[Jewelry making - Article 00127] - Re: [Orchid] Bench Jeweler's Right Bicep Pain

[brainnet]

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>     I've also been avoiding the foredom as much as I can because I find
>     the vibrations can be very irritating to my hand. I know that my
>     body is still catching up to all the wear and tear (literally) but
>     I expect to be fully recovered soon 

    There are a number of tools available today that reduce the stress
    on your body (important for all those aging jewelers out there).
    Examples include the bench mate system with its holding methods which
    take the place of hand stress, Aquaplast and Jetset which permit
    rapid holding and fast jigs, air powered gravers like the
    gravermeister, gravermax and the cadillac lindsay gravers which
    eliminate the pushing stresses required of gravers and finally the
    micromotors (Foredom has a new $380 retail one out there) which
    (while they are an adjunct to a flex shaft rather than a full
    replacement) eliminate the cable vibration completely. 

    Here is an extract from The Jewelry Workshop Safety Report which is
    posted here at Ganoksin: 

    http://www.ganoksin.com/borisat/nenam/noise.htm 

          "Vibration and noise are often linked conditions. Vibration
          can cause injuries very similar to those caused by noise, and
          can also result in special damage to the hands and other
          jointed areas. Vibration has been shown to hasten and cause the
          onset of arthritis, back problems, gout and heart disease, and
          can damage vision with long exposures (Quinn et al 8). You can
          experience vibration when using power tools of various kinds,
          and when using heavy machinery. Hammering can be considered in
          some ways similar to vibration; there are repeated shocks
          occurring to the hands and arms. Holding items on the
          polishing wheel constitutes vibration. A well-known injury in
          the production jeweler's world is "whitefinger," where numbness
          and a white look to the fingers can occur, progressively
          getting worse until the whole hand is involved, painful and
          not fully usable. Professional polishers, or people who do a
          lot of jewelry polishing, most frequently experience 

          whitefinger (Stellman and Daum 108; Kinnersly 67). If you have
          to do a lot of polishing in your work, consider changing your
          finish or procedures to reduce your time at the polishing
          wheel. The job is not good for you, and the ventilation needs
          to be working well to protect you. You could, for instance,
          obtain pre-polished metal for some projects, immediately
          protect a metal's surface with glue-on paper before beginning
          to work it, use firescale retardants like Pripps flux upon
          every heating, seek to avoid scratches to reduce the polishing
          required in your workplace. You can switch to tumbling for
          certain applications to reduce the polishing time on certain
          pieces. 

          There are four main kinds of damage that can result from
          vibration. The hands and wrists develop bone loss in the form
          of small holes that show up on x-rays. This is not supposed to
          make them more fragile, however. The muscles and nerves of the
          hands can be injured by vibration, resulting in loss of use in
          the hand, or, rarely, the tendons contract and thicken, making
          the hand weak and restricted in movement. The joints can
          develop osteo-arthritis; this is common in the elderly, but it
          ensues earlier in people exposed to vibration (Stellman and
          Daum 108). 

          Finally, there is "whitefinger," mentioned above, where the
          circulation of the hands has been damaged. It is very
          disabling. Progressive numbness leads to permanent disability.
          It happens most often to workers who grip vibrating tools
          tightly when working, as well as to production polishers. In
          general, pneumatic hammer type tools are responsible for many
          such injuries (Stellman and Daum 109). Symptoms include (from
          best to worst), intermittent tingling, intermittent numbness,
          blanching of fingertips with or without tingling or numbness,
          blanching of entire fingers in winter, blanching on most
          fingers both in summer and winter (Waldron 165)-and really bad
          pain can be involved too. Whitefinger can end in rare, severe
          cases with a finger becoming gangrenous and having to be
          amputated (Stellman and Daum 108). There is no medical cure
          for whitefinger (Kinnersly 67). Set things up so that you don't
          experience repeated vibration, or if you do, see if you can
          dampen it as much as possible. If your fingers tingle or the
          tips go white when using a vibrating tool it is time to
          consider vibration a problem. Note that some of the special
          "vibration absorbing" gloves that are available from safety
          suppliers (with gel-filled pads on the palm) have been found to
          contribute to carpal tunnel syndrome because they change the
          gripping position of the hand "

best
Charles

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