Outside exhaust necessary with glass etching?

[Dan Hintz]

I'm still roughing in my workshop in the basement, and until that's finished I won't have easy access to outside air. Common sense tells me I'm safe etching glass without worrying about exhausting to the outside world, but I'd like verification.

[Daniel Cline]

Hi Dan...Dan here!

It depends on how much glass you are doing. I just work in my garge so i try to vent everything out.

Glass is a silica, like granite which can cause silicosis if you breath in too much of it. Silica does not come out of your lungs...I would say if you are just doing a piece or two you are ok especially if you are using the method with the wet paper. If you smell it in the air I would be careful.

Cheers,

Daniel

[Dan Hintz]

Maybe I'll run the exhaust though a wet tank before releasing it back into the basement... that should take care of any dust.

[Rob Bosworth]

Dan, it will also pull some of the silicate out and away from the machine's movement. Silicate is pretty abrasive to moving components.

[Dan Hintz]

Yeah, I wasn't suggesting running with no exhaust, I just intend to exhaust back into the room. I'm all for having brisk air movement through the machine to get debris out of there.

[James Aldrich]

Etching glass produces small glass chips and dust. I put a furnase filter on the exhaust hose and ran a 5x7 picture on frame glass. I was surprised at how much glass fragments was on the filter when I was done. And the smell stayed with me for a couple of hours.

Jim

[Dave Coble]

Agreed. I also orginally thought that glass could be done without the vent. That was until I did a few jobs running experiments, I'd say maybe 30min of continuous run time. My wife came out to the garage to check on me and said, umm...is there supposed to be all this smoke in here? Sure enough, I looked at the overhead lights and I had filled the whole garage. Nice! Lesson learned.