I’ve used a good many different work gloves over the years and wanted to share some of my experiences with y’all, and hear what you might have tried and how you liked them.
I used to buy these at the local big box store for general purpose work. They did fine for firewood, were only about $11, and though they would dry out after use and become slightly crunchy, they would become supple again shortly after putting them back on.
I bought a pair of these goatskin gauntlet gloves at the advice of someone else who owned a pair. At about $19 online, they were an affordable solution for working with thorny plants, light duty welding and handling my friend’s yard birds. The trouble is that the gauntlet is not cut generously enough to easily allow admittance of my forearm, and I haven’t ripped out the seam and added a strip of thick cotton inlay, so they languish unused.
A well-known Georgian gardening personality spoke highly of knit cotton, rubber-dipped gloves available in a 12 pack from the local home improvement stores. I had seen bricklayers wearing ones like those he described and gave them a try, but the ones I sourced were rubbish: the rubber would self-adhere after use, the knitting would tear easily. Heck, in only about 20 minutes of pulling nuisance muscadine vines from pine trees I had already wasted a pair. Half the package went straight into the trash.
I did some further research and found a stone mason who swore by these knit gloves that are also dipped. I was so enamored with them that I tried to get the company to make shoes in the same fashion, a la Vibram Five Fingers. I believe that the gloves are manufactured here in Georgia, in Menlo. They can be tossed in your washing machine with your laundry, dry relatively quickly, and cost about $33 for a dozen pairs when purchased online. They last a nice long time, are good at insulating during chilly weather, are suitable for wiping sweat off of my brow/forehead, but they do leave my hands with a slight aroma and do leave my hands feeling dry after wearing them.
A friend gifted me with a pair of these and I’ve never looked back. Their online price fluctuates quite a bit (ranging from $42 to $56 for 12 pairs over the last 3 years), but they check every box that I need: they dry fast, don’t make my hands smell, last a full month of heavy duty use at 6 days a week, go through the washing machine, good for wiping sweat off of my face, allow enough tactile dexterity that I can plant onion seeds one by one by feel, don’t cause my hands to dry out, plus they are reversible. Yes, for those moments where you are in a pinch and you suddenly have a hole on the finger pad that you use the most, you can switch gloves between hands and go on as if almost nothing has changed. Only expect to get an additional 2 weeks of use once you have flipped them, though.
Do y’all have a work glove experience that you would like to share?
