Garments for Welding

For many home tasks, handyman efforts, and types of tinkering, nearly any clothes that you decide to throw on will do. Short-sleeved polyester shirts and holey jeans are no obstacle to successfully painting a door, repairing the interior of a computer keyboard, or applying body filler to a car, but they will put you in considerable danger if you are welding. Welding is much more intensive, serious form of work than many other repair or do-it-yourself tasks, with extreme conditions occurring as a normal part of the process, and so it requires forethought even in the clothes worn.

The primary rule of thumb in selecting welding garb is that natural materials are almost always preferable to synthetic ones. Leather is naturally resistant to flame, where nylon or polyester will erupt into a blaze if they are struck by a welding flame or even a shower of exceptionally vigorous sparks. Simply being near the intense heat of the arc, even without any kind of accident, can cause polyester and similar plastic-based fabrics to become molten, fusing themselves onto your skin and producing a burn injury which is not only agonizing, but requires skin grafts to repair.

Leather shoes or boots are preferable to all other kinds because they will not catch fire unless the heat applied is so intense that it does not matter what material is being worn. For clothing on the rest of the body, denim is excellent, and it should be intact and free from rips, worn holes, or other openings where molten metal or sparks can find their way to your skin. Denim pants and denim shirts are both good for light welding and for TIG welding, while for MIG welding, plasma cutting, and so on, you should wear welding leathers or at least a jacket made out of genuine leather.

Any edge area on your clothing can capture sparks and thus has the possibility of setting you alight, possibly resulting in your injury or death. Open breast pockets, for example, may serve as a cloth bin where sparks gather and start a blaze. The cuffs of your shirt are another potential trouble spot, though luckily they are usually covered by welding gloves.

Cuffed pants are to be shunned, since sparks ricocheting down along your legs can snag in them and set fire to the cloth, giving you far worse than an ordinary hotfoot. Since ordinary fire is invisible through a welding helmet window, you will not be aware that you are on fire until the flame actually begins to sear your flesh – so the important thing is to make sure fires do not start in your clothes to begin with.

Long sleeves and long pant legs are a must, since the light of an arc welder is brilliant enough to cause skin cancer if your bare skin is exposed to it over the long term.

A welding cap should be purchased to protect the head, and if you have long hair, this should be tucked up under it to prevent any risk of your hair catching fire. Although this litany of precautions sounds daunting, they are actually easily met, and you will be fairly safe from the clothing-related dangers of welding as long as you wear proper garb and are reasonably cautious.