A Safety Tip

I found out tonight that it is NOT a good idea to let crud accu­mu­late under one’s torch table. My table is a con­verted util­ity shelv­ing unit, with a par­ti­cle board shelf on the bot­tom to hold my oxy­con and act as a footrest. There is about a one-​inch gap between the bot­tom of the metal sup­port and the floor.

Tonight I burned through a man­drel as I was mak­ing a bead. The hot bead dropped onto the table, then bounced down onto the floor and UNDER the table through that one-​inch gap. Did I men­tion that the bead was HOT as in GLOWING??? Well, need­less to say, the accu­mu­lated crud under the table decided to flare up. So I had the begin­nings of a lit­tle flamb? going there in that lit­tle one-​inch space.? For­tu­nately I was able to get the smoul­der­ing crud out and dunk it in the water before it could catch any­thing major on fire.? Yikes!!

I WILL be putting some kind of “skirt” piece there to block the gap so that hot glow­ing glass pieces won’t be rolling and bounc­ing under the table to catch stuff on fire any more!