Safety

Safety Week May 1 – 5 2011

	Monday Giving Safety the Finger Some lessons learned, reminded or reinforced after beginning Safety Week sitting in ER
	Tuesday Filtration A bit about filtering the air you breathe, either in shop filtration (and a reminder to check the filters and how), or just at the point you suck it in.
	Wednesday A Stitch in Time After the unusual start to the week, I researched some appropriate PPE for hands, particularly when chainsawing.
	Thursday F’ing Safety (Fences and Fallbags that is). A risk mitigation exercise, deciding if a particular risk is best mitigated by a fence at the top of the cliff, a fallbag at the bottom, or a parachute foruse on the way down.
	Friday The Nike Ethos Safety isn’t hard.  Just do it.

 

Safety Week May 10 – 17 2010

	Monday Holistic Safety – Holostic, from ὅλος (holos), the Greek concept that the properties of a system cannot simply be determined or explained simply by looking at the individual component parts. Aristotle summarised it particularly well – “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”.
	Tuesday Safety Practicability in the Workshop – Capable of being effected, done, or put into practice; feasible. Is it practical to engage all forms of safety, or only as far as it is practicable?
	Wednesday Scary Sharp is a Myth – “So sharp, it is scary” – can something be too sharp?
	Thursday 10 Safety Tips – Not a Top 10, just a collection of 10 tips for safety in the workshop.
	Friday In the Air Filter or the Lungs…Decisions, Decisions – Air filtration is often the last “tool” acquired for the workshop, yet it is critical for personal safety.  So why is the decision to purchase one left for so long?
	Filter Changing – Just when do you change the filter in an air filtration unit?

Safety Week May 04 – 08 2009

	Monday Risk Assessment – If you cannot identify the risks, how can you prevent, remove, control or manage them? This article looks at a way of quantifying risk, so that our limited resources can best be applied to minimising those most with the greatest ratio of risk and consequence.
	Tuesday Dust in the Workshop – A bit of a discussion of sources of dust in the workshop and its removal
	Wednesday Fire Prevention and Fire Fighting in a workshop.  The risk of a fire in the workshop is often overlooked, or understated.  This article is a prompt if nothing else to be more conscious of the risks.
	A video to follow on from the Fire Prevention article, giving some idea of how intense the damage can be from even a small fire.  This one comes from my Navy days – a galley fire on an adjacent ship.
	Thursday Kickback Causes – A look at some of the woodworking machines, and the potential reasons why they would turn a piece of timber into a missile.
	Friday Kickback Prevention – With some of the causes of kickbacks being covered, this is a look at some of the methods of preventing them occurring.

Safety Week May 05 – 09 2008

	Monday An Introduction to Safety Week 2008 on the Wood Whisperer Network. Includes a brief discussion of PPEs
	Tuesday Manual Handling – why is it that we accept practices in our workshop that we would never tolerate in a commercial environment?
	Wednesday Noise in the workshop video and article – a test of different machines and the sound levels they produce, both running freely, and under load (ie when machining some timber) This ties in with one of the previous articles shown below on Hearing Protection in the Workshop
	Thursday Eye Safety – Just because you own some safety specs, they don’t help if you are not wearing them, or that they are not large enough to provide good protection. There are too many hospital admissions by home handypeople for not wearing something that can be purchased for under $10.
	Friday Safety Devices.  Intended to do one of two things (or both) – keep bodyparts away from the cutting things, and/or control the workpiece so it doesn’t become a missile.
	Safety Week Wrap It has been an interesting week, with lots of safety information coming out from members of the Wood Whisperer Network. Here are some final comments.

Previous Safety Posts on Stu’s Shed

	Wood Dust and Respiratory Protection
	Timber Health Hazards
	Hearing Protection in the Woodworking Workshop
	Circular Saw Blade Speed
	Router Bit Speed
	Safe Working Distance
	Fire in the Shed