Turning galvanized bolts?

[Janger]

lets not get to dramatic here....argon will kill you faster than zinc fumes

high exposure for long periods of time will eventually have lasting health impacts, not many people escape working in a hot dip plant without health problems in the long term, but no one is dropping dead on the shop floor either

moral of the story, avoid zinc fumes, but a days exposure is just going to give you a nasty case of zinc chills (metal fume feaver) for the evening, so use ventilation, a respirator and drink a quart if milk if your going to be exposed to the fumes or a lot of particulate in the air that day (typically grinding), this has been studied, occupational health has daily exposure limits and they are not 0

Hey Ryan,
I use argon for tig welding - I’m just a casual hobbyist so I don’t know about this. Looking up argon on Wikipedia it’s a noble gas does not react with hardly anything - so non toxic. At least that is Wikipedia. How is argon a risk? I assumed it was pretty safe. Wiki did mention you can’t breathe it - perhaps obviously it’s not oxygen. Can you tell us more? Or is that the risk?

 

[PaulL]

To grossly simplify: Any inert gas can be a problem - your breathing reflex isn't from lack of oxygen, but from a surplus of CO2 in your bloodstream. If you're not processing oxygen you aren't adding CO2 buildup and so have no breathing reflex. So the inert gas drops the partial pressure of O2 in the air, and you have no way to know until someone finds you passed out or worse.

 

[Dabbler]

For my 2 cents worth (is that a thing any more - no pennies in Canada...)

Zinc can be removed using muriatic acid to get the bulk of it off. Ventilated or outdoors, etc. Normal acid handling rules apply... rinse well, repeat.

 

[Tom Kitta]

To grossly simplify: Any inert gas can be a problem - your breathing reflex isn't from lack of oxygen, but from a surplus of CO2 in your bloodstream. If you're not processing oxygen you aren't adding CO2 buildup and so have no breathing reflex. So the inert gas drops the partial pressure of O2 in the air, and you have no way to know until someone finds you passed out or worse.

As a mountaineer yes, primary system is based on C02. But there is a backup system for luck of oxygen. Unfortunately the backup kicks in rather late.

So adding inert gas to the atmosphere and displacing oxygen is same as climbing up a mountain. Rate here is important, certainly ascending immediately to say 6000m could cause one to pass out - same as suddenly releasing a lot of nitrogen in a room.

Your body will try to "cope" with the issue and will detect low oxygen but it may not be able to handle suddenly low oxygen.

If you released nitrogen at controlled rate - say over a week and displaced half of oxygen with it your body would adopt (or at least mine would) I may have some sleeping disorder or similar but otherwise I be fine.

 

[Former Member]

As a mountaineer yes, primary system is based on C02. But there is a backup system for luck of oxygen. Unfortunately the backup kicks in rather late.

So adding inert gas to the atmosphere and displacing oxygen is same as climbing up a mountain. Rate here is important, certainly ascending immediately to say 6000m could cause one to pass out - same as suddenly releasing a lot of nitrogen in a room.

Your body will try to "cope" with the issue and will detect low oxygen but it may not be able to handle suddenly low oxygen.

If you released nitrogen at controlled rate - say over a week and displaced half of oxygen with it your body would adopt (or at least mine would) I may have some sleeping disorder or similar but otherwise I be fine.

Dangerous games to play unless you been trained.

 

[phaxtris]

Hey Ryan,
I use argon for tig welding - I’m just a casual hobbyist so I don’t know about this. Looking up argon on Wikipedia it’s a noble gas does not react with hardly anything - so non toxic. At least that is Wikipedia. How is argon a risk? I assumed it was pretty safe. Wiki did mention you can’t breathe it - perhaps obviously it’s not oxygen. Can you tell us more? Or is that the risk?

Asphyxiation, argon is heavier than air and will displace oxygen in a low lying area, including in your lungs, it's only a real risk in a confined space situation....but so is any other gas that's not air then

You don't have to worry, I was trying to illustrate a point of how dramatic that comment was

EDIT: I should add this because I didnt at first consider quite a few guys here work out of basements....if your basement does not have a ground level walk out it could fall into the category of a restricted or confined space, doing a ton of gas welding down there without a way of exhausting the shielding gas isn't a great idea......

CAUTION...STORY TIME

they tell a story in confined space courses of a half a family in rural Canada who was killed in the root cellar in thier own basement.... vegetable's rotted releasing whattever gas, displacing the o2 to a point the kid goes down passes out from asphyxiation, dad (or Mom I don't remember), goes to check passes out.. etc, everyone who went down dies from asphyxiation

Now I don't know what level of embellishment is in the story, but I have heard it several times (tickets expire...you have to pay to take the course again...), Maybe it's all bs and it's used to illustrate that dangers related to a confined space are not limited to work, I don't know

Just something to be aware of for the basement shop guys

 

[RobinHood]

@phaxtris , your story is not BS at all. It is very real. Here is a safety letter from Ontario Farm Safety regarding gases in silos. (Root cellars can have the same fermentation process happening).

https://ofa.on.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/silo_gas_dangers.pdf

I grew up in Switzerland. We lived in an old farmhouse (it was 320+ years old when I was little - that is it’s documented age; there is good evidence [undocumented] that it was much older though; still standing today, btw.) with a root cellar. As a precaution Grampa would light a candle lamp outside of the door before going in. We’d hold it low to the floor and if it went out, we got out of there right away. Left the door open for a bit to aid in ventilation and tried again later. This was common practice with all the houses that had root cellars in our area (and probably beyond).

