A letterpress and binding workshop is not a dangerous place, but it contains three hazards that cause real and sometimes permanent harm if they are treated casually: lead in metal type, solvent vapour, and cutting blades. The controls are well established, mostly inexpensive, and almost entirely about habits rather than equipment. This article is educational content — it is not a substitute for the equipment manufacturer's instructions, the supplier's safety data sheet, or the regulations that apply where you work.
Read this as a starting point and then go to the primary sources. Every machine you own came with an instruction manual, every chemical came with a safety data sheet, and every jurisdiction has its own rules on lead and on hazardous substances. Those documents take precedence over anything written here, and they are updated in ways an article is not.
Nothing here is a substitute for the manufacturer's instructions, the supplier's safety data sheet, or local regulation. If you employ anyone, or if you handle lead or solvents regularly, get a proper assessment for your own workshop.
Lead in metal type
Traditional type metal is an alloy of lead, antimony and tin — commonly around 60 to 80 per cent lead by weight depending on the alloy and the casting. The hazard is not the solid metal in your hand. Handling type does not present a significant exposure route beyond the need to wash your hands. The hazard is lead that has become dust or fume.
- Lead dust: generated by abrading, filing, sanding, wire-brushing or dry-sweeping old type and type metal. Dust is the main route of exposure because it transfers to hands, food, drink and cigarettes.
- Lead fume: generated by heating type metal. Lead melts at about 327 °C, and fume becomes a serious concern well above that; melting scrap type on a hotplate or in a foundry pot without extraction is not a workshop activity.
- Contaminated surfaces: benches, floors, tools and aprons that have held lead dust, which then transfer it to hands and to anything set down on them.
Lead exposure is cumulative. The body takes it in faster than it removes it, and the effects — on the nervous system, the blood and the kidneys — build over years rather than appearing after a single incident. That is precisely why the controls are habits rather than one-off precautions.
The lead rules, plainly
- Do not eat, drink, chew gum or smoke in the workshop. Keep food and drink out of the room entirely.
- Wash your hands with soap and water before eating, drinking, smoking, leaving the workshop, or touching your face. Do this even if you think you only handled clean type.
- Never dry-sweep or use compressed air on a bench or floor that may hold lead dust. Use wet wiping or a vacuum fitted with a suitable filter.
- Do not abrade type. No sanding, filing or wire-brushing to clean it. Clean with a damp cloth and put it away.
- Do not melt type metal indoors without proper extraction, and not at all in a space used for anything else.
- Keep a separate apron or work coat, and wash it separately from other laundry.
- Store type in closed cases and keep the storage area out of the way of food preparation and living space.
- If your hands are visibly dirty, clean up before you touch a door handle, a phone or a light switch.
Lead dust on fingers reaches the mouth without any obvious hand-to-mouth action. Food and drink anywhere near type cases or a composing bench is the single most common route of accidental exposure in small workshops.
Some people work with type regularly for decades without apparent harm, and some are more susceptible than others; individual sensitivity to lead varies. That is not an argument for skipping the controls — it is an argument against relying on your own reaction as a gauge. If you handle lead regularly, ask a doctor about blood lead monitoring, and follow local occupational health requirements where they apply to you.
Solvents and vapour
Printers use solvents to clean ink from rollers, type, slabs and hands. The common ones — white spirit, kerosene-based washes, isopropanol, and proprietary roller washes — all present two hazards: they are flammable, and their vapour is a respiratory and neurological irritant. Several also degrease and irritate skin on contact.
| Solvent | Flash point (approx.) | Main hazard | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Isopropanol | About 12 °C | Highly flammable; vapour irritant | Evaporates fast; vapour accumulates in low spaces |
| White spirit | Around 40 °C | Flammable; vapour irritant | Slow evaporation, so vapour lingers after cleaning |
| Xylene and similar aromatics | Around 25 °C | Flammable; more toxic vapour | Avoid where a safer wash will do the job |
| Water-miscible roller washes | Varies; often none | Generally lower vapour hazard | Prefer these where they work for your ink |
Vapour, not liquid, is what you breathe. Solvent vapour is often heavier than air, so it collects at bench height and in floor-level spaces, which is why "it smells fine up here" is not evidence of adequate ventilation. The controls are dilution and extraction: work in a well-ventilated space, keep lids on containers, use the smallest quantity that does the job, and where the work is regular, extract at the source.
