes into that tunnel opposite us, well the tunnel is 2 km short of the other side, the road authority ran out of budget for bribes to get the job done and so it just stops!"

[JDarvall]

…... and yet still turn with just a cheap paper mask.

Well I use one of those occasionally, and just a 'dust be gone' when the moneys there for it. But I would never buy a professional quality breathing apparatus.

There must be a reason right ? ……….for me its obvious.

efficiency, time and money.

professional breathing equipment…..(for me )
- are bulky
- are expensive.
- are damageable.
- when they get damaged they are expensive to repair. Muck about on the phone trying to get it replaced or fixed.
- ( a big one) I'm rarely on the lathe constantly, churning out parts. Moreso , I'll turn a part , then take off lathe to make fits. My fitting could mean getting down low,,,,dashing about to the next thing(in a packed workshop the breathing thing will get cut and damaged as I brush past sharp edges)
- may not really be necessary if your sanding is in a position where there's plenty of ventilation. i.e.. might have a fan blasting right at me. OR I'm outside and the winds blowing. OR I maybe only light sanding OR wet sanding will little dust at all. Or a lot of the day may not include any sanding.
- Sitting them right on your body may take a fiddle. So every time I'm interrupted by someone (family, visitor), I've got to take the thing off and on and fiddle over and over to get it sitting right.
- generally feel castrophobic wearing all that gear. Feel like I'm not really woodworking anymore when I look like an astronaught.

These are very real reasons I would imagine many woodworkers would have to deal with.

There seems to be many versions of common sense.

just an opinion. Not an expert on obvious. Your obvious is different to mine . 2 cents worth.

[Drillit]

I am inclined to agree with sturdee - don't do it unless you are of sound mind and body.
I think if you push yourself when you are not really up to it, that is when you will make the
fundamental mistake. I know that we all do it when we should not attempt it and that is
the very time when you muck it up or can get hurt. That said I follow the tripleE rule, eyes, ears & 'earing.
Drillit.

[FenceFurniture]

Taking it up in the first place. No slippery dippery slope for me.

I don't need a lathe

I don't need a lathe

I don't need a lathe

I don't need a lathe

I don't need a lathe