The walls were about 3 feet thick made from river rock piled up with some sort of clay mortar. The floor was just clay. Ax hewn oak beams served as floor support for the living quarters above.

We had all kinds of veggies down there buried in damp sand. Lasted all winter and well into the new year. It also housed all our meats and moonshine (yes, we did have a liquor licence to make our own brandy and kirsch). No fridge or freezer until well into the ‘70s.

 

[DPittman]

Pictures Don? What does this look like?

The first four bolts are all titanium but the first two are the more common matte finish in the bolts I have, the second two are shinier but obviously a different finish. The last bolt is not a titanium bolt and has yet another finish.

 

[phaxtris]

@phaxtris , your story is not BS at all. It is very real. Here is a safety letter from Ontario Farm Safety regarding gases in silos. (Root cellars can have the same fermentation process happening).

https://ofa.on.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/silo_gas_dangers.pdf

Right on, I never doubted that it was a possibility, I was just never really sure if the details were correct, like mabye the story is actually from Germany and it was a farm hand that went down and the details had just been changed around to make it seem more relevant to the course, like if the course was in the us it would be a us family, or Mexico it would be a Mexican family...etc

Because everyone knows if It happens somewhere else it doesn't happen here right

Now I'm sure you all realize I'm joking, but these courses are full of all sorts...including the sorts that would think that

Anyways good to see some backup on that

 

[PaulL]

Here is Worksafe BC's confined spaces training material - short and to the point: http://www.worksafebcmedia.com/media/WebBooks/confinedSpaces/index.html#/

 

[phaxtris]

Here is Worksafe BC's confined spaces training material - short and to the point: http://www.worksafebcmedia.com/media/WebBooks/confinedSpaces/index.html#/

Surprisingly that is far less stringent than the requirements for a confined space in Alberta, and definitely less stringent than what is applied on jobsites, especially any kind of plant, maybe that has to do with all the oilfield related work here...all of the over the top safety protocols adopted in the oil field seem to trickel into everything else here......except residential construction, that's a free for all

 

[Former Member]

@phaxtris the issue with worker safety and that of hobbist safety is training, experience and exposure.

Point being is that the worker with lots more exposure can take higher risk because they should know and be trained to mitigate the risks involved.

Hobbists or general public have some or no understanding or formal training in these same risks. So keeping it simple in terms of good, bad, really bad or fatal when making comments drives the point home.

Someone experienced and trained as you sees this as over simplification as you know the exact risks and precautions.

Again remember the KISS principal for the limited experienced. The rest will ask for clarification as they understand there is more to it.

 

[Tecnico]

Re: Confined Space, I heard the same story as @phaxtris but the setting was actually industrial. That was in a training session.

WRT the cad plated AN/NAS hardware, the fifth bolt looks like an AN or NAS bolt. You should be able to ID the exact specification (materials/dimensions/MFR ID/strength/torque etc.) of all your aircraft fasteners using a guide like this: Aircraft Hardware Guide

D

 

[CalgaryPT]

Ya, if I go by what everyone else is afraid of, I died 40 years ago.

Now that's a epitaph.

 

[Johnwa]

CAUTION...STORY TIME

they tell a story in confined space courses of a half a family in rural Canada who was killed in the root cellar in thier own basement.... vegetable's rotted releasing whattever gas, displacing the o2 to a point the kid goes down passes out from asphyxiation, dad (or Mom I don't remember), goes to check passes out.. etc, everyone who went down dies from asphyxiation

Now I don't know what level of embellishment is in the story, but I have heard it several times (tickets expire...you have to pay to take the course again...), Maybe it's all bs and it's used to illustrate that dangers related to a confined space are not limited to work, I don't know

Just something to be aware of for the basement shop guys

 

[Johnwa]

In 1999 a couple of teenagers died from root cellar asphyxiation.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/alberta-teenagers-die-in-root-cellar-tragedy-1.196408

 

[johnnielsen]

A friend of mine was the tig welding specialist in a large fabrication shop (Wemas Industries) for 40 years developed some sort of immune/metabolic disorder that was never diagnosed by his doctors. Two years later, he came back to work after losing 100 pounds (gained most back). The common belief in the shop was that it occurred due to the argon/welding fumes from welding aluminum, bronze, titanium, copper etc.
When it comes to welding, better safe than sorry.

 

[johnnielsen]

I used to stick weld 300 to 500 pounds of 308L Stainless rod a year. I learned very quickly to have fans placed so the smoke went out the overhead door otherwise I paid the price.