Anyone know what the heck “toe boards” on scaffold planks are? Someone mentioned them to me today but I’ll be danged if I’ve ever seen them. Anyone? Thanks – Jim
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To keep you from slipping out under the railing. 2x4 turned up on edge, or something similar.
Well, you have to really try to slip under the railing. It is for keeping tools and material form getting kicked off a scaffold. Usually a 2x4 on edge with timber platforms, 4" minimum for metal. This is an OSHA requirement....that's not a mistake, it's rustic
Toe boards:
-Prevent your feet from sliding off of walk boards. A real hazard if the boards are wet and especially if iced. While it may seem careless for anyone to fall through the 16' or so gap between the walk boards and the lower, knee, board it becomes a very real possibility at 70' on the shaded side of the building.
Small patches of glare ice, some no more than a foot across can give you a skating lesson that you will never forget. Suddenly you are doing pull ups on a 1x6 with gloved hands and hoping that the guy that nailed in the guard rail was one of the sharper tools in the shed.
-Keep tools and materials from sliding off the walk boards. Avoiding Excedrin headache #10-38.
-A very good idea.
are toeboards related to toenails?..she who must be obeyed gets snakey when I leave 'em around the house.
Saveral of the answers below are correct. Toe boards are used on the outboard side of the scaffolding to prevent anything laying on the plank to be pushed off and possibly hit some one below. They would be a trip hazzard if used on the inboard side. The best size is 2x6 on edge, tie wired separately to the scaffolding pipe, sitting directly on the horizontal plank. The plank should also be tied to the horz. pipe, and any plywood on top of the plank should be nailed to the plank. Now you have safe staging, especially when everyone below wears their hard hats.
Thanks you guys. That sounds dangerous to me. I'm gonna have to go to the OSHA website a read up on these things, seems like something to stub your toe on or maybe trip over.
I'm with you on this one Jim. The way I figure, a twelve inch plank is eighteen or twenty inches without the toeboard. When I walk across the plank I like to feel the edge. Which is why I wear work slippers. Leather soled shoes and toeboards would be dangerous for me. Why should someone else dictate what is safe for me?
Try rock climbing with hard soled boots. Same effect for me. Hard hats? Another safety hazard. Safety glasses are a safety hazard for me in some applications.
Safety is my number one concern. No pencil pusher will ever tell my what I need to do to make my jobsite safe. Idiot proof the world and we'll be surrounded by idiots. Genetic selection, selective breeding, whatever your wan't to call it. Tom
as mentioned above.. toe boards are part of the set up for pipe staging......
they aren't required for pump staging....so let's not get upset until we have something to get upset about..
as for me... OSHA has made a big difference .. for the better... in job site safety.. if it weren't for OSHA.. I'd still be competing against contractors who care nothing for safety.... like it was when I started in the business.. now , safety is never questioned.. it's just part of the cost of doing businessMike Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
Knock, Knock Mike,
Wake up bro'
You're still competing agin'm!
Excellence is its own reward!
Well, um, er, what about pipe-pump setups? Are toe boards required then?
That's my point Jim. Where does it end. It's common sense. Today I'm on a 7/12 three story roof, with permanent roof anchors installed ( a great idea, but I'm not sure if osha requires it or not) I'm clipped in but the roofer isn't, and I'm only going to be up there for fifteen minutes. My safety line isn't osha approved, I use a waist belt, whith a hunk of static line that I use for climbing and a redundant prusik knot for tieing into my safety line.
I'm familiar with ropes and their use and am safer with them in some applications. The best policy is to know what's safe for you, and toeboards aren't safe for me.Tom
"Hard hats? Another safety hazard. Safety glasses are a safety hazard for me in some applications. "
Could you give some examples?
BTW, I'm not questioning your knowledge. It sounds like you have expertise in roping and stuff like that, and probably know many ways of doing things safer than the regulations.
But. Is everyone in your line of work as knowledgeable? Are the business owners and foremen?
Just because you are smarter than some of the rules doesn't mean those rules don't prevent a lot of injuries and save a lot of lives.
Bob,
Just checked in on this one.
Hard hats- I'm not saying this is definately a safety hazard, but I think there can be some problems do to heat. Obviously it will protect your head from dropped objects, but at what cost. And at what benefit. Hard hats will not do a whole lot if a 900 # beam is dropped on your head. So my thinking is more along the lines of make sure you don't drop it, whether it is a block of wood or something heavier.
