No Glove....No Bicycle Love?

[razinhellcustomz]

Typing a little slower this evening but I'll get through it -

I want to ask you guys what glove(s) you wear for your bicycle work?

For years I have been washing my hands 20x a day and never really getting clean, countless scraped knuckles, cuts etc etc etc.

This past week I experienced the first "debilitating" consequence of this gloveless habit I have nurtured.
It started mid week with what felt like a splinter-like pain in my thumb but for the life of me I couldn't see anything there.
Over the course of a few days of "powering through" my left-hand thumb had become badly infected and was spreading unfortunately.

I spent most of yesterday dealing with doctors and it is slowly improving with their advice and I appreciate it but now I need to think about tomorrow.

What kind of gloves to do you use? I have and have had so many styles of glove all with their own drawbacks.
Oil reacts very badly to most synthetic gloves, leather gloves offer me no digit mobility.

Any suggestions? Thanks guys, happy tinkering.

Well for the most part , being i was an Army mechanic for over 21+ years we never had to use gloves so i guess this doesn't help much. But i guess if i had to use any thing Nitrile and the rubber lined gloves when i worked at Ariens pretty much sucked the bag, so i'm like you and go COMMANDO... Good luck... Wrench Onn... Razin..

 

[Dbike]

I use the examination gloves which doctors use. Very thin. A lot easier than trying to get grease and oil off my hands!

 

[SirMike1983]

I keep three types of gloves in the shop: all-purpose cleaning gloves, heavy-duty paint stripping gloves, and gripper/work gloves.

For very fine dexterity work, I don't wear gloves. Sometimes you have to clean a small screw or work with parts that require fine manipulation where gloves get in the way. I do the work and wash up as needed afterward.

For general cleaning of parts where dexterity is not an issue, I use cleaning/kitchen type rubber gloves. It isn't the end of the world if you get some WD-40 or Evaporust or weak Oxaxlic Acid on your hands. But it's nice not to have to wash off all the oil, or deal with residue on the hands.

For work with more caustic chemicals, I use heavy-duty paint stripping type gloves. This is the big one. If you get a substance on your hands and you quickly begin to feel it burning or blistering, you need gloves. The chemicals I can think of here are paint stripper, Naval Jelly, brake cleaner, oven cleaner, etc.

Then there are the gripper/workman's gloves. I use these when I'm working with the Dremel brush or wire wheel and I need something to grip the part, and I don't want the wire wheel biting into my hand. It's tempting to cut corners and just take the part over to the bench grinder and start on it with the wire wheel, but if there is any doubt about working with the part, take the time to put on gloves. The wire wheel can very quickly chew up your finger tips.

 

[mike j]

These are, hands down, my all time favorites. Sorry for the bad photo. A case just arrived today, they were tough to get during the height of covid. Fit really nice, I can do most things with them, fairly chemical resistant. I trick that I use when gloves aren't readily available is slather my hands w/ liquid hand soap, rub it in good, let dry, work, then rinse after. Gets rid of a good amount of the gook.

 

[Barnegatbicycles]

I use callused hands. Esp at work because no matter what gloves I have they are getting destroyed.

However, if I'm using chemicals i use dish gloves. I've had the same cheapish set for over 5 years and I like them because you can reuse them instead of going through a bunch. Also when using steel wool they dont just get torn up in 5 seconds and you end up with a metal splinter anyway.

Just be sure to still wipe your hands. I had a guy work with me that always wore gloves his hands were clean but everything else was nasty, Esp tools. I guess when you can't feel the grease you don't have a constant want to wipe your hands.

 

[Rivnut]

I have had very good luck with the nitril gloves from harbor freight. They are quite heavy duty but not so much you lose touch. They are a decent price and while other places had no gloves last year they always seemed to have them. The large fits my hand perfectly. I noticed that