I work at a treating plant that uses a 612 C1 Stetson Ross planer from 1952 to plane our boards before being treated. We are currently beefing up our hot work program and are requiring the action of joining the heads of the planer to have full hot work permit responsibilities. This task uses a stone to shave material from the planer heads (metal), which produce sparks.
From my understanding, the head jointing is best when done on the planer itself, but can be done in another location with a different piece of equipment. We do this task frequently (at least once per day).
The challenge is: the room the planer is in is by no means hot work safe, and doing hot work prep and permit would require a big effort to clean the area itself. Another challenge; we are limited on people, so having the full fire watch covered while the jointing is happening is difficult. (I think this is not a great excuse and we should be able to provide at least one person from the planer crew to do fire watch, but I have been told by plant manager snd site GM that “this will kill the efficiency of the plant”).
I am currently trying to find out if the planer head jointing can be done in another location (permanent hot work area) so we can avoid the hot work permit and cleanup of the planer room. I am curious though, is anyone else familiar with planers and head jointing and have faced a similar challenge? How do you handle hot work for this task at your facility?