Safety glasses- Unless the things are as clear as my cornea, they can obstruct my vision and affect my depth perception and therefrore my balance, etc. Even the most polished lenses can become fouled with sweat on a hot day. Sure, I use them in some applications.
The point is I can determine what's safe for me. What do I have a deathwish? Do I want to be blind? or crippled? Of course not.
I do have employees, and if I thought they were practicing unsafe working habits, they would already be gone. Of course there have been a few accidents in my 20+ years in the trades and 12 years in business for myself. I like to think of these minor incidents as reminders. I have seen a whole lot worse happen to other folks around me. Guys like me are not the cause of OSHA regs, nor do we appreciably benefit from any of what is mostly nonsense.
If Osha's prime directive was education I would be ok with it. But our tax dollars are spent attempting to enforce regulations that are unenforceable, if only by the shear volume of the acts they are trying to regulate. Its like trying to regulate sodomy. There is simply not enough, nor will there ever be enough osha type to effectively enforce and regulate safe working habits. Even if it wasn't a personal decision. Would you want a guy working for you who didn't know how to work safely? This is strictly a personal responsibility issue.
Wearing your seatbelt while driving is a personal issue in my opinion. So is wearing a helmet on a motorcycle. Smoking, drinking, doing drugs and eating fatty foods are a personal safety issue. Helmets are enforceable, because its easy to spot someone not wearing one. Which is kind of comical in my experience. A helmet will only protect you from a small portion of motorcyle crash injuries. Seat belts, air bags, they protect many more careless, distracted, incompetent drivers than the they the opposite. At this rate, airbags around a jobsite will be the norm. But it isn't cost effective. The minivan my kids ride in has front airbags, I didn't buck up for the side airbags, does that make me an incompetent parent? I can't delete the front airbags, and buy the side ones so my kids might survive a side impact? I'll be alot more upset if I survive and accident and my kids are killed because I can't pick where I want my own damn airbags. This is the can of worms that we open when we let bureaucrats make these kinds of decisions. When I get behind the wheel I drive like there is an accident waiting at every corner. That does me a lot more good than front airbags. I run a circular saw like there is a finger in front of every cut. That combined with a little luck, is the best you can do, period.
Don't take me literally on all this, but the best way to stay safe in any situation is to stay focused, eliminate distractions, and use your own head. These things will never be legislated, and will always be the most cost effective. I don't know any tradesman who have been injured who has practiced these things and and blamed there injuries on someone else. Almost everyone who I know that has been injured on a jobsite, probably everyone, failed themselves first in some regard and the injury was incidental to this fact.
Face it, the world is not a safe place, it is up to the individual to make it safe.
Hey, you asked.Tom
All the research shows that a hat providing an air gap between itself and the head consistently lowers the burden of heat load on people in direct sunlight. As does a light colored tee shirt. DoD tested steel helmets with a liner painted (You guessed it.) flat OD green and the newer Kevlar rigs with the same results. There is a reason that sombreros cone hats and pith helmets are popular in tropical areas.
My preferred helmet is a wide brimmed lineman's, 2" brim all around, with an extra tinted green sun screen attached to the front that adds an extra 2". It shades my head and partially shades my body. Florida heat does not play.
I have an ongoing problem with safety glasses in that sweat falls onto the lenses when I work bending over. Even when working upright the lenses fog up and my eyes sting after 15 minutes or so. Not so bad if I remove the side shields. Unfortunately nearly every set has non-removable side shields. Try sorting a few dozen phased wires with fogged glasses. Now consider that they are live at 480v and you have to cut the only one that's dead.
When cutting and grinding I wear the glasses but drop them down on keepers in short order. On large commercial jobs, with on site safety police, I remove the side shields, wear a headband and apply anti-fog compound frequently. The compound doesn't help much but it gives me a reason to take off the glassses. I get by.
Jim,
Don't know your situation, but when we built wood scaffolding that was 6ft or higher off the ground, we ALWAYS had to install a 2x4 guard rail with a top height of 42 inches. We installed a midrail (2X4) horizontally at half that height, and a toe-kick (2X4) at the bottom. Toe kick and midrail were both installed on the INBOARD SIDE. All guard rails are supposed to withstand a 200 lb force thrown against it. ( wishful thinking here on OSHA's part, but the way we built them,a 200 pounder could slip into the railings "fairly hard" and yes the railings would hold. An all-out hard hit into them? I doubt it would hold.)
