Practical TIG Welding: Gloves
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Gloves
02.38
| 00:00 | - The process of welding can easily result in temperatures that reach thousands of degrees and this high temperature, molten weld pool combines many dangers that require us to protect our hands and the best form of hand protection in our case is gloves. |
| 00:14 | To work out what gloves we need, we need to have an understanding of the risks we're trying to eliminate. |
| 00:20 | The obvious danger is heat but we also need to be thinking about the radiation emitted by the light of the arc. |
| 00:26 | This means our gloves need to be heat resistant and also UV resistant to protect the closest part of our body to the actual weld, our hands. |
| 00:35 | It's important to note that there's no specific glove that's perfect for all welding processes and most fabricators have different types of gloves for different welding jobs. |
| 00:45 | For example, dedicated TIG welding gloves differ from thicker MIG welding gloves, as they need to offer us more control and feel so that we can accurately feed the filler rod into the weld pool. |
| 00:57 | You may see footage of people TIG welding with bare hands and this is manageable in very low amperage, high precision situations but we can't recommend it. |
| 01:07 | We really do need to protect our skin against the ultra violet radiation, visible light radiation and infrared radiation emitted by the TIG welding process and gloves should be considered essential. |
| 01:19 | To protect from heat and light when welding, especially on higher amperage settings, it's important to wear gloves designed and constructed specifically for welding. |
| 01:28 | More often than not, these will be made from cow hide leather and are very stiff, meaning that they may take some time to wear in. |
| 01:35 | When the amperage levels and the inherent heat from the workpiece decrease, you can improve the amount of feel that you have on the torch in the tungsten by switching your gloves to softer leather such as deer, duck or goat hide. |
| 01:48 | This increased feel is commonly referred to as dexterity. |
| 01:51 | By increasing the dexterity and completely eliminating the radiation from light, we can safely and comfortable weld with good control and precision. |
| 02:01 | Like the hearing protection we've already covered, the damage that comes from exposure to the weld arc are cumulative and may not present itself immediately. |
| 02:09 | You can definitely expect sunburn like symptoms though after just a few minutes of welding. |
| 02:15 | If this skin damage continues on a frequent basis then we run the real risk of having skin related issues later in life. |
| 02:22 | Gloves really are an important part of TIG welding and finding the right fitting ones and making sure you have 100% skin coverage will give you the peace of mind that you won't be doing any long term damage. |
