Shop Safety

We don't mess around with Studio Safety!  Your and my personal safety is never worth taking a risk, regardless of how special and important a project may be.  Here are our house rules:

1. Always wear your safety equipment including safety glasses, hearing protection and mask.
2. Never wear open toed shoes.  Glass bits and dust will get into your shoes and cut your feet up.  Always wear closed toed shoes.  I prefer leather and many types of sneakers have an open weave type of fabric.
3. Know where the first aid kit is.  Ours are located in the classroom near the kitchen and in the cold shop on the wall above the Blue Diamond Lap Wheel.
4. No loose clothing or long loose hair is permitted ever!  Any of these items can get  caught up in rapidly moving parts.  Your personal safety is never worth sacrificing or cutting corners to finish earlier.  You only have one set of eyes and ears.
5. Frax paper and shelf paper; these items are very harmful if breathed in.  Please wear a mask (and preferable a niosh rated respirator) when handling or cutting them.  Also, when removing them from the kiln and when scraping kiln shelves.  Silicosis is a very painful, non-reversible lung disease.  I don’t want it and I don’t want you to get it!
6. It is very helpful to also wear a rubber or plastic apron and rubber boots while working in the cold shop.
7. Never forcefully push work into or through a machine.  You can seriously hurt yourself and others around in the cold shop.
8. If your work gets loose, step back and turn the machine off.  Do NOT try and grab it or save it.  If your glass piece starts to fall do not try to catch it.  You can get seriously cut.  Your personal safety is never worth taking a chance.  We all have mishaps and have things happen.  Understand the nature of our medium, glass.  It is breakable.  Do not endanger yourself or anyone else, EVER!