Our experience with sodium silicate is that it is pretty kind on hands. We never used gloves and I have seen a few foundries that don't bother. However, we only indirectly contacted the stuff in practice. As to mixing, we just used a cheap arse $15 mixer (kitchen style vertical thing with blades in the bottom) to do the small mixes we were doing. For these, we used a syringe to dispense the SS into the pre measured volume of sand when the mixer was going
As MM says, I also saw somewhere they were using the plastic bag trick, which also seemed to be neat for a few small batches.
The real nasty stuff is hydrofluoric acid (sometime found in stainless steel pickling paste). Over here it can only be purchased with a special application. The acid gives you a protracted & painful death.
"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”
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