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Author: Laura_Brito, Contributing Editor
| These little containers do not melt with heat, and they keep my enamels, pixie dust, goldstone frit, frits, reduction frits and milliflori clean of the dust and dead bugs that seem to end up in my studio.
There are a lot of ways people like to use enamels. Some like to "Sift" the Enamels onto the object to cover it. Unless you have a very good setup, I would not recommend this for the average beadmaker. You need to have very good ventilation plus you MUST use a Respirator with sufficent NS rating - NS97 is the proper one to wear when using Enamels. You cannot get by with just ONE of these items, you must have the combination of great Ventilation and Respirator. Your store bought Particle Mask will not filter out these tiny particles. I purchased mine at my Welding Store. It looks like a Regular Particle Mask but it has a round plastic filter on the front and the strap has the correct rating on it. Below you can see what this looks like. |
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| You can also use a Cartridge Respirator (pictured above). The drawback of these is that they are more expensive, you have to change the Cartridges when they don't work anymore (air won't go through them and it makes it hard to breathe), and they are very HOT! We already get pretty hot sometimes by being in front of a torch and this just makes it harder to get used to using the proper equipment. I recommend the one that looks like a Particle Mask , since it is light weight and not as HOT! |
| Ventiliation
This is another important aspect of Enamel Work. Ventilation needs to be adequate, if not better than adequate! A lot of people get the idea that an open window is enough ventilation. It isn't! You might get some fresh air and it might help take out fumes, but it really never does a good enough job so you can be safe. Your health is very important! Too many of us do not take this seriously. Please read the article that I wrote about Ventilation Ventilation needs to be tested to be sure it is adequate. You should have some kind of ductwork and a motor that sucks out the dust, particles, and fumes from the immediate area of the torch and your face. If you do not have, at the very least, the proper ventilation and respirator, I would not recommend that you use Enamels. It is not worth the impact that this can have on your health. It is better to be obsessive about safety and your health than to be sorry later on. |
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