It took me a long time to warm up to the idea of using gloves regularly in the woods. I just thought my hands were tough enough, I hadn’t had a ton of problems with injuries or cuts on my hands, why should I wear gloves?
Well, there’s a lot of great reasons why you should wear gloves! It sure makes processing wood for a fire a lot faster, it does protect your hands (even if they’re tough) from getting poked, cut and covered in sap and dirt. Wearing gloves when you’re chopping, cutting and breaking sticks can help protect you from getting cut. (please don’t be stupid though they aren’t force fields) And yeah, sure you can handle getting a scrape or two when you’re close to first aid supplies or home or whatever, but what about when you’re not? What if you’re in a survival situation? It’s better to be smart about your safety than proud. Plus even a small cut can be a real pain in the butt if it’s on your hand. Ever been cut between your fingers or gashed the middle of your palm? It sucks!
Anywho, I’m sure most of y’all are smart and don’t need to be told gloves are a good idea, but what ones do you wear? I have really fallen in love with my Ironclad gloves – not because the brand is anything super special, but there are a few key features of these particular gloves that I really like.
Hands down, my favorite feature of these gloves is the spandexy material between the fingers. I hate gloves that take away my dexterity, and the spandex material allows for you to manipulate tools and objects much easier than a bulky leather glove. The gloves still have nice leather palms and finger tips, so the area of your hand that is touching what your working with is protected.
Another cool feature these gloves have is on the thumb there is a terry cloth for section, which is handy for wiping sweat or boogies away. Not essential, but handy. Even if you aren’t wiping something from your face, the terry cloth material to brush your face with is nicer than scratchy leather.
And of course, the palm of the glove is entirely leather, and it’s soft and flexible. Perfect for general bushcrafty things. If you’re going to go be a lumberjack out in the woods, by all means, go for an all leather glove, but I think for the casual woodsy person who wants to protect their hands and still use their knives/axes/saws/other tools easily these gloves are the bomb.
And that’s about it! I can whip up fire material real quick, put together a shelter and do whatever woodsy things I want to with these guys. Could even have the dexterity to fire my gun if I needed to while wearing these, which makes me happy. I don’t want to have to tell a bear to hold on while I take off my bulky gloves so I can shoot it.
You can get gloves like this on amazon, or if you have an awesome hardware store in your town, a lot of them stock this brand.
Until next time – Peace out!
