Tag Archives: Safety

News

Shooting at the OK Corral

This past weekend saw another accident with guns used during a performance, this time at a Wild West reenactment during Tombstone’s Helldorado Days.

According to Tucson News Now, “One of the Vigilantes arrived late and did not have his gun properly inspected. He then accidentally shot another member of the Vigilantes.” The show was stopped immediately, and it turns out the shooter’s gun had been loaded with six live rounds, and five of them were fired.

Yikes.

We could talk about all the things that “should have” happened. They should do a gun check before every show. They should have an armorer in charge of all the ammunition. They should cheat their aim away from other actors. They should, they should, they should.

But it sounds like they do that. The Tombstone Vigilantes have been performing reenactments since 1946. They do several shows a month. Collectively, they have probably fired off more blank ammunition than most of us have even seen. And they have done it without an accident for 69 years.

So what happened? I don’t know. We may never know. But the important thing to take away from all this is that weapons safety protocols are important no matter how experienced you are, or how many times you have done a show. No matter how much training you have, or how qualified you become, you can never skip over proper safety procedures.

Learning about proper weapon safety isn’t like a vaccine, where once you learn it, you are protected from future accidents. It only works if you follow it each and every time weapons are used on stage. There is no new procedure or protocol we can invent that will imbue us with perfect safety; we already know all the proper procedures, we just need to follow them.

I recently ran across the following passage from an 1874 issue of Harper’s Monthly Magazine. We’ve had safe weapons procedures for a long, long time; it goes to show that accidents only happen when they are neglected:

“A careful property-man keeps his ramrod attached by a cord to the wall, so that he may not by mistake leave it in a gun-barrel after loading the weapon. Accidents have arisen from a neglect of this precaution, and also from the improper or careless loading of weapons, as was the case a short time since in Washington, where a young man was shot and killed on the stage of a variety theatre by a too-heavy wadding, which entered his head from the gun of a horrified comrade. Paper wads are very dangerous; among the other accidents possible through them is that of their setting fire to the scenery; hence in well-regulated theatres a special wadding is used, made of hair, and which will not communicate fire to surrounding objects.”

Safety

N95 Day

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A little over a week ago was N95 Day, a day which NIOSH created four years ago to raise awareness for respirator-use in the workplace. It happens every September 5th – get it? N95 = 9/5 (in the US, we put the month before the day. Sorry, rest of the world).

The N95 is the most common type of respirator used in the workplace, and is probably the most common found in your props shop.

"Fit Testing the N95 Mask" by AlamosaCounty PublicHealth is licensed under CC BY 2.0
“Fit Testing the N95 Mask” by AlamosaCounty PublicHealth is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Some people think the N95 is a dust mask, not a respirator, but that is incorrect. The N95 is a disposable particulate respirator, but it is still a respirator, so all the rules and requirements for wearing a respirator must be followed for the N95 as well.

A couple of things about respirators. First, you have to know when to wear the right one. If you have The Health and Safety Guide for Film, TV, and Theater, or if you have ever attended a workshop by Monona Rossol, you know that airborne hazards come in five flavors: dust, mist, fume, vapor and gas. Dust, mist and fumes are particulates, which means they are bigger than air molecules and can be filtered mechanically. Vapors and gasses are the same size as air, so you can’t just block them; you need to chemically absorb them. So an N95 can stop dust, mist and fumes, but you need a classic cartridge respirator to stop vapor and gas.

You really need to know what you are dealing with to pick the right respirator. Using contact cement produces hazardous vapors, so an N95 will do absolutely nothing. In fact, some may argue that since any respirator creates extra stress on your body, wearing the wrong type of respirator can actually be worse than wearing no respirator.

Most chemicals we use have a mix of hazards. Spray paint is a prime example; the paint comes out in a mist, but the solvents produce vapors. So you need both a particulate and a chemical respirator. Most of the cartridges you can get for your respirator have a combination filter for doing both.

One final note: you often come across shops where they are really gung-ho about eye and tool safety, but cavalier about using respirators. It’s true that if you lose an eye, it sucks, but you have two eyes, and you can still live without being able to see. A respirator protects your lungs, and if you can’t use your lungs, you’ve only got about three minutes of life left.

