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Old 2009-05-22, 9:02am
NMLinda NMLinda is offline
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Join Date: Nov 21, 2008
Location: Herndon, VA
Posts: 867
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Desa - I'm impressed that you and your mother installed your vent system yourselves! What's also wonderful is that, wisely, you installed a system. I've seen studio posts with no ventilation whatsoever.

I'm so sorry to disappoint you, however, but I think your current system is way underpowered for what you're doing, especially given your 'event'. I'd bet you're not getting anywhere near even 300 cfm actual protection, mostly because of the flex. I once tried making a small, barley box style vent hood with a 250 cfm Home Depot kitchen fan. I used 7" diameter flexible ducting, and only had to go 2.5' to 3' to vent it outside. Figured, how bad can that be? Even with that large a duct and such a short run, the flexible duct loaded the fan so badly that it could barely turn on. I ended up having to throw the whole mess out. To make yours work at least to standard venting code, you'd have to lower it to no more than about 12" off your work bench, add sides and a back, and replace the flex with smooth-walled ducting (easy to do, actually, the sections just push together and can then be taped). Given how tall or short you are, that may or may not be a convenient working height.

If it's not, and given that you and your mom have a handy streak, you can make a far, far better one, perhaps for not much more than you paid for your current hood. Here's a link to some great info that can walk you through how to do it:

http://mikeaurelius.wordpress.com/ventilation-primer/

There's really good info in Safety and Studio, too, and lots of other great info on the Art Glass Answers board. Please feel free to PM me, too, if you have more questions.

If you'd prefer to install a better, but pre-made hood, Dale M posted a link to a kitchen vent hood with 900 cfm - only kitchen hood I've seen with enough oomph to support what most of us like to do. You might PM him and ask him if he still has the link handy. He has some great posts on Art Glass Answers that are well worth reading, also.

In the meantime, you might want to very seriously consider wearing a protective mask, like a 3M P100 or N100. These are relatively inexpensive. Even folks with excellent ventillation will wear these when fuming (or working with fine powders like enamels or frit). Your experience suggests that keys may sometimes have a thick coating, and you may inadvertently be 'fuming' if you can't get it off first.

You'll also want to do your own research, of course, to be sure you're sufficiently protected, whether it's a better vent system, mask, combination or something in addition.

My appologies to everyone for going off-topic a bit. A number of wonderful folks on LE have shared their health concerns from insufficient ventilation and heavy metal poisoning. I felt Sue asked a great question on her companion thread about working with keys safely and that Desa's experience with the 'flaming key' was valuable. Since there are entire industries that work with metals at high temperatures, I'm sure there are other safety practices that can be adapted to minimize health concerns when working more unique items like keys. Swamper seemed to be thinking along those lines in her post about her investigations into removing coatings. There might be other great cross-industry ideas (like using Dawn or lemon juice/baking soda) for cleaning keys, too.

Linda
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