Have you ever found the perfect work glove? Let me take a guess and say the answer is no. OK, that was a little easy because we all know the perfect work glove doesn’t exist. Sure gloves protect your hands, but you lose dexterity when you wear work gloves.
However, we shouldn’t let this stop us from using gloves. Who wants to deal with a small piece of metal stuck in their hand all day. What about if something drops on your hand? Sure it won’t stop your hand from getting crushed, but it will stop it from a bunch of cuts from the day to day material we handle on a job site. So yes, a work glove can hinder our work, but it can also help protect.
Today’s work glove technology has changed. We have new materials and new machines that make the gloves. They now fit the contour of a worker’s hands. In addition, we have a better understanding of safety and work gloves.
The two biggest material changes are the use of Teflon and Kevlar. These materials can take a better beating than the traditional leather gloves. So does this mean the leather gloves are dead? Well no, even the leather gloves have made changes. They are double stitched with Kevlar fibers instead of cotton fibers They no longer have the seems at the end of the fingertips, so you know can actually feel your work, plus the leather actually takes the beating and not the stitching. Gloves can now be a lot thinner, but provide more protection than the old thick work gloves.
The newer gloves are designed using AutoCAD systems that actually fit a contractors hand. They now have different sizes of gloves. Yes, it is worth an extra couple of dollars to get a better pair of gloves. After all, this is your hand we are talking about, don’t be cheap! Some work gloves are too thick to provide dexterity for grabbing small objects. There are thin gloves that have reinforcement in the fingers for jobs that might need a little more protection. Some gloves have more padding in the palm for people who pick up items all day long. Depending on the job you are performing, you can now find the right type of work glove.
My point is you shouldn’t just own one pair of work gloves. A work glove is like a tool. There is a right time wrong time for certain gloves. If your gloves are getting in the way, you are probably wearing the wrong gloves.
Today there is no excuse for not wearing work gloves. If you are performing a job and the gloves don’t feel right, then you probably have the wrong type of gloves.