- Ventilate. An open window with cross-flow is a minimum; a fan pulling air away from you and out of the room is better than a fan blowing at you.
- Decant only what you need into a small lidded container. Do not work from a large open tin.
- Keep solvents away from ignition sources: pilot lights, heaters, grinders, and anything that sparks.
- Wear gloves suited to the solvent — check the chemical resistance of the glove material against the specific substance rather than assuming any glove will do.
- Do not use solvents to clean your skin. Use a dedicated hand cleaner and water.
- Store solvents in a suitable closed metal cabinet, and keep rags in a lidded metal bin, not a wastepaper basket.
Cloths soaked in drying oils or oil-based ink can generate heat as the oil oxidises and have been known to ignite. Never leave them crumpled in a bin or a pile. Spread them out to dry, or store them in a lidded metal container, and follow local disposal guidance.
Cutters and the blade
Guillotines, board shears and knife work present the sharpest hazard in the workshop, and the injuries are usually severe because the forces involved are large. A guillotine blade will pass through fingers as easily as it passes through a 300-page text block. The guarding is there for a reason, and the reason is that the blade does not stop.
- Never reach into the blade path. Not to retrieve a slip of paper, not to straighten a sheet, not for any reason. Stop the machine and wait for it to be genuinely safe first.
- Keep the guard in place and working. A guard removed "for a moment" is how most cutter injuries happen.
- Keep both hands behind the clamp or on the handle, never in front of the blade, on a manual machine.
- Change blades only with the machine isolated, using a proper blade holder or carrier, and with cut-resistant gloves. Never handle a bare blade by the edge.
- One person at a machine at a time. The person operating the clamp and the person handling the paper must be the same person.
- Do not use a blunt blade. A dull blade needs more force, slips more easily, and produces a worse cut.
- For hand work, cut away from the body, on a proper cutting mat, with a sharp blade and a metal straightedge. Change the blade as soon as it drags.
No paper, no offcut and no moment of tidying is worth a hand. Stop the machine, wait, and use a stick or a hook to remove anything from the cutting area.
Presses, rollers and everything else
A platen press has a closing nip and enough force to crush a finger. Keep hands clear of the platen when the press is in motion, never reach into a running press to adjust a sheet, and never wear loose sleeves, ties or jewellery near any machine with a rotating or closing part. A cylinder press will pull in anything that touches the rollers.
- Tie back long hair; remove rings, watches and loose sleeves before operating a press.
- Isolate a machine before adjusting, cleaning or changing rollers or a die.
- Keep the floor clear. A press operator who trips while pulling a handle is a press operator who lets go at the wrong moment.
- Wear eye protection when handling solvents, when cutting, and when cleaning a press with a brush.
- Lift properly. A chase, a nipping press or a stack of board is heavier than it looks, and back injuries outnumber blade injuries in small workshops.
A short checklist before you start work
- No food or drink in the room; wash-up facilities available and reachable.
- Ventilation running if solvents are in use, and the smallest quantity decanted.
- Guards in place on every cutter, and blades sharp.
- Rags in a lidded metal bin, not a basket.
- Sleeves tied, jewellery off, hair back, floor clear.
- A first aid kit, with a note of where the nearest telephone is and how to summon help.
Every workshop is different. Write a single page of rules for yours, stick it on the wall, and revise it when something nearly goes wrong. A near miss is free information.
Nothing in this craft is worth a finger, a lung or a nervous system. Everything in it is worth a habit.A workshop supervisor, on why the rules exist
The controls are unglamorous: wash your hands, open a window, keep the guard on, do not reach in. Done consistently they make a print and bindery workshop a safe place to spend a long afternoon. Done inconsistently, they are the reason someone eventually gets hurt doing something they had done a hundred times before.