Lets have a safety discussion.

Surely each of us, weather or not we are educators remember an excellent safety lesson. Let's share some of them.

If any generalization can be made about us <welders> its that we tell good stories. Stories are effective training aids, evoking a sense of caution in the most experienced journeyman or the greenest apprentice. Does your institution use storytelling as an effective training device? On film?

So how is Safety communicated in your Classroom/Shop/Site? Does your Company/School provide initial or recurrent training? Do they employ videos or CDs? Which have you found to be effective? ANSI/AWS Z49.1 is a wonderful comprehensive document as is Safe Practices, AWS Welding Handbook Volume 1, Eighth Edition but how many craftsmen are familiar with them?

There is lots of training media out there. Why don't we share what we think is best as well as rating it. Sharing also availability and access information related to training materials we judge to be excellent.

I would also like to get input from anybody and everybody who uses or views teaching media on several subjects. My present concern is focused upon recurrent training for Journeyman TIG welders and high temp silver brazers. As you might imagine it can be difficult to come up with media to capture the attention of experts. However I would be interested in Video, CD or any other type of training material that has significant time devoted to the more advanced aspects of any of the following.

Shop Safety focused on TIG

Aluminum and Magnesium TIG repair of Castings.

Titanium TIG manual welding, including *up to date* information on surface prep, residual color/Alpha case, argon backup and shielding.

High Temp manual Oxy-Fuel Silverbrazing (Black flux hand wire fill)

Pneumatic hand tool safety focused on small die grinders, pencil grinders, or any surface prep tools, carbide burrs or mandrels which run at RPM between 20,000 and 80,000.

Since I know I'm asking a lot, I'll throw you all a bone from the start.

Here is a link to the Oklahoma State online library its Great!
http://www.pp.okstate.edu/ehs/links/welding.htm

A Gold mine! Over 150 PowerPoint Safety presentations, courtesy of the University of Vermont.
http://siri.uvm.edu/ftp/ppt/powerpt.html

Last but not least, since you will all be spending the next few minutes hunched over your keyboards typing witty replies, the following ergonomics presentation from the university of Virginia. I'm sure you will find it enjoyable.
http://keats.admin.virginia.edu/ergo/stretch.html

Our host Webmasters have not taken to heart the wise suggestion somebody made to begin a safety folder so I guess we will have to just take it upon ourselves to press on and begin such an endeavor right here eh? Education surely is next best place to put this stuff.




Lawrence Bower
Education Development
United Airlines