Safety gloves

No goves, no rings, safety goggles, if nasty chips faceshield material to keep it away, use apron and rubbish drum underneath with guided plastic.

Had the chuck & toolpost keys wired safety in special places(series with doorswitch), so if these tools are not there, the lathe cannot run, or switched off if pulled while its running.

When I lifted my 330 Lathe height initially(200mm) on advice from machinist, I installed the lathe between a metal frame box over it.
I then fit a 40mm pipe between front upright pillars to protect me from bumping the lathe apron in garage when not in use. I made it to easuly remove. Till today I actually never removed this horisontal pipe at your waist height.
I now sort of lean/stand against it, and if I remove it, it feels like I walk into the lathe. I understand with big lathes or smaller ones this would not be practical to do.

I do some wood turning sometimes so naturally hear comments from wood turners on the topic. American wood turners often wear gloves it seems and see it as low risk. The most vocal pro glove wearing turners say they have to wear them due to arthritis, dermatitis or they don’t like the hot wood chips getting onto their hands. Ring wearing is also no too uncommon with even some professionals showing off their jewellery on wood turning YouTube videos.

I did see a video some time ago saying it was perfectly safe to wear thick leather gloves when using a metalwork lathe but I can’t find it now. I did see this though.

Margaret,

As Nick said...

I now use a vacuum cleaner with a separator bucket that catches most things. As for stopping the the fine splinters in your hands etc, I use a clear safety guard that had a mag base, and place it so it keeps stuff away. I often use the vacuum cleaner nozzle close to the drill, and catch the swarf as it's being made.

I have a mini-lathe and mini-mill. I use a Dyson fitted with the short nozzle it comes with - it sucks up about 80% of the swarf created. Then I use a 1" paint brush to guide the rest in to a position my Pan and Brush can reach. For bigger swarf, use a long'ish srewdriver or similar to move it in to position for clearing up - try to do that when the machine is off. Never use your hands/fingers.

Again the 1" brush can be used to clear swarf away from the actual workpiece as the machine is running. For very small swarf I also use a little camera-lens blower.

Ultra-fine tweezers and a magnifying glass is the only solution I've found once a little brass splinter gets in to a finger

Ches

My point is that in that circumstance the wire brush would have done the same thing without gloves.
Gloves are only a hazard when they are MORE LIKELY to be caught than bare skin or are STRONGER than bare skin. Tight fitting thin nitrile gloves are neither more likely to be caught or stronger than skin.
There will be edge cases, that I'm sure will be quoted, were the nitrile glove may be a little worse, but they are rare. That smal risk must be balanced against the hazards the gloves are protecting against.

So what gloves would you endorse? I did say "if you MUST have gloves...."

Robert.

Definitely do not wear rings, not connected with turning or drilling but a colleague of mine when descending from a safety raiser, when working on aircraft, lost his footing on the greasy rungs of the ladder and a ring he was wearing caught as he was falling and rolled the skin and flesh of his ring finger right down to the bone the full length of his finger, fortunately he didn’t severe the tendons, but they were well and truly exposed. Once you have witnessed a nasty injury like that it focuses the mind and you make sure you take the necessary precautions. Dave W

Some people like myself suffer from skin problems, dirt, grease, oil etc can be a real problem so nitrile gloves are the answer if you want to continue with the hobbly. I have caught and lost the odd glove, though not regularly, with no problem.

I have witnessed a gloved hand being caught in a lathe. NO! NO! NO!

I cringe whenever I see a glove in a workshop, other than welding gloves.

The most frightning thing I ever saw done on a lathe without an actual accident was at work. An older engineer parted off a bit of 1" thin-wall tube and then with it still running, wrapped bit of emery strip round his index finger and stuck it in the bore to smooth it. I could not say anything in case it distracted him. as soon as hiss finger came out I hit the E-Stop. When I asked him to think about what he had done he went very white and had to sit down....

I suspect those suggesting Nitrle gloves are thinking of the very thin style disposable gloves. Those saying no are thinking of the fabric reinforced type. Neither will stop metal splinters/chips.

