Thank you for so many sharing your tales of accidents and
situations. I will be posting a compilation fairly soon as many
have emailed me off-list.of course all respondants whose
is used inthe paper/report on safety will be
acknowledged.
Of interest in my research so far is that I am pleasantly
surprised at how relativeley safe jewelry making seems to be
compared with some other crafts industries.(Yup there are still
problems in our field). We do seem to have gotten better in the
last few years:)
I am still looking for tales of accidents. However, a couple of
further questions have arisen. Please email off-list. My email
address is: @Charles_Lewton-Brain
here are the questions:
Have you experienced or known people with RSI (carpal tunnel,
tennis elbow etc) injuries in the jewelry trade? Have they
recovered?
Do you know anyone who died/suffered late in life from a disease
that you think could be based on their jewelry making expereince?
Do you know any substitute procedures (ie ionic cleaning versus
bombing) or chemicals (ie a non-silicate based polishing compound
to replace tripoli) that would be useful for me to mention in
this paper?
If you were telling a beginner about health and safety issues in
the jewelry field and giving them advice what would be the most
important things you would tell them?
in class once we had a polishing machine go into flames… the
filter was filthy … we all had to take turns cleaning the
filter etc once a week … no more fires tho Ruth
The worst accident I’ve ever had? I was working, late late at
night. I’d been at the bench for 16 hours straight, working on a
chalice for a church. Why so long? Just how I tend to be when
working, don’t want to stop until I do everything I wanted to
finish that day/night. So sitting there in SHORTS, with the bowl
of the chalice upside down on the soldering pad. It was pinned
down around the entire rim, so that I could solder on some more
celtic knotwork pieces that adorned the outside. It was the
last piece of the design to go in, and I was really tired, and
pushing it really hard to get the solder to flow everywhere. I
pushed TOO hard from the front with the tweezers, which knocked
the pins out of the far side of the bowl, which made it flip up
and roll backwards over the backside of my right hand (taking
skin with it, since it was at about 1500 degrees with some parts
still orange) and bouncing onto my right thigh, taking more skin
with it, then to the floor where it burned the plastic mat under
the chair. The burns on my hand required no grafts, but had to
be gauzed and medicated four times a day for three weeks, as well
as the thigh. I got lucky, my doctor gave me something besides
the usual silvadine cream, and i barely have a scar. The burn
was 3" by 4", the scar is the size of a dime.
Moral of the story? DON’T work tired, DON’T work in short pants
or barefoot. If I hadn’t been so damn tired, I would have known
not to press so hard.
OUCH! And I always work in shorts (when the weather permits!)
The worst that ever happend to me was that I ended up with poison
ivy on the inside of my knees. (don’t ask, I’m not sure!)
When working on crystals with lead free stained glass solder, I
once dropped a huge amount of solder on my panti-hosed leg. Got
burned of course, but the solder peeled off the pantihose,
leaving no mark or burn on them…
(Legg’s Sheer Energy, ladies, in case you are wondering…)
Have you experienced or known people with RSI (carpal tunnel,
tennis elbow etc) injuries in the jewelry trade? Have they
recovered?
I do alot of chasing. I got tennis elbow once from doing alot
of production work. I had to take ibruprofen 3 times a day and
wear a “water cast” on my elbow. I stopped doing so much
production work and the problem went away by itself.
Do you know anyone who died/suffered late in life from a
disease that you think could be based on their jewelry making
expereince?
No
Do you know any substitute procedures (ie ionic cleaning
versus bombing) or chemicals (ie a non-silicate based polishing
compound to replace tripoli) that would be useful for me to
mention in this paper?
No
If you were telling a beginner about health and safety
issues in the jewelry field and giving them advice what would
be the most important things you would tell them?
Wear eye protection always and also a dust mask while polishing.
Always be aware of fire and hot metal.
YES there were people in the 1960’s and 70’s that were getting
free oil for their trim and slab saws. The oil was transformer
oil from the power companies. The stuff was full of PBC and
other toxins. No one knew the dangers. You can guess the
result.
There are many people concerned about the asbestos strip that
was worked into the flask before investment. It was supposed to
absorb pressure as the investment cured.
I still don’t know about Chrome Oxide (a jade polish) that is
also a carcinogin. Steve Ramsdell
