Potentially dangerous glassing room

General Discussion
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Hey fellas, I have shaped, glassed and sanded about 20 boards so far in this 8x6x6 shed using poly blanks & UV poly resin.

i cut a hole in the shed and installed this 8" exhaust fan set up on the floor because I heard that resin fumes are heavy and that they fall as opposed to rise. I also have a 5500 btu  AC unit installed into the wall of the shed as well.

i use the proper 3m mask for resin work with pre filters.

Something tells me that this is still not sufficient space/ventilation… I try to work with the resin quickly and get the hell out of there but I am still pretty slow on my laminations, taking about 20-25 minutes per side.

Yes, it is an annoyingly small area to work in but that’s not what this is about.

What I want to know is: Should I consider a larger workspace for safety reasons?

Thanks y’all

 

 

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A bigger space will just make your existing ventilation systems less effective, but the degree to which it does, could be immaterial.

 

Poly resin fumes do sink, but having them run through a brushed ( spark producing) fan motor on the floor exhausting might not be wisest, especially if large amounts of acetone are involved.

 

I’m pretty big on air exchange and employ both shrouded intake and exhaust fans, on speed controllers.  The intake fan will have filters on it during important stages, the exhaust fan will have filters on it when sanding.  With both exhaust and intake fans whether one is on the floor or ceiling is much less consequential.

 

Look into router speed controllers for controlling fan speeds.  They might make the fan motors whine at reduced speeds, especially if the fan’s own speed controller is set to medium or low. I always put my box fans on high speed and used the router speed controller to control their speed/flow/noise, but one box fan simply sounded sick at reduced speeds through it and I quit controlling it Via the router Speed controller.

 

I’ve tended towards powerful brushless  12vDC  or 24vDC fans on battery power lately, rather than AC fans, and using solar to keep battery charged.  I use inexpensive DC  voltage buckers ( reducers) for speed control on the 12v dc fans and buck/boost converters for the 24v fans.  All my Lighting is 12v DC LED’s too, so I can power my lighting and ventilation for many hours if the power grid goes down, but mostly this is nice as it takes some  load off the 15 amp circuit when running the tablesaw or other high wattage devices that can otherwise trip the breaker, having the breaker trip passing the lumber through the saw pretty much insures a flaw in the dimensioned lumber, so reducing  this likelyhood has been well worth it, to me.

 

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You stated that you are using UV.  If you are using UV, fumes are less of an issue.  MEK Catalyzed Poly is where fumes really kick in.  I’m not saying that there is no need to take precautions, but I am saying fumes from Catalyzed Poly are much worse.  Keep your Acetone in a capped metal can stored in a cool place.  If you mount the fan too close to the floor it could spark sanding dust.  A foot or two above the floor is better.  As long as you are doing boards that fit in the room you’re fine.  Knew a shaper in Pismo who worked out of two metal sheds.  One for shaping and sanding, the other for glassing.  If you are using UV;  What do you do?  Walk them outside?

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He McDing thanks as always for the insight.

yes, to answer your question I walk the boards outside after laminating and after hot coat(s).

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The key is air speed and how fast you change air in your volume. Small volume need small ventilator, less money and less power. I have one intake at top with G4 filter and one outake, with large G4 filter, at opposit bottom. outake is more powerful than intake so room is in depression, dust moved to outake and are not spread in room. I change all room volume each minute.

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4 words…use epoxy…problem solved

 

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Soon as I saw that Charlie had posted;  I knew what his reply was.   And yes if there is concern, Epoxy is the answer.

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Umm, two things. 

First, your safety in terms of gassing yourself. The 3M mask, with the right filters, should do the trick for that. You want organic vapor filters, if you can smell resin inside the mask either the mask fit is wrong, the filters are wrong or it’s time for new filters. 

