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No one likes to have safety issues shoved down their throats, and model engineers are no exception.

With the ‘nanny state’ taking over, trying to protect everyone from themselves, it has become a dirty word. Especially since Bob the Barrister and Lawyer Leech have come onto the scene. Break a fingernail while in someone else’s place, and it will be assumed someone is to blame, and you can get squillions of squids by suing them.

I am not on about that type of safety, but the one where you go into your ‘workshop’, and you come out in the same physical and mental condition as you went in.

I will assume that most of you have seen at your place of work, a copy of the Health and Safety at work act. A 3×2 poster, covered in very small lettering, and totally ignored by everyone.

If you took the time to read and understand it, it can be a bit of an eye opener. People think it is just saying that your employer has to keep you safe. But there is a little more to it than that, and I will try to condense it down into a very easily understood form, leaving out all the legal jargon.

Your employer is under a legal obligation to keep you safe while you are working for him/her in your place of work, and if you are injured whilst carrying out your work, he/she can be prosecuted for not keeping you safe and unharmed.

Now comes the bit that most people never get to.

Because you were harmed at work, you also are liable for the full weight of the law to drop on your head, if you were in any way, found to be responsible for allowing yourself to be hurt because safety measures were not followed.

This is where my thoughts on safety come into it.

You can go onto the web and get information on all the things you shouldn’t do when in your shop, and I won’t be listing them all out, but when I get into showing how to do things, I might raise a pointer or two on anything that might be a safety issue.

But I will tell you about the most important thing in keeping you safe, COMMON SENSE. If you ain’t got any, you shouldn’t be reading this website, and you should take up knitting instead.

So, if what you are doing in your shop looks unsafe or even if you ‘feel’ it is unsafe, THEN DON’T DO IT.

A machine has no feelings, it will be just as happy cutting thru your flesh and bone as it is machining metal. On the web you can find all sorts of pictures where people have been turned into the ingredients of a burger, or had a haircut without using scissors.

Don’t assume that it always happens to someone else, next time that someone else could be you!!

I use a few basic rules in my shop

• I always wear glasses, and the prescription ones I have, I bought the largest frames possible, and I have reinforced lenses fitted into them. Prescription safety glasses are reasonable cheap to buy (around 70 squid), and any optician should be able to make up a set for you from your own prescription. If you don’t wear prescription glasses, you should get used to always putting on normal safety glasses as you enter your shop. Eyes are very difficult to grow back again, as are bodily extremities.

• I try never to handle raw swarf with bare hands. It can have cutting edges like razor blades, and if cutting many of the brass family, can be sharper than any syringe you have encountered. The modern day safety gloves are easy to wear, and you can handle small items with them, unlike the old fashioned leather gauntlets of years ago.
• I very rarely wear shirts that have the sleeves coming past the elbows, or any sort of jewellery and watches. I find I would prefer to have small hot swarf burns on my arms, rather than having no arms at all. It is all too easy for a loose cuff to get snagged onto a turning chuck or cutter.

So, to put it bluntly, use it, don’t lose it, your head that is.

You are the only one responsible for your safety in your home shop.

Also be very aware, if you do have a bad accident, it could be hours, days or even weeks before they find you. So if possible, ask a loved one or a friend to call in occasionally, just to check you are still in one piece, and I mean that literally.

Maybe get a cheap intercom system; it can work to your advantage. Get her indoors well trained, she calls to see if you are OK, you reply with OK, and bye the way, ‘any chance of a cup of coffee’.

Let’s keep it safe out there.