I actually have an Amazon list of the things that you need to ventilate outside a window with ease. Here is the link:
https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/27Q6YCA4Y6PFB?ref_=wl_share
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a school setting especially if thereās kids involved (oxymoron), requires all kinds of safety and health regulations and rules. working with fire, hot metal, fumes, acids, potentially toxic chemicals especially with kids presents incredible insurance and liability problems. Itās completely different from a home studio where you can keep yourself safe but not a whole bunch of others who may not follow the safety rules all of the timeā¦fire proofing, burn avoidance safety, metal chips in eyes, you name it are further considerations beyond ventilation. Commercial outfits have the same liability and safety concerns also but have responsible adults at work, not kids who are just learning and push the limitsā¦ rules are made to be broken! These kinds of considerations have to be taken into account. A health and safety consultant is required!
Home studios are a different matter. If you injure yourself, itās your own fault, or if you burn down your houseā¦ your home insurance may not like the idea of storing flamable gases or explosive gases within the home. a rider insuring expensive materials such as a stash of precious metals and gems is impossible to get or way cost prohibitive. Itās cheaper to rent a safety deposit box at a bank and access is totally inconvenient, nor is it cheapā¦
The first rule is not to burn the house down or burn yourself up or poison yourselfā¦The next is not to get your stuff stolen in a burglary.
As far as school settings go I would like to relate an experience I had!
I signed up for an extension course for teachers that was about Foundry Casting. I wanted to gain experience with Bronze Castings for my Sculptures I had in my mind, I needed the experience. My first problem was I realized their furnace they melted in was all wrong! The top had been broken and replaced with 1/4 inch steel thick 15" diameter, 4" tall no refractory material!!! This lid would suck off all the heat a wouldnāt reach temp for melting bronze. The instructor wanted me to switch to aluminum.
I wasnāt happy but I was there and I forged ahead until an Old man that apparently taught electrical courses
At this school associated with The University of California Riverside
He wasnāt in the class, but he was on a mission to work on a project there with their ARC Welder.
He struck ARC Right There in the middle of class with no Shields and he is the only one with Eye Protection !!! 20 People all around him. I grabbed the Stinger out of his hands and started reading the Riot Act and telling all who would listen that even the reflection off the wall would Sun Burn Their Eye Balls.
The Instructor said āWe try to work around each other around hereā
I left and reported all of this the Next day at the Main Campus. Got my Refund. I did manage to study under a Very Knowledgeable Teacher at San Jose State UCSJ
Named Randy, He got part of his education in Europe, I was fortunate to have known him. I have attended jr college settings that had a special soldering station with a hood and different kinds of set ups to help soldering jobs, jigs beds etc.and that eliminated the dangers associated with close quarters and flames and fumes.
Steven
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aluminum would melt at 1220 degrees Fā¦ lower than copper, bronze, silverā¦ that makes no sense at all! Plain old firebricks for a wood stove would have done betterā¦ heat resistant and poorly heat conductiveā¦ someone who is teaching how to melt bronze should know better!
So far as striking high current arcs, I learned the hard way by sun burning my eyeballs when I didnāt use a welding helmetā¦ I also got sun burn from not using long sleeves made out of leatherā¦a long sleeve shirt would have prevented sunburn but could easily catch fire from sparksā¦
When people do things like that exposing others to harm, especially in a classroom setting itās almost unthinkableā¦ these people are supposed to know betterā¦ all they are doing is inculcating bad risky behavior in their studentsā¦ Good thing to have said Good Bye!!!
@jsfandskh
Thank you for your thoughts and input. My dad would come home with eyes burning from welding titanium which is brighter than stainless. He instructed me from an early age about taking care of your eyes! One of the reasons he was hired was his experience in working Noble metals. Seeing his creations inspired me to pursue all things that were artistic that involved metal, gem stones and from there I branched out to whatever came my way as far as materials to include.
Some of my favorites were a combination of found material and in combination with my skills incorporated into something new.
A piece of old sterling flatware overlaid as a decorative appointment on a ring I cast or wrought with maybe a gem stone I found in the field or yard sale or swap meet. The hunt is lots of fun too! I have been fortunate to have been mentored by wonderful craftsman and as pop was fond of saying āsome of your best teachers are your students!ā I love being around artistic people and One reason is the synergy that one can absorb and renew your artistic drive. Thank goodness the ones that endanger the ones around them arenāt prevalent. When I attended jewelry and metal sculpture classes at San Jose State
San Jose, California. I was required to watch a machine safety movie and an instructor went over the different machines in the wood shop and machines that you might use in metal working, then you had to pass a written test, and had to show you could safety turn on and shut down the machines. Safety was the important thing. I missed one on the written test.(Trick question).
