# High School Survey for Painting Safety



## Gus Rutledge (4 mo ago)

Hello! I am a high school senior, and I'm looking to get market research for my senior project. I'm planning on building an ergonomic paintbrush because I've found that Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and other repetitive strain injuries are common in painters. If you paint a lot, please fill out this survey. Every response is appreciated!


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## Don Painting Services (4 mo ago)

Good luck improving the wheel.


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## Holland (Feb 18, 2011)

Gus Rutledge said:


> Hello! I am a high school senior, and I'm looking to get market research for my senior project. I'm planning on building an ergonomic paintbrush because I've found that Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and other repetitive strain injuries are common in painters. If you paint a lot, please fill out this survey. Every response is appreciated!


More likely to get carpal tunnel holding a cut-bucket all day than a paintbrush, may consider expanding your survey to include spray guns.


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## RH (Sep 7, 2010)

Painted a good portion of my life and got carpal tunnel syndrome in my left wrist. I'm right handed.


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## Don Painting Services (4 mo ago)

The only improvements I could think of is to design left handed and right handed brushes.


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## Joe67 (Aug 12, 2016)

Don Painting Services said:


> The only improvements I could think of is to design left handed and right handed brushes.


Sure, except for when you have to paint with the other hand anyway. (I've always found that some degree of ambidexterity is an asset).


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## Joe67 (Aug 12, 2016)

RH said:


> Painted a good portion of my life and got carpal tunnel syndrome in my left wrist. I'm right handed.


...probably from holding the cut bucket.


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## finishesbykevyn (Apr 14, 2010)

Very odd survey for a high school senior. Why not something like the affects of thc on the young mind, or too much gaming makes you a serial killer. Anyhow, I'll leave this open for a bit to see if anyone bites.. good luck!


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## RH (Sep 7, 2010)

Joe67 said:


> Sure, except for when you have to paint with the other hand anyway. (I've always found that some degree of ambidexterity is an asset).


Thad’s certainly true. I always said that a long time painter could usually paint as well with their left hand as their right. 
I just figured it was some physical aspect of my left wrist that caused it - not anything I necessarily did.


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## celicaxx (May 29, 2015)

I ended up getting wrist issues from painting. Nothing serious, but it comes up when I do it often again, and I feel my hands get numb on the steering wheel/etc. I think partially what causes painting wrist issues is how thick/draggy the paint is, something like Behr Ultra vs Gardz or BIN primer would be a big example, the latter are about the consistency of water and really fast and easy to brush, the former is like brushing tacky glue. There's a lot of reasons why paints are made thicker and to drag more, but namely it's more spatter resistance, but it's also easier to control your lines if you have a shakier wrist like an average DIYer would have. It's also likely cheaper for paint manufacturers to make a thicker/draggier paint cover better because then you could add more cheap components like chalk or clay and less expensive components like titanium and pigment. 

For the ergo paint brush angle, one thing I noticed when I was in Asia and checked out some hardware stores/home stores quite a lot of paint brushes sold are actually what we call "hockey stick" style brushes. 





__





Hockey Stick F4621 • Wooster Brush


With the right tools, you can accomplish anything.




www.woosterbrush.com





But the ones I saw in Asia weren't exaggerated in length like that, but about 6-12" depending on the brush. 










Here's a picture of chip brushes that shape from Aliexpress, but I do believe they make some brushes that shape with quality filaments. I remember seeing a brush in this shape with decent looking filaments at a Taiwanese hardware store in real life but not buying it. Using those on trim would be difficult I think, but it might make a good brush for wall use because you could use a "cave man" style grip (ie, in the fist) instead of a pencil grip and still likely get more accurate lines than using a cave man grip with a normal brush, but likely less accurate lines than with a normal grip on a normal brush. 

There's actually a couple other Asian ergonomic things I liked in tools there, the Japanese style plaster trowels with their handle design cause me a lot less wrist strain than European/American style handles. 








Since your wrist is closer to the blade and the balance point is more in the middle of the handle, I find it reduced wrist strain a lot compared to say, an American Marshalltown with a handle like this.









The Marshalltown handle is higher up, and the leverage points change and it requires more wrist strength to control compared to the Asian style handle. 

There's a lot of different and imo better things, like Japanese hand saws and hand planes cutting on the pull stroke which ends up being more ergonomically comfortable as well.


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## RH (Sep 7, 2010)

Don Painting Services said:


> The only improvements I could think of is to design left handed and right handed brushes.


Or maybe some that work as well going backwards as they do going forward.


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