If guardrails are nailed on outboard side as someone earlier suggested, nails could loosen and the guardrail could pop off when a body force is thrown against it. If nailed on outboard side, nails should be long enough to be clinched tight on other face side of post. On inboard side, vertical rail posts keep boards from pulling out and add to overall guardrail ridgidity. Inboard side is the correct way...or so we were told...and was the way we complied with OSHA inspectors.
As for toe-kicks... face-nailed on inboard side to vertical rail posts, and toenailed to scaffold plank with 8 or 10 penny every 2 ft or so. Toe-kick keeps tools from dropping off and hitting workmen below. In a maintenance situation where more than one craft is working around and on top of one another ( very common in an industrial setting; unfortunately), toe-kicks can save a guy's life.
Hardhats are good protection against accidently walking into low headroom areas and bumping your forehead on pipes and such, but to be honest, if a tool falls from a height of 10 feet or so and hits you on the head, you are still going down and the injury will be serious. Toe-kicks are a better safeguard in these situations, because the workers don't want to be stubbing their toes and such and therefore are more aware of where they are when on such a scaffold. They tend to keep their bodies and their tools more toward the center of the work platform and therefore are less likely to accidently "back off" and fall. The tools are less prone to being kicked over the side as well, due to this situational awareness. If tools do happen to get pushed around, they still normally just wind up against the toe-kick; not "over-the-side."
We are not talking about a 1 or 2 plank wide scaffold in these situations...I'm talking about a normal 4 to 5 plank wide scaffold. We always tried to give our crews at least a minimum 4ft X 8 ft work platform.
If using pipe scaffold, guard rails, and toe kicks are made by the scaffolding manufacturer to be attached directly to it. Your scaffolding supplier can supply you these things. In a pinch, 2X4s can be substituted and in these cases are wired in place with No. 9 tie-wire. Job looks shoddy when done this way, but it will work and satisfy OSHA ( least it used to.)
Pump jack staging and the like....never seen toe-kicks used....never had anyone insist on it either;...just plain dumb in that type of situation. If in an area where only 1 or 2 plank wide can be used, OSHA does not necessarily require a guardrail / midrail /toe-kick system....instead the workmen must be wearing approved fall protection (harnesses or belts with lanyards/ropes) and be properly tied off in these situations. Belts with a 6 ft lanyard used to be the standard at our industrial site, but since were outlawed in favor of using harnesses.
Not only can a person easily break his back wearing a safety belt in a fall.... if he/she doesn't suffer a back injury, chances are they will pass out within a matter of minutes due to the strain placed on their abdomen. In a harness, you can hang fairly comfortably in one all day long. I know, cause they use to demonstrate this by making each of us hang off the ground using a safety belt, and then using a safety harness...what a difference!
I personally liked the belt better cause it was less cumbersome to wear, but now they make really lightweight harnesses, and I will admit I thought them ( harnesses) ALWAYS to be better suited to handle a real fall.
AS for safety glasses...there are situations where they can get fogged up...thats why we wore eye-glass holders that fit over the ear pieces on the frames. If fogged up, say due to working around steam pipes and such, you simply removed the glasses and let them dangle around your neck. Put them back on later when it was safe to do so.
Anyone who doesn't wear safety glasses when working construction is really taking a "chance." I prefer not to take that gamble. AS for side shields, they do make the removable kind, and these come in many various shapes so there really is no excuse why not to wear them. They were mandatory where I worked; along with hard hats and metatarsal shoes. I hated the shoes...too damn heavy.
Remember the glasses worn by Donald Sutherland in that Clint Eastwood Space movie ( I forget the name...Tommy Lee Jones was in it too)? Well if they could make prescription safety glasses look like the pair he wore, everybody would want a pair. Too bad most safety glasses look dorky...which I believe is the real reason why many don't want to wear the accompanying side shields...they make you look dorky! AS for screen mesh sideshields; they did cut my peripheal vision...I hated them. I went instead to the plexi-glass side shields so I would not lose the peripheal vision....Yes, I looked dorky when I wore those things, but so did everbody else at that time. Since leaving that job, I don't usually wear sideshields anymore because they do look so bad; but I'm seriously considering about going back to wearing them. I have had a few close calls with wood splinters buzzing too close for comfort.
I personally know of a wood shop teacher who unfortunately lost his eye to a wood splinter 25 years ago while demonstrating to a student how to safely rip a board on the table saw. I'm 100% positive he wishes he could re-live those few seconds and put on a pair of safety glasses first
Just my 2 cents worth (more like 50 cents worth huh?...I sometimes ramble too much!)
Anyway, have a great day, and work safe.
Davo