The other day one of my birthday presents arrived.
it's a powered air purifying respirator. In other words it's something I can wear while carving stone to keep the dust out of my lungs, the rock chips out of my eyes, and it won't fog up while this is going on.
For years I've worn a bug nose respirator and safety glasses, but it's a lousy combination. The respirator works fine, but it gets hot. Then it happens that rock chips and dust get around the safety glasses, particularly when I'm using a die grinder. To avoid that I could wear goggles, but those just fog up and become a hindrance almost immediately.
This new device runs on a battery for 8 hours at a stretch. It's got a fan that pumps a minimum of 4 CFM (cubic feet per minute) of filtered air into a full face mask. That means that as I sweat it evaporates and is exhausted out the vents, so I can continue to see.
Yesterday I used it for nearly three hours and it worked very well. Today I got stuck on a different task and didn't do any carving, but there's always tomorrow. (And there'd better be a tomorrow for this. I'm running out of time before the upcoming show.)
Anyway, I thought some of you might be interested in this development. If anyone wants to know more, email me and ask about it. I can send or post more details on what I got and why. I did a fair bit of research before making the purchase.
