What Safety Gear You Need to Forge Metal

Video Transcript

On behalf of Expert Village, I'm Terry and I'm here today to show you the workings of a forge. When working with a forge you always want to take precautions. Before you ignite it, you want to make sure that you don't have any leaks in your hoses; no cracks in your hoses, your valves are working properly. Once it's ignited and lit...well then you have the heat and the burn factor. You want to always use tongs to hold your material and you want to use gloves. The best gloves to use are Teflon coated gloves. What I have here is just plain old welding gloves. They'll work, but you really want to get some Teflon coated gloves because you can hold onto material a lot longer. Handling these rods will soon get hot with welding gloves on where you can't hold them, so you have your tongs. You really want to have an apron, a heavy leather apron. You know...you make one mistake, you drop, you fall, you stumble....Whenever you drop something on you it's going to burn right through your clothes immediately because of embers three-thousand degrees. And so, you know, what I'm wearing here is some thick cowhide. You can see it's gotten hot before and all it did was curl up. So, as far as safety you want to keep a bucket of water around. You also, just in case there's a fire that starts....you know...you may not notice it right away. Even a fire extinguisher would help. But I keep a bucket around so I can cool a piece of metal off. If I need to throw it down, I don't throw it on something. I completely stow it in the bucket. They extinguish the heat that's on the rocks so that it doesn't catch anything else on fire. But it's always good to have plenty of water and maybe even a water hose. But find a bucket and a fire extinguisher is adequate for what I do here. I wear steel toed boots because I don't like hammers and things falling on my boots. That's a good thing to do is protect your toes. You know, there are a lot of dangers you don't see around...as long as you?re well protected. Safety glasses is a good idea. Usually, you don't get a lot of pop and crackle off the metal but...You know you have this shell that pops off the metal as your working it and you can get a piece in your eye, so a pair of safety glasses is a good idea. Some people even wear a shield and that's just to shield your face from the heat. But if you?re working in front of a larger forge than this and your working around it all day, it'll be just like a sunburn...you can blister your face. So, I would recommend a shield, gloves, safety shoes, and a leather apron.

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