Safety Equipment

Safety Glasses: They are a must when I am working. I only have two eyes and they are not repairable or replaceable. I use them whenever I am using fast rotating equipment. I have had one significant eye injury. I was making some rabbets in some birch for some train cars. A piece of splintered wood flew under my safety glasses and into my eye. In my attempts to flush it out, it embedded in my eyelid. Went to urgent care and they tried to flush it out and failed. The next morning my eye was swollen shut. The body is a miracle in itself and it expelled the splinter on its own. I still followed up with a specialist to make sure there was nothing in the eye. Are safety glasses important, Yes! Do I wear them every time a piece of equipment tells me too, No. If you look at flash lights sold in the cordless combo packs, they tell you to use safety glasses when using them. When using my drill, I don’t always put on safety glasses. When I am out working with my tools they are on. I have a couple of pairs just in case I lose or break one. My advice, find a pair that you like and buy a couple. It is very easy to find excuses to not wear uncomfortable or glasses that skew vision. Basic glasses will do for most operations. I do know that people use full face shields for doing turnings. If you are worried about your eyes at least get a basic pair of safety glasses. They are cheaper than losing an eye.


Ear Protection: I did not get ear protection until after I was married. I guess my wife always wants me to hear her. Well with the hearing protection it is hard for me to hear her. Prolonged exposure to loud noises will cause hearing loss. I have one of the higher rated ear protection and they are reasonably priced. I purchased my ear protection at www.envirosafetyproducts.com. Ear protection is based on the amount of they can reduce decibels. If my table saw has a 110 dB reading and I am wearing ear muffs with a noise reduction reading (NRR) of 30 dB I will only hear the saw at 80dB. There was an interesting article in Wood Magazine a little while back about ear protection. They talked about putting in the ear buds of an iPod is better than nothing just don’t turn the volume up when you turn on machinery.

Respirator: Another purchase after I was married. I cannot say I use it as much as I should. It is kept in my garage because that is where I do my sanding and finishing. Large amounts of sanding create a lot of fine dust. This dust is not good for the lungs. I also have an air brush and fine particles of finish are not good for the lungs. I have also used oil based finished that evaporate off chemicals not good for the lungs. I use the respirator for my major sanding projects and finishing. I have also used it when cutting into my few pieces of exotic woods as precaution only.

The Brain: This is probably the most important piece of equipment any one has. This organ in your body will tell you if what you are doing is safe. It also gives ideas and thoughts on how a project can be completed without endangering yourself or others. If there is one thing I have learned with wood working, there is always more than one way to do things. One may be more comfortable doing it one way over another. For example, I have the ability to cross cut on my table saw. However I chose to use the miter saw. The miter saw was also my go to saw for making all my scrap blocks. Now that I have a band saw I use it more for cutting smaller parts.

Safety: Over Rated?

I feel the need to post something on safety. There will be some that disagree and some that think that I am too strict. The company I work for in the recent past just hired a risk management manager. I am not sure what he does entirely except print out safety manuals, have safety award parties and implement safety rules. He is big on “Safety First” and just adopted the slogan from a company contest of “Make safety your first priority.” I say that is completely untrue and false security. If safety really was our first priority we would never leave the house. I would propose safety is all about risk management: What are you willing to risk and can you live with the consequences? For example, I work 30 miles away and have to go through one of the worst freeway interchanges in Southern California. I have been in two accidents in the area of the interchange in the four years that I have worked for this company. Neither were serious or my fault. If safety was first in my life I would not have taken that job because of the commute alone. I also would not work in a job that required excessive typing in fear of arthritis in my hands. However I feel the risk is adequate for my compensation. Let’s face it would any mothers have given birth if safety was first? Would men ask women out on dates in fear of being turned down(not a very good example in this day and age any more)? Would there be any progression if safety was first? So this post is going to be more on risk taking rather than on safety first.


In life we take risks every day, some have physical consequences and others are financial and some maybe psychological. We all put up safety nets to protect us from the potential dangers of life. It may be the car we drive, a savings account, our friends, or maybe it is sun block. The same applies with wood working. I am well aware of the dangers and risks involved in woodworking and I am willing to take them. I do have several pieces of equipment that are extremely dangerous and potentially deadly. I have some safety nets that I have when using the equipment. I will share a couple with you in the next few posts.

My High School Cross Country Coach

I know this is not about wood working, but I found the blog of the King Cross Country team.  This may mean nothing to people that read this blog, but the coach is Brad Peters.  He was my coach when I ran at Ayala a few years ago.  I never had him as a school teacher and I think I really missed out.  He could motivate and inspire.  He never thought of him self first.  He will always be a better writer than I am.  I have attached the website to my friends list.  If you read only a couple of posts you will see what a remarkable man he really is.  It was my privilege to run with him as my coach.

The Sample Shop

I had the opportunity to spend a couple of weeks in the sample shop at my work. We were in the process of quoting several vanities for Home Depot’s Martha Stewart line. They recently just launched their custom bath and kitchen line. We were working on the retail/in-stock line. These units were designed by Martha Stewarts’s design team and completely different than what we do now. The past two weeks were spent making the samples. I hate to say that the drawings made were rushed and not all clear to give someone to build. Our sourced parts were good but the assembly drawings were either sketches or drawings not updated with the new design changes. This is probably more information than you care to know so I will get to the point. To aid the sample shop in assembling these units as quickly and correctly as possible I was out assisting the build because I was the lead engineer on the project.