You can make a scoop from a 4 pt milk container to help clean up, but most of my splinters are picked up from wiping my hands on a rag, which provides enough force to penetrate the skin and they always come from the mill.

Sorry, Robert, but the thin, non-reinforced nitrile glove my friend was wearing pulled the wire brush up his arm at alarming speed in a way his own skin never would have. It was only after the wire wheel had travelled about four inches up his forearm, digging itself deeper into his skin as the tightening rubber pulled it down, that the glove disintegrated. He simply didn’t have time to react.

Surprising result - latex and nitrile gloves tear easily, or at least the ones I buy do. Thicker gloves are available, so perhaps a pair of the tougher type were being worn?

Before thin rubber the advice not to wear gloves was rock solid - no glove was safe because they were all too strong.

Not wearing gloves causes other injuries though. Minor cuts and infections from swarf, plus dermatitis from oil and cutting fluids. Barrier cream helps, but I prefer gloves. I hope I'm balancing the risk sensibly. In my case, I'm a sensitive softy, not a horny handed real-man!

Food for thought though. Might experiment later to see how strong my thin latex gloves actually are. They may not be as safe as I fondly imagine...

Dave

As a former apprentice instructor - no gloves, rings, even watches. No ties (who wears such things these days? OK, a few of you). And avoid loose shop coats or aprons, if you have bare leadscrew and feedbar.

Bill

The gloves, Dave, were almost certainly Sempercare Nitrile.

Oh dear, back to Barrier Cream for me then!

Dave

The one mitigating circumstance, Dave, is that I couldn't swear to what type of Sempercare Nitrile they were. The most common type is the "Nitrile Skin 2", which has a breaking force of "6-7 Newtons". There are, however, others in the range that have a breaking force of "9 Newtons".

Personally, I don't regard this sort of difference in strength as a reason to trust that the lower strength gloves will always break at the critical moment before any damage is done.

The thin gloves must also be tight fitting. If you are gettng within a thou or so of the moving part you are too close glove or not

Edited By Robert Atkinson 2 on 14/07/2023 19:39:07

I believe you can get nitrile or similar type gloves which are guaranteed to split rather than get wound into machinery - I don't fancy the idea myself, but I guess if you suffered from some sort of severe skin condition they might be worth looking into.

I agree, brass splinters are horrible. I do find though that using a tool with no top rake (side or back, i.e flat) produces less aggressive chips - and it isn't prone to digging in, and gives a good finish

Edited By Andy Stopford on 14/07/2023 20:32:27

It seems this industrial safety training company at least hasn't heard of them [as I haven't, nor would I trust them for that purpose if I had]:

"Train your employees to protect them from bad information available on the internet. Workers may believe that latex or nitrile gloves are safer than leather or cotton work gloves because they will tear free if caught. Make sure they know this is not true; these kinds of gloves can also lead to dangerous entanglements, accidents, and sometimes amputations."

Bob B's testimony here of an accident at the Waterford Nuclear plant also makes for sobering reading about the potential consequences of wearing nitrile gloves inappropriately.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 14/07/2023 21:32:45

Some interesting tales in that link, Bill. I used to treat nitrile gloves as tear-before-getting-finger-removed devices, but recently I have started just wearing them for the dirtier jobs, such as changing tooling in the mill. However, if I ever get a round tuit, I might try Ansell's Hyflex 11-812 gloves "designed to pre-emptively tear if entangled in rotating tools" (see hyflex 11-812). Their video shows some of their testing on these gloves: they look like they would reduce the risk of loosing a finger, but the risk of being pulled in might remain.

I apologise if this sounds like an advert! I have no connection with Ansell, but I thought that these might be of interest in this thread.

Dave

my Wife told me to try a Pair of Suspenders from my late Father. These were the kind that just snap onto the Trousers. It scared me to no Ends when I leaned over my running Lathe to read the Cross Slide Dial and the back Snaps let loose and the Suspenders flew over my Head across the running Lathe. There was no Accident, but the Suspenders went directly into the Trash.