Captain Cutie
Captain Cutie

This is my son. He’s adorable, right? He’s lived in the hospital since he was born 14 months ago, and needs to be hooked up to a ventilator 24 hours a day to breathe. His lungs are too small to support him. Most of us take our lungs for granted and don’t stop to think that every breath we take is a small miracle.

Not being able to breathe sucks. Wear your damn respirator.

Useful Sites

Props Reading for the Weekend

The Stage reminds us that an army of craftspeople exist to make theatre: “While there is no such thing as a job for life in the theatre, and many of these craft jobs are now freelance, except with the very big theatre and opera companies, if you are good at what you do you’ll find an abundance of work that even the best actor or director would struggle to manage.” They talk about how to get started, and even give a list of training programs in the UK.

San Diego Comic Con is happening right now, and with it come tons of displays and sneak peeks at the props and costumes of upcoming films. Io9 has a quick video of the absolute coolest things on the convention floor, such as Batman’s new weapons, or vehicles from the upcoming Star Wars. The Original Prop Blog is also there posting updates, such as this collection of photos capturing all the details of the proton packs from the upcoming Ghostbusters reboot.

Make Magazine has a helpful primer (or a reminder for those of us that should know better) on what to wear to work safely in a shop. They cover gloves, clothes and shoes, as well as pointing out what not to wear.

Most of us have heard the story making the rounds of the audience member who jumped up on the stage of a Broadway show to charge his phone on a (non-functioning) outlet on the set. Vanity Fair has a nice profile on Beowulf Boritt, the set designer responsible for coming up with the realistic church basement for that show, Hand to God.

Useful Sites

Friday Rehearsal Report

The Compliance and Safety Blog has created this great infographic on PPE basics (personal protective equipment) that they shared with me.

Volpin Props has an extensive build diary for his latest project, a shark bazooka gun from The League of Legends. It’s quite the complex process, using casting, vacuum forming and even some puppetry.

Dug North has a new tutorial up showing different methods for bending brass wire, tube and sheets. You can make some pretty quick but intricate small props using nothing but brass.

The Walking Dead has a video showing off some of the best props, effects and explosions from Season Five. Warning: if you haven’t seen Season Five yet, it gives away quite a few spoilers. Also, blood and guts and stuff.

Finally, Nick Offerman tells us why we should build stuff. Besides playing Ron Swanson on TV’s Parks and Rec, Nick is quite the accomplished woodworker, and runs his own shop employing half a dozen other woodworkers.

Safety

The Four Dangers of Sawdust

Sawdust happens. If you are a prop carpenter, or you do any sort of carpentry in your shop, you will produce sawdust. There’s been plenty written about maintaining the dust in your shop; that is, providing adequate ventilation in your shop,  hooking your tools up to dust collectors, hanging dust filters above larger power tools, and wearing dust masks when necessary. That’s all important, but this post is about dealing with the dust that is left. Sawdust creates four hazards:

  • Slip hazard
  • Health hazard
  • Fire hazard
  • Tool damage

Slip hazard

When you have a fine layer of sawdust on the ground, it reduces your traction. It is challenging enough to run a full sheet of plywood through a table saw. Don’t compound the struggle with slipping and sliding around on the floor. On lighter-colored floors, a thin layer of sawdust can be almost invisible and still cause slips and falls.

Health hazard

When you allow dust to hang around, everytime you drop a piece of wood or a prop, you will raise a cloud of dust. A lot of tools, especially routers and sanders, kick out a stream of air which will also blow sawdust into the air, and ultimately, into your lungs.

Fire hazard

Ideally, your shop will be set up for seperate metal and wood areas. In reality, this is not always possible, especially with larger props which cannot be moved to the metal area, or props constructed with both wood and metal. Grinding throws out hot sparks which disappear quickly, but if they find a pile of easily-combustible sawdust, they may begin to smolder and even catch fire. More dangerous is welding around sawdust. I’ve seen plenty of small fires begin from the johnny balls that fly out of a welder and roll into a pile of dust.

Tool Damage

All wood, even kiln dried, contains a minute percentage of moisture. When you turn the wood into dust, it allows the moisture to be released more easily. If you let even a thin layer of sawdust remain on your tools, the moisture will eventually begin to rust the metal parts. It makes no sense to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a tool with a precision-machined metal table only to let sawdust rust it away into a rough surface; especially when it takes about two seconds to brush the sawdust off.

Too much sawdust
Too much sawdust