It was interesting to see how they put together these units. The most interesting fact is that they use one tool for 80% of the work. They have a sliding table saw for sheet goods. They use it for squaring board, ripping small strips, cross cutting and cutting dado grooves, rabbits, and tongue and grove joints. They have a miter saw and a cabinet table saw with a dado blade set. They also have two routers. It took a week to realize why the used this machine so much: setup. This machine was easy to set up and had a scale that was accurate to the blade. It would take several minutes to setup the other machines.

Setup was the second thing I noticed was quickened. Rather than set up stops and fixtures to drill holes or cut accurate dado grooves they would take short cuts that resulted in the same result. I am not saying to make shortcuts. They need to work fast and they have adapted. Why set up a dado blade when moving the ripping fence 1/8” at a time has the same result? A dado will have a cleaner cut however in particle board the result will be the same. It is also about tool wear, accuracy and precision. Their shortcuts will dull the table saw blade faster. The dado blade will also resist deflection.

What have I learned from this experience? Something I all ready knew: there are several ways to do the same thing. Am I going to change my practices? No, I am comfortable using my tools to do the assigned tasks. Am I going to use the shortcuts I learned the past two weeks? There may be a couple of situations I use the techniques I learned. I am not graded on my speed. I would rather take may time and not make something I enjoy doing a job. I am also grateful to have my own tools.  I do not want to trust some one else to the care and maintenance of the equipment.

Just a note unrelated to this post: I am sanding another bucket of blocks. So by the end of the month there should be another contest.

New Twist to a couple of Projects

I was asked to make a couple of trucks for a friend of my mother's.  They were going to be for her two grand boys and they were going to be the exact same.  I changed them up a little and made the accent woods different.  One was walnut and the other was a red looking wood from my grandfathers scrap pile I inherited.  They turned out really nice and but I wanted them to be a little more different.  I asked the lady I was making these for if I could try to paint their names on them.  Anyone that knows me knows that I could not write these names free hand.  I do have an air brush and I knew if I did it free hand I would have to sand a lot of mistakes out.  So I opted to do it like etching glass.  My mother is a major scrap book person and a while back she purchased a die cut stencil set.  I cut my letters from that and put them backwards on a sheet of contact paper.  Then I put the contact paper on the truck beds and cut out the letters leaving behind the sheet of contact paper. The reason I did this rather than just tracing the letters  on the contact paper was because the paper stencil leaves a lip that is easy to trace with a blade.  I then painted the names on to the beds of the trucks.  They turned out really nice.  It looks a lot better than my free hand.  Here are the pictures of the steps.

 

 

Just a note:  Push down the contact paper after cutting out the letters.  The lip that helps you cut out the letters will let the paint bleed if not pushed down.

My Band Saw

I did a mail order band saw from a company called Grizzly Tools.  It came with a high recommendation from our sample shop manager at work.  They only do mail order and they are the manufacturers of their equipment so I am not paying a middle man.  I have been looking on their website for a while and the the plan was to earn the money from selling my projects (I am about half way there).  They introduced a new series called the Polar Bear series.  The only difference was this series was all white.  They were doing and introductory offer on them.  With the promo price I was able to upgrade for free.  I couldn't let that deal go by.  I don't know what the extra 1/4 horse power gets me but I got it for free.
It came via FedEx freight and because a semi truck might have trouble on my parents street and there would be no one there to sign for it; I opted to pick it up at the terminal.  Set up was not as bad as I thought it would be.  It went together very well, even thought the directions were a little weird.  I had to know the bolt classifications and everything was in metric.
When I first turned it on nothing happened.  The motor hummed but the blade did not move.  Customer was very helpful and quickly identified the problem as the start up capacitor.  I think they had a bad patch of motors because they were really quick to state the problem.  They sent me a replacement which was smaller than the original.  Now it runs great. I just did re sawed some lumber.  I am very happy with the purchase.
Now this means I do not have to use the work band saw that is extremely dull and burns the wood .  I am also in control on how the equipment is treated.  There is a definite advantage of owning your own tools.

The Construction Set

This has been about two years in the making.  I downloaded three of the plans from the Internet.  They were free and here is the link. Later I purchased the Reader Digest book of wooden toy plans.  It had he road grader and the larger bob tail truck.  Then My wife purchased Norm Marshshall's book of Wooden Toys.  This had the bulldozer and the tanker.  So I just finished those two pieces.  There is a Crane but I need to catch up on current projects.  I feel bad because there are people waiting for projects, some I still have to design.

The Bulldozer

Cab-over with low trailer

Simi with Trailer

Road Grader

Tanker truck

Steam Roller

Most of these are made out of Poplar.  It was cheap and clear.  However the bulldozer engine is out of a maple foot.  It was a project I was working on at work and it was a failed first article so I took the decorative profile off and squared it up.  Over all it looks pretty good.
Lessons:
Slow down the speed of the drill press when drilling large diameter holes.  The first two trucks were made while I was taking a wood working class.  They had a 2 1/2" forstner bit that cut through wood like butter.  I don't have that tool because I would not use it very much and they are a little pricey.  I had to use a hole saw(it can also make wheels).  I tend to burn wood when using a hole saw.  I took some advice and slowed the speed down and did not try to cut the hole in 2.4 seconds.  It was a little rougher then the other bit but it did the job.
Don't try to carry too many things at once.  I was putting all the parts back into my car to take home after some time at my parents.  I accidentally dropped the tanker truck cab and the top broke into 5 pieces.  With a little glue and sanding it all worked out.  I was lucky this time
Look at previous items made in the series.  If you look at the engine for the tanker tuck and the other two you will notice that the head lights are different sizes.  The tanker has 3/8" dowels for lights and the other two have 3/4" dowel for lights.  It was a combination of not reading the drawing completely and not having going back and looking at the other trucks in the series.