The fire risk of the glaze

The glaze rag that is burnt itself.

Have you seen or heard about the fire incident in the furniture factories or finishing room?. Here is a story that show how dangerous is finishing material. The finishing material is need to be handling carefully since it a highly flammable material and could be very dangerous..

One day we were invited by a furniture factory for finishing work on his sample. At that time I was new in the world of furniture finishing, I just two years working in the furniture finishing industry. I went to the factory along with my senior to do the finishing job. There were two bedroom sets we need to finish; one set was made of pine wood that need to be finish in light brown transparent color, while another one was a bed set made of mahogany wood with a dark brown transparent color. Totally there were 12 items that we need to be finished. 

At the time we got there the first time we did was checking the unfinished product. And we found that the products were still not ready, there were still some job need to be corrected,. The sanding was not perfect and some touch up was need to make a good preparation. Therefore, we did the touch up and sanded the sample product until they were ready to the finishing process. This situation actually is quite common for us. The samples usually is done in the rush time. The samples are always new product so the people still learn to get the best system to make it. Moreover, this factory was still new to the finishing process; previously he had been making more on unfinished product.

The color, panel, finishing materials and finishing systems was ready since we had prepared in our lab a few days before. The finishing system for both colors was the same but with different color of the body stain, pad stain and glaze.

The finishing process was:

1. Sap stain and stain equalizer

2. Body stain

3. Wash coat

4. Glaze

5. Sealer

6. Dry brush glaze

7. Sealer

8. Pad stain

9. Top coat

It took quite long time to do the preparation on the unfinished product. Finally we started the finishing process at 02.00 PM.  There were some peoples from the factory which helps us to do the finishing process. But the people who worked with us were still new and have never known the finishing process. So most of the finishing work such as staining, sealer application, was done by us ( I and my senior).

We plan to do the finishing process until the glaze application in the first day. Thus we could give long time the let the glaze to dry thoroughly before continuing with the next process. And we did. We finished the glaze application about 07.00 PM when it was getting dark and we're all tired. We washed and cleaned our spray gun, hand, body and other equipment. While the trash such as sandpaper, rag and dirty cloths that used  were collected.  Then we went home to continue the work for next day.
The next day we came to into the factory to continue to the next finishing job. I arrived at the factory at 08:00 AM. I am surprised because in the room there was a fire or burning trash. Who burn trash in this room?
We did the investigation to find why there was a fire  in the night before.  Finally it found that no one has lit a fire in the room. The fire was from the stack of dirty rag and clothes that burnt itself.  Fortunately, there were no other flammable items close to the fire, so the fire was not spread and cause bigger disaster.

The incident is still stay in my mind until now.  It reminds me to always be careful in handling the finishing materials include the waste from the finishing process. I always remember  that the rag with glaze can burnt itself. Since that I always make sure to bring out the trash from the finishing room and placed in a safe place. To prevent the fire I usually put the rag waste from the finishing process in a pail or drum and put water in there. 



 

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