Health and Safety on your Blacksmithing Course or Experience

Important – we want to ensure your safety and enjoyment; please take the time to read this carefully:

**Please ensure you have thoroughly read everything below, including your clothing and footwear requirements for the day(s)**

Emergency Contact

Clothing & Safety Footwear

Please wear close-fitting, non-flammable, old/unimportant clothing (denim jeans and non-loose cotton T-shirts or work shirts are typical). Long hair should be tied back and any jewellery that could get caught removed. Synthetic sportswear is NOT suitable. Our course area is covered, but is open sided so ultimately outside - please dress appropriately to the temperature (do contact us if you have any queries relating to this.)

We provide a protective leather apron, safety glasses or over-specs (to fit over spectacles where necessary), leather gloves, and paper masks and earplugs if required. In cold weather, whilst the teaching area is covered, it is essentially outside, so do wear several cotton layers to ensure you don’t get cold.

For Health and Safety reasons, in consultation with our tutors and our insurers, we require all students to wear safety boots with steel toecaps; we want to ensure your safety and comfort, and it is also necessary for insurance purposes to demonstrate that we have taken every reasonable measure to protect you from all perceived risks.

Steel toe capped Wellingtons are NOT suitable, as the rubber can melt. Rigger boots are not ideal (small hot pieces of metal or fuel could drop down into the top of the boot, although by wearing loose jeans, etc., these can be pulled over the top of the Rigger boots to prevent this).

Nobody on our courses over the last 26 years - over 1300 students - has ever suffered a foot injury.

Because of the difficulty of holding a sufficient range of sizes to suit everyone, and the obvious hygiene drawbacks of shared footwear, we ask students to provide their own boots – ideal for gardening afterwards. These are readily available online at a very reasonable cost – Toolstation, Screwfix, etc.

General Workshop Safety Considerations

Please ensure you read the following very carefully:

During the course you will be working at an open fire, handling hot metal, and using some sharp and some quite heavy tools, so care and attention is needed. As stated on our main course booking description: “Students are expected to take responsibility for their own safety, and to consider the safety of other students at all times during the course.” Your tutor will give you instructions about working safely in general at the outset of the course, and will remind you about particular hazards associated with particular blacksmithing operations at the appropriate times during the course.

The most important of these instructions are:

• Wear your safety spectacles at all times while in the working area – coke, hot slag, and pieces of metal can fly out at high speed, and you only have one pair of eyes!

• Don’t grasp any workpiece or tool without checking whether it is hot – even iron that looks cold to the eye can be hot enough to burn you. Hold the back of your curled-up fingers near the object you are going to pick up, but not touching it, for a moment – if it’s hot you will feel the warmth safely.

• If you do get burnt, plunge the hand or affected part into the clean cold water provided (polished silver metal bucket) immediately and keep it there, and call for help – this container of clean cold water is kept close by for this purpose only; there is a burns first aid kit, and your tutor will apply any first aid required or seek further assistance.

(No student of ours has suffered more than a very minor burn to the fingers in 25 years of our running these courses – please don’t spoil this record!)

• If you notice sore places developing on your hammer hand (very common), cover these immediately with the fabric Elastoplast patches provided, before they develop into painful friction blisters. Just mention it to your tutor and they will assist. It is really common for this to occur early on the first day and popping a fabric plaster on it nice and early, stops the friction and prevents the area becoming painful later.

• Be aware of people working close to you, and don’t swing around a possibly hot, sharp or heavy workpiece in a way that might impact on your neighbour.

• Do not leave any pieces of metal lying on the floor that could constitute a rolling, trip or burning (if the metal is hot) hazard.

• Be aware of sharp tools, in particular the cut-off chisel (‘Hardie’) that fits into the hole in the anvil with the sharp edge pointing upwards; treat these with care and attention and put them away as soon as you have finished using them. Don’t walk into the anvil point!

• Please do not touch anything in the main forge workshop next to the teaching area.

• Students are not permitted to touch or use any electric power tools, machinery or oxyacetylene heating torches unless on the explicit instructions and under the direct supervision of a tutor, and after induction and confirmation of understanding the hazards and safe working practices.

• Smoking is not permitted on any part of our site other than the designated smoking area. If you wish to smoke, speak to your tutor and they will advise.

• DON’T hold back from asking for help or expressing concern – we take Health & Safety very seriously and want it to be ’real’ rather than ‘token’. If you hurt yourself or have any worries, tell us confidently and immediately and we will help.

• FIRE – Ironically, fire is unlikely to be a hazard in the conventional sense because workshops are single storey covered areas without significant timber or flammable materials. However, in the event of a building fire, shout ‘FIRE’, notify your tutor and leave the area immediately to assemble by the old well opposite the gallery entrance in the car park, next to the gate to the old house.

Covid-19

COVID: We still ask that you do not attend if you have symptoms of COVID-19 or a positive test result. If you test positive AFTER your course, please let us know so that we can take precautions and also inform any other attendees so that they can do the same.

Our course area is covered, but ultimately outside. You are not required to wear a mask, but please do wear on if you wish.

Our insurance details are displayed at our premises or available upon request.

Lucy Quinnell & Tom Quinnell - Safety Representatives - The Quinnell School of Blacksmithing, Fire & Iron Limited & Richard Quinnell Limited