Next, safety in terms of blowing yourself up, Either an explosive mixture of fumes and air or an explosive mixture of dust and air. Fumes you know about, dust explosions can make on hell of a bang, Flour mills in the US Midwest used to be famous for it, great big masonry buildings flattened. Impressive pictures. Not so much fun for the people working inside.

All it needs is the right mixture and a spark, Like for instance your exhaust fan. That mixture passing through it, and it’s electrical, there you go. Boom.

But there’s a way to fix that, cheap and easy. Turn your fan around. put it on the outside and make it an intake fan, blowing air in and blowing the fumes and dust out the other end instead of sucking the mix through it. The fan only handles clean and hopefully non explosive air. Use something like a heating furnace filter if you’re worried about blowing dust and debris into your shed, a collector box similar if you;re worried about spreading dust outside. In order to avoid breezes in the shed? Make a baffle or two. 

hope that’s of use

doc…

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Doc,  What you stated in your first paragraph regarding masks is a rule of thumb that laminators, spray men etc. use and have used for years.  The trick is to realize your filters are saturated before you get too high to realize;  your filters are saturated.   If you can smell it, change 'em.

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Right?  I learned that spraypainting the inside of a walk-in cooler with something called Galvi-grip paint, back when. Lots of nifty things in that stuff. Wheeeee.

There were masks on the market but they didn’t give me one, what they’d do is pull me out to wander around the parking lot until my head cleared. Permanent brain damage, eminently possible. 

Which may explain a lot about me… 

Now, you and I know these rules of thmb, but we’ve been around a while. Never a bad idea to put this out again. 

Something I mentioned but didn’t go into- mask fit and how they seal. Masks come in different sizes and having the right one with seals in good shape is important. As in if it’s the wrong size or the seals don’t work, it’'s just hot and itchy. 

Take off your filter(s) and put some masking tape  on to seal up the intake. Put it on your face without using the straps and inhale- the seal and suction should be enough to hold it there. If not, it’s time to go mask shopping

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@ Doc,

Very sound advice.      Smart, too.

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Hi Bill, 

Thanks to you and McDing for the kind words. Just trying to pass on the distillation of a lifetime of mistakes. 

Now, a little bit more on masks. And you know when I say ‘a little’, well, I really don’t mean it. 

Right now, unsurprisingly, you can’t get one for love nor money. The reasons are rather obvious.

But strange and coincidental as it seems,this last winter I was looking at a large fiberglass repair job coming up on the inside of a boat, Ripping out the floors up forward, replacing them and the framing, glassing it all together using fiberglass I beams and a black foam sheets with a layer of glass fibers impregnated in it. Mat and more mat on top. 

Cutting, grinding and glassing, with fumes, fibers and dust. All in a very enclosed space. Yecch. We had been using ( we redid the main deck in the winter of 2018-2019) half-masks, with the vapor cartridges and all. 

But the dust, gets in your eyes, on your skin, ground fibers make what may be the best itch powder going and I don’t want to know what that does to your corneas. 

Now, for no good reason, I get the woot.com daily email ad. And January 25th or so of this year, what do they have on sale and heavily discounted but the 3M #6900 full face mask, In my size ( large, just call me fathead, other sizes are #6X00 with X depending on size)

No filter cartridges come with it, actually good as you want to get the exact right ones for what you are working with. Sixty bucks plus tax for the facepiece, which is the technical term. 

I jumped on it, turned my nephew onto them too- it’s his boat, he’s going to be helping. They used to ( then, seems like another age) go for around $120-150. Full faceplate, etc, etc. 

Y’know, I take it back, that was the good reason for getting the woot.com email ads. Paid off, it did.

It came with, and you could and should get more of, clear protectors for the faceplate, protects against scratches and scrapes and overspray and spills, cheap. They stick on as much by static as anything else, very easy to change. 

Excellent seal - when you can plug the intakes, take a deep breath and it stays on, it’s a good seal. When you have a heavy full General Grant beard like I do and it stays on, you’re on to something really good.