With all the dangerous stuff we work with as metal smiths there is danger from heat: hundreds of degrees to thousands of degrees!
Acids that are dangerous and really dangerous. Volatile to your skin and your lungs and the lists go on and on. Learning all the safety is a trade all in it self! Without it you wonāt be around long enough to enjoy your creativity! Extracting metals from raw ore has left many a fishing holes polluted, poisoned all the way up the food chain. The cyanide and mercury used in the extraction process washes down into lakes and bays to the shell fish which are eaten by bottom feeders which are eaten by bigger fish which man catches and eats. I could keep on telling the tale but I think we all know these facts. I personally donāt eat fish from places like that if I can help it but as metal smiths we are connected to it indirectly. Thank you for your time and I might add I love discussing art and metal work and reading about anything to do with it here on this site the questions and answers etc. ā¦~~~~*BB
I first learned how to weld steel from a friend who was a master mechanic and car builder. He bought wrecked cars at auction, was able to calculate exactly how much time and parts would be required to rebuild and paint it, then sold themā¦ His shop had everything to repair wrecked cars. My mishap happened when I just started to learn how to weldā¦ I never repeated that mistake. He also had a TIG welder for aluminumā¦ the high frequency high voltage current electrically charged everything it touched. He kept on with safety issuesā¦ told me that one of the high pressure hoses he had if uncoupled could fly off and break legsā¦ same when he did frame straigtening work using a 4 ton hydraulic piston, attached to 4 ton strength chains to pull dents out of a frameā¦ told me that if the chain broke it would whip back with enough force to cut someone in halfā¦ Painting cars with spray paint was another toxic situationā¦ heavy clothing, canister respirators rated for specific chemicals and solvents, eye protection and head coverings.
I later moved away and bought my own MIG welder. It was a low output machine but did the job on sheet metal and up to 1/4 inch thick steelā¦ made mobiles, wind chimes out of scrap metalā¦ I also bought an oxyacetylene torch with cutting and welding tipsā¦ MIG welding is so much easier than gasā¦ never used welding tipsā¦ the cutting torch has been very handyā¦ I used it to melt silver to pour ingots, later gold. the heat output exceeds jewerly making torchesā¦ I also used it to āfire refineā scrap sterling to fine silverā¦ the oxygen jet that cuts steel can be used to inject oxygen into molten silver. Silver will absorb over 20 volumn% of oyxgen when molten. Copper gets oxidized and burnt out into the fluxā¦ as the silver cools, it exsolves oxygen bubblesā¦ hence the name āspitting silverā which is close to fine.
Of course all of this is very dangerousā¦ spilt molten metal burns anything it touchesā¦ silver spitting can throw off globules of molten metalā¦ None of this can be done indoorsā¦ I have to do it outside on a stand with a ceramic tile surface which I made out of left over tiles from home improvement projects.
Protective clothing and a waterhose nearby are more precautions.
So far as acids are concerned, Iāve used both muriatic (impure iron containing hydrochloric acid) and reagent grade nitric acidā¦ muriatic acid out of the bottle is 37% HCl and fumesā¦ Same with nitric which is much more corrosive and toxicā¦ HCl is great for cleaning toilets, it will almost instantly remove water rings and sterilize the bowlā¦ but must be diluted to half strength outside first so that it does not fume. Nitric acid presents its own set of dangers. it fumes out of the bottleā¦ when it reacts with metals, it produces brown nitrogen dioxide fumes which are highly corrosive, as the fumes themselves are a strong oxidantā¦ It cannot be used safely indoors either.
When I took chemisry lab in college, the lab was equiped with high output fume hoods. They were not open but had a door to put in chemicals and start a reactionā¦ the doors had to be kept closed. air was sucked in through panel openings. The professor would lecture the class on safety before any experiment was started. Violating safety rules intentionally would result in an automatic flunkā¦nitration reactions were particularly dangerousā¦ not only nitric acid fumes but also side reactions creating explosive substancesā¦ trinitrobenzene has the explosive power of TNTā¦ these reactions created heat, and had to be chilled with dry ice and alcohol to slow the reactions down, to avoid fire and explosions.
