Hi, all

I’ve been looking around at lots of different methods advocated for finishing guitars, mainly focussed around stuff that we can do in a fairly standard house/garage setup without a dedicated ‘workshop’.

DingoTone and TruOil have been the likely items we’ll continue to use, but I’ve been looking at a few things like Feast Watson Wipe-On Poly and others, and found that a little checking on the safety info for some of these chemical products ends up with some serious concerns in terms of safety.

I’m bring8ng this up because I’m investigating Sanding Sealer, and again it’s a pretty nasty product (or at least, the version I looked at is).

Most safety sheets for the products basically turn your work area into a likely Zone 1 hazardous area (at best Zone 2, but that’s unlikely given that Zone 2 typically involves open areas such as petrol bowsers), and your lights, power, switches and tools need to be iEC Ex rated equipment (which is some serious outlay in terms of finances).

Additionally, I see heaps of videos with people using these products in what appear to be fairly run-of-the-mill man-caves, workshops and sheds, and most often with no gloves, eye-protection or breathing protection. Very now and then I’ll see some veteran of dozens of very informative and authoritative videos get called out in their comments section with someone saying “that xxxx is pretty nasty stuff. Shouldn’t you be using gloves/respirator/etc.?” And they’ll respond “good pickup”, but meanwhile there’s a bunch of newbies like myself potentially getting some advice that misses some serious safety tips.

Am I being overly concerned, or is there a real issue in the safety aspect of a lot of the instructional videos out there? Are many of these workshops a time-bomb waiting to go off?

Another interesting point is that I got both Leonardo Lospennato’s books on building and designing guitars (awesome books), and the health issues around working wood are numerous. Most woods have some degree of toxicity in their sand-dust particles. Skin diseases and respiratory problems can be created and/or exacerbated by wood dusts. I’m not sure if it’s related, but the day after I finished building a basswood & ash guitar on a two-day weekend course I got this massive sty-like infection on my eyelid.

I’m not trying to be a buzz-kill, but how does everyone treat the issues of safety with their guitar-work?