Working with Fiberglass
Handle with Nitrile Gloves: Wear nitrile gloves when handling raw fiberglass strips or mats to prevent sharp glass fibers from becoming embedded in your skin, which causes severe itching and dermatitis.
Wear a Respirator During Cutting and Sanding: Use a respirator with high-quality particulate filters (like P100) whenever sawing, grinding, or sanding fiberglass. Simple dust masks are often insufficient for the microscopic glass particles produced.
Wear Long Sleeves and Pants: Use loose-fitting, long-sleeved clothing to minimize skin exposure to fiberglass dust. Wash these clothes separately to avoid contaminating other laundry with glass fibers.
Use Eye Protection: Always wear wrap-around safety glasses or goggles to prevent airborne glass shards from causing corneal scratches or severe irritation.
Adhesives and Finishes
Use a Mask for Thunderbird and Epoxy Finishes: When spraying Thunderbird finish or other catalyzed coatings, a respirator equipped with organic vapor cartridges is essential to protect your lungs from toxic fumes.
Ensure Proper Ventilation: Work in a well-ventilated area, ideally with a dedicated exhaust fan, when mixing or applying epoxy resins and finishes to disperse flammable and hazardous chemical vapors.
Avoid Direct Skin Contact with Resins: Uncured epoxy and resins can cause chemical burns or permanent allergic sensitization. Always use fresh gloves and avoid using solvents like acetone to clean resin off your skin, as they can drive chemicals deeper into your pores.
Fire Safety Precautions: Many finishes and cleaners (like acetone or lacquer thinner) are highly flammable. Keep a fire extinguisher rated for chemical fires in your shop and never smoke near your workspace.
Stringing a New Bow
Safety is paramount when stringing a new bow, especially for a beginner, as the stored energy in the limbs can be dangerous if released accidentally. The process should be done carefully. Work the wood of your new bow throughout the crafting process to ease the wood into its final shape. By shooting the bow during the building process, you will end up with a better finished product.
Essential Stringing Safety Tips
Always Use a Bow Stringer: This is the safest method to string a longbow or recurve. It ensures the limbs flex evenly and significantly reduces the risk of the bow slipping and striking you in the face.
Avoid Manual Methods: Steer clear of the “push-pull” or “step-through” methods, especially with a new bow. These can easily twist the limbs or cause the bow to “kick out” and cause injury.
Wear Safety Glasses: When stringing a bow, the string and limbs are under immense tension. Safety glasses protect your eyes from a snapped string or a limb that might fail during the initial stringing of a newly built bow.
Inspect Before Every Stringing: Before applying any tension, carefully check for cracks, delaminations, or fraying in the string. If anything looks suspicious, do not attempt to string it.
Proper Footing: When using a bow stringer, step on it with both feet shoulder-width apart to ensure maximum stability and prevent the cord from slipping.
Orient the Bow Safely: Always turn the bow so the limbs face away from you while stringing. If a failure occurs, the energy will be directed away from your body.
Verify String Seating: Once the bow is strung, slowly relax the tension and double-check that the string is perfectly seated in the limb grooves before fully letting go of the bow.
Initial “Shooting In”: A new string will stretch. Expect to adjust your brace height after the first few dozen shots as the material settles. Shooting the bow during the crafting process will help the material settle.
General Shop and Woodworking Safety
Protect Against Wood Dust: Inhaling fine wood dust, especially from exotic species or maple bark, can cause respiratory distress, asthma, or long-term health issues. Wear a mask during heavy sanding.
Maintain Sharp Tools: Use sharp chisels and saw blades to reduce the force required for cutting. This prevents slipping and minimizes the production of hazardous fine dust.
Follow Proper Tool Distances: Keep your hands at a minimum distance from blades when using power tools—follow the “six-inch rule”—and always push tools away from your body when carving.