On Fri, 07 May 2004 08:57:07 -0400, Michael Shaffer
wrote:

Thanks for all the info, I didn't know you needed that much protection.

98% of the time you DON'T need it all, and you wonder why the heck
you're dressing up for a moon shot - just to stand there swaddled up
like Bibendum (look it up...) sucking down water and sweating your
butt off while doing your welding.

You do it for that /other/ 2% of the time, when you get hot spatter
down your shorts / down your neck / between your toes / up your gloves
/ etc. and start dancing the Time Warp... :-0

It gets really interesting protecting yourself when you're lying in
a restricted space like under the tail end of a car, welding over your
head... That's the kind of position where SteveB's suggestion of
wearing earmuffs (to keep the spatter out of your ears) comes into
play.

(Keep the earmuffs handy [and a face shield] for running the hand
grinder when cleaning up your work - those things are noisy, and will
ruin your ears in short order.)

Human hair burns quite nicely when exposed to hot stuff. And you
really don't want first-hand experience. There's a /reason/ why you
wear a cotton cloth engineer's cap under your welding helmet.

Don't weld galvanized metal without taking special precautions -
clean as much zinc out of the weld area as possible with a grinder,
and always have the breeze at your back - Zinc fumes do very bad
things to your lungs. A respirator is great if you do it a lot.

You also suffer through wearing all the protective gear for your
retirement years, so you aren't going in to the dermatologist every
week to get malignant melanomas removed - today's bad UV Sunburns from
any skin exposed to the welding arc flash (arms, neck, legs wearing
shorts, etc.) will be tomorrow's skin cancer.

-- Bruce --
--
Bruce L. Bergman, Woodland Hills (Los Angeles) CA - Desktop
Electrician for Westend Electric - CA726700
5737 Kanan Rd. #359, Agoura CA 91301 (818) 889-9545
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