I've never really liked working with the stuff, since one of my
concerns has always been getting it in my eyes... Not from flying
pieces, but since I wear contacts, and tend to do most of my building
late in the evening and then retire for the night, I have to take out
my contacts... My concern has been getting a small shard on my
finger, and then getting it in my eye when taking the contact out...
I -usually- wear glasses now when I am working with boron, to
eliminate that problem...
I've only stuck myself once with it, and it pretty easy... it didn't
break off and pulled right out, but went into a finger on the side and
came right out the other side, going through about 1/4" of the
finger... That from running my finger along the motorstick without
the boron glued down tight enough at the end...
Since I'm so paranoid about the stuff, I always use a piece of white
foamboard to cut it on... I put a piece of clear tape folded around
the boron with the center of the tape where I want to break it, and
then just take the back of a blade and press down enough to snap it...
Then pull out the piece from the tape (both ends...) and I always can
see the broken parts left in the tape... Before I started doing that,
I had little shards on the foamboard, and picked them up with tape,
but I don't seem to ever have any anymore... Then I have a coffee can
that I throw the tape in, and any short pieces that aren't useful for
anything I put in a plastic tube and keep that in the can also...
longer pieces go back in a longer tube just like the shipping tubes...
Eventually, I will probably tape off the lid of the can and throw it
out, or I guess if you really wanted to be safe for everyone (trash
guys...) you could cast it full of plaster or something...
I can get the length within 1/16" or so of what I want this way, which
seems to be fine, and at least I feel better about the stuff...
I do think (especially at USIC) about it when getting a plane out
"goes bad"... Two years ago I got a PP stuck and pulled it out, and
it came down (with me looking right up at it...) in pieces and it had
boron on the wing spars and the motorstick, and when it came down on
top of me, the wing was all trashed and quite a bit of the boron was
missing on the spars and on the snapped motorstick... (I wasn't
thinking about the boron until I realized it when I was picking up the
pieces...)
The moral part that Mark talked about comes into play there, as it is
impossible to find it in a case like that, and who knows who could
step on it...
JH
Received on Thu Oct 23 2008 - 15:03:12 CEST
This archive was generated by Yannick on Sat Dec 14 2019 - 19:13:45 CET