I canāt see without my eyeglassesā¦ my glasses are retro round with 47mm diameter lensā¦ they have saved my eyes from dust fragments, metal fragments many timesā¦
Teaching jewerly making to beginning students absolutely requires safety measures to be repeated endlesslyā¦ anyone violating safety measures has to be lectured to. Safety equipment has to be up to OSHA standards. Long hair has to be covered or tied backā¦ One of my grad student helpers in chemistry got his long hair wound up in a drillā¦ it happened so quickly that all he remembers was being hit hard on the forehead enough to be stunnedā¦ when he came to, a piece of scalp had been pulled out along with some hair. The drill had wound up on his hair, hit him on the head and pulled out skin and hairā¦ Dangerous situations occur when least expected and not every contingency can be covered. All of these lessons were learned through experienceā¦ there were a few minor disasters along the way but the situations that caused them were never repeated.
re pollution: illegal artisanal gold mining in Amazonian Peru has destroyed millions of acres of streams and forestsā¦ on the same scale as illegal loggingā¦ artisanal miners use mercury to recover placer goldā¦modern commercial extraction crushes low grade sulfide ore, puts in in piles of thick rubber pads, sprays the piles with water to oxidize the sulfide to release gold from arsenopyrite and pyrite, then sprays it with dilute cyanide to dissolve gold and silverā¦corporate mining in the US is well regulated (depending on the state)ā¦the leachate is collected and processedā¦ sulfuric acid from the oxidation of sulfides is neutralized by crushed limestoneā¦Once the waste pile has been processed, the landscape has to be restoredā¦ the leach pad is kept in place to drain into a collection system. the tailings pile is graded and covered with the dirt that was removed and replanted with grass and shrubs.
Thatās the way it supposed to happenā¦ doesnāt happen that way all the timeā¦ We had a major problem in South Dakota with a Canadian based gold miner going broke and abandoning the leach pileā¦ the bond that was posted for clean up was only 1% of the cost of clean upā¦ right now the State is processing the runoff at taxpayerās expenseā¦ itās on the Superfund list for clean up except that the superfund has no fundingā¦
Most of the heavy metal pollution in streams in the Western US comes from old abandoned mines dug during the gold rush daysā¦ California gold was native gold in quartz with little contamination from heavy metalsā¦ Colorado ores were complex sulfidesā¦ acid mine drainage laden with heavy metals flows out of mine openings and dumps into trout streams killing everything down stream for several milesā¦ A recent article by the American Geophysical Union stated that the mine drainage could be a source of strategic rare earth elements of which the US is in desperate short supplyā¦ China owns 90% of the worldās reserves. Rare earth elements are essential of magnets in electric vehicules and for electronicsā¦ Neodymium super strong permanent magnets that EVās depend on constitute 40% of the metals used in the magnetsā¦ they also need Cobalt which is sourced from only one place in the world- Congoā¦ Terbium is essential for LED displays in TVāsā¦If acid mine drainage could become cost effective for rare earth recovery, our supply of rare earth metals will increase by 10-20% while streams would be cleanedā¦
I know this post is completely off topic but it was brought up and I was called to answer.
Thank you for the insight into the dangers and current extent of pollution that is really going on!!
And how We the taxpayers are left holding the Bag to clean up the mess made by our neighbors and to further the point look at the mess left in the Gulf of Mexico by BP!
In Canada the mining of black tar sands for oil has left the Native population eating fish that are cancerous because of the disturbing the soil for harvesting the dirty tar sand . This is off the subject of mining of metals But the relationship is glaringly plain greed and and not considering the long range effects on the Food Supply that so many depend on. The Shrimp beds in the Gulf will Never Recover for many many generations! So I believe these happenings should be talked about big business doesnāt want to hear it or take responsibility and Global warming isnāt happening 
as I am surrounded by wildfires and my lungs are suffering. Iām still driving a gasoline engine car (30-35 a gallon) always have owned custom trucks and cars. Iāve assembled 12 to 1500 engines and I use metals that were mined somewhere. So I am responsible also as many are
I wish the powers that be would put a hot rail on the freeways so a guy like me could get on the freeways and drop a shoe to connect my electric motor and power my car for long distances and then the huge rare earth batteries wouldnāt be required this reducing the price of the electric cars and why do you need 4 motors unless your racing or just because you can afford them.
There I got some stuff off my chest about rare earth minerals and a work around also I had no idea you could reclaim some pollution and get rare earth by cleaning up past messes! Cool solution happy ending.
I see news of other mining projects involving Canadian mining companies and you have previously mentioned that their bond they were required to post wouldnāt come anywhere near what it cost to clean up! What kind of recourse is there when the parties responsible cut and run and to get this into sharper focus āpeople from our own country advocate for No oversight or very liberal restrictions in the name of Energy Independenceā. The results are a domino effect, cascading might Even apply! Killing off fish populations that feed humans and a wide variety of wild life, Remember
āSilent Springā??? Off point? No I donāt think so, Mining, Minerals, and Earth Sciences are our bread and butter, to turn a Blind Eye isnāt a solution. We found ways with Blood Diamonds. We are interconnected in so many ways and our actions touch everything ā
Nature relies on us and we rely on nature. If we focus on the beautiful part of our craft then we wonāt suffer from mental anguish 