A reminder about shop safety….
I know that we’re all aware that knifemaking, blacksmithing, and making pattern welded steel is a dangerous avocation, but sometimes things still have a way of sneaking up and scaring you straight. I’d like to take a minute to share a story and remind folks to be vigilant about shop safety.
I’ve been getting back on my schedule of 5-7AM in the shop before work this week. Not only is it a nice, cool, quiet time during these summer months to get some work done, but I also like the feeling of having accomplished something even before I clean up and go to work. This morning I was up and out in the shop about 5AM working on a large steel order and had been forging, welding, cutting, and grinding for about 2 steady hours. The sun had come up and that was my cue to start wrapping up so I could get to my day job.
I was drawing out a billet and caught a slight delamination of a weld. No biggie, it happens sometimes. I immediately re-fluxed, squeezed the billet slightly in the press to close the gap and stuck the billet back into the forge to come u pto heat for re-welding. Since this would be the last thing I was doing I didn’t want to start on anything else around the shop and was just kind of wandering around thinking. As I walked towards the front of the shop I noted a bit of a burning smell (my sniffer doesn’t work so well, sometimes all I get is a bit of a smell of anything). I initially didn’t think much of it as I had just been flinging flux around hot steel and that always makes things smell a bit “burny”. Then I noticed something else. My shop is not particularly well lit at the moment, and too much light was coming from the west side of the shop. Well, since the sun doesn’t rise in the west it caught my attention. Good thing it did.
Apparently while grinding some steel clean 15-20 minutes before I had thrown some sparks from the angle grinder in the wrong direction. The managed to find a nice little pile of doormats and a moving blanket situated on top of a box of household cleaners, etc. There they smoldered for 15-20 minutes until they caught fire. Once I noticed it I grabbed the shop fire extinguisher from it’s spot in the forging area and put the fire out. Then I dragged everything outside and soaked it with the hose to make sure it was all out. All in all no terrible disaster…this time.
Had it gone only SLIGHTLY differently, this would be a post about my shop being gone. I was getting ready to pack up for the day. If those sparks had waited another 10 minutes to ignite their tinder, I would have been inside in the shower, my wife still in bed, with the demons of negligent shop practices eating all of the hard work and money I’ve poured into my shop over the past 3 or 4 years. It was a very sobering experience.
So, it’s time to review some practices around my shop and try to make what I do more safe. I’ll be building a proper welding /cutting/grinding table and probably surrounding it with welding curtains or screens to keep the sparks from flying across the shop. This will cost me some money to be sure, but in the long run it could save me my whole shop. I’ll also be making sure to take a couple of seconds every few minutes and just look around the shop. If I had done this I might have caught an errant wisp of smoke rather than not seeing it until it was 4 foot tall flames.
So, learn from me folks and take a look at your shop practices to see what you can improve, it could save your shop…
Yeah, this is so true, always remove stuf wich easy ignites… I’m happy your shop didn’t go up in flames..!