3M has a family of filters, air supplies ( really, an air pump setup) and more that fit this and the 7000 seies they make. North/Norton/Honeytwell make something similar that’s good, plus there’s lots of copies. I’d go with a brand and model you can get filters for and ideally quite a variety of filters for, which may take some of the knockoffs off the table. 

Now, I’m telling you all this and right now the information is useless. The masks are sold out ( I should have picked up a couple extras ) and the factories that make them are running extra shifts supplying the medics, as they should be. But they’ll be back 

https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/company-us/all-3m-products/~/3M-Full-Facepiece-Reusable-Respirator-6900-Large-4-EA-Case/?N=5002385+8709322+8711405+3294780254&preselect=8720539+8720550+8720784&rt=rud - see the page for more on filters, face shield covers and so on. Keep yours in a great big zip-lock bag when not in use, makes a good way to keep it together with extra filters, faceplate covers and so on. 

Oh, we never did that deck on the boat. Just as well. But ( long story) I have a motorcycle to paint…

doc…

 

 

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i am mostly an low voc epoxy guy working in a ventilate place so don’t need mask for resin work according to all epoxy resin formulator, most danger come from sanding even if i use for 80+% a vacuum sander. i buy full face mask, 1 moldex M size, too big for me, 1 3m small size, too small… After 1 hour working with you only want to put them out. Now i use a filtered ventilate cap, can wear it all day even more when it’s hot

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Mat, that is a neat looking mask-hat-safety thing.

I was also worried about this same topic when we starting glassing with poly resin. It was a low VOC blend but still stunk like catalyzed resins do.

The room I used was small and unheated and attached to the house so I was looking at both heat and fresh air. I also did not want to run solvent-filled air through a fan not rated for sparking. I got thinking about pushing air and heat exchangers and then realized the room was too small anyways. All of this helped me to go over to the ‘dark side’ of epoxy.

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Except for finishing layers where it can be tricky, modern 2:1 no (ultra low) VOC and blush free epoxy are easy to work with simple precautions : ventilate low humidity mid temp room and a bit of accurency for mix. Remember 25 years before, epoxy where much “funky” to use…

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I’ll speak up from a respirator background acquired while I was (for 15 years) EPA-certified to write specifications for asbestos abatement jobs.

A half mask, cartridge filter, negative pressure respirator covering nose, mouth and chin (the most common type) has a protection factor of 5, meaning the concentration inside the mask (the stuff you breathe) has 1/5 the concentration of “free” air outside.  Thus, 20% of whatever can still get into your lungs.

A full face, cartridge, negative pressure respirator, which has a PF of 50.

A respirator fed by an external fan that is located outside the exposure area, thus pushing positive pressure clean air into the respirator, is even better.  A full face powered air purifying respirator (PAPR) has a protection factor of 1,000, so very little “stuff” gets through.

BUT… 1) your gotta wear the respirator, which requires comfort and light weight; 2) it has to fit, so professional users will do a three-second fit test each time they put it on; 3) you can’t have any scrub or beard which would interfere with the seal to your face; 4) in commercial asbestos work you have to be medically certified to wear your own personally issued respirator.  How many backyard glassers ever did any of that?  I certainly didn’t.  Further, your health depends on how toxic is the chemical you’re trying to protect yourself against.  I’m not going into the Permissible Exposure Limit or PEL, which is specified by OSHA.

Although advice above to the effect that you should change your filters when you can smell the stuff, this goes OUT THE WINDOW when highly toxic chemicals are involved.  In some cases it you can smell it, you’re already dying.  This is supposedly true for those using some modern auto finishes.  Respirator use also ignore skin exposure… and that acetone has quite the ability to mobilize other chemicals right through your skin.  It’s much safer to keep stuff off your hands/arms/feet than it will ever be to clean it up later.  Common latex or nitrile gloves are permeable to styrene…

Protect yourselves as well as you can afford, guys.  I’m sure many of us have met painters who are more than a little wierd, but they are a dying breed, pun intended.

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Hey Doc, thanks for the insight… this mask looks great. So let’s say I’m fortunate enough to get my hands on one of those and I set it up with the proper filters, how safe do you rate my laminating situation as was previously described in the creation of this thread?

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Hey, SC,

Umm- a few things. 

First off, nothing is perfectly safe. There’s risks involved in anything you do, from getting out of bed in the morning onwards. I mean, eating a banana: it contains potassium, and some of that potassium is an isotope  that apparently can cause cancer. As is found in pretty much all potassium, by the way. Eating steaks, smoking, hey, I just got me a motorcycle. All have risks. 

How you deal with these risks, relatively speaking, what you trade off, that’s the thing. I’ve given you a few suggestions to cut down on the risk of fire, explosion and exposure to nasty stuff. Those will make you safe-er, not 100% nothing will happen to ya. But you can improve the odds.

What you can get and how difficult that is to get, what you can afford or want to pay for, what mobility and visibility restrictions the setup puts on you, whole series of choices. 

For instance- motorcycle safety. I have been thinking about this quite a lot of late. You can maintain the bike well, or not. You can maintain it so well and constantly that it’s never ridable, something is always apart for upgrades or maintainence. Or run it as a ratbag, brakes might work, they might not, throttle might stick wide open, engine might seize. 

You can get one of those ‘helmets’ that’s essentially a dinky unlined plastic bowl, tool around in shorts and flip flops at high speed like you want to race GP*. Zero protection. Or you spring for a high end Arai**, an armored leather jacket,  good boots, good gloves, good pants and tool around gently enjoying the breeze. Or somewhere in the middle.   

How safe is your shop setup?  Relative to what? Compared to some high end shops now with the worker safety people watching them? Maybe not so much. Compared to some of the setups we worked in 10-20-40-60 years back? Pretty good. Some long-time glassers and painters and the like are pretty damaged, if they’re still alive.

Like I said, I’ve given you a few suggestions. I don’t have the knowledge to quantify it, give you relative risks with data. And that’s important. Let me commend to you Honolulu’s excellent post, he has training I most definitely lack and his knowledge, experience and opinions are a helluva long way ahead of mine- hoping he writes more, as I want to learn.

  • GP motorcycle racers and other elite bike racers - their race suits are ( last I checked) made of Kevlar and carbon and kangaroo hide, with titanium armor here and there, they even have airbags, really oh truly oh airbags in the things. Best helmets, boots and gloves available at any cost.  And even then a few GP racers die every year on racetracks set up to improve survivability, padded barriers and so on. The Isle of Man TT and similar races in Ireland, on regular roads with stone walls on the sides ? Yeesh. The idiots out on regular roads in shorts and flip flops going 100 mph in heavy traffic are Darwinian selection in action.

** The old guy in the expensive, best-you-can-get brand helmet, armored jacket and so on, uses the bike on low traffic roads and nice days? That’s me. I’m not really sure how I have lived this long, but I know quite a few that haven’t. I kinda like this ‘being alive, not crippled’ stuff.  Motorcycles are inherently more dangerous than cars, too. I’m not gonna go with the GP suit though. Tradeoffs.

Hope that makes sense and is of some use

doc…

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Hey Doc, thanks for following up… your response actually helped me better understand Honolulu’s post if that makes any sense… although I appreciate everyone’s input, some people’s responses are too dense with only semi-relevant information based off my question… also a lot of divergence to sift through. 

 

im stoked on the opportunity to learn from you guys who have a wealth of knowledge in these areas because where I’m from (Miami,FL) there aren’t any surfboard builders… sure, there are a thousand and one fiberglass guys (boats etc.) but my questions are often more detailed towards the craft of board building  so that’s why I value this site so much.

 

Hey anyway I am going to take some of the suggestions I’ve read here and apply them to my workspace to hopefully reduce the risks associated with surfboard building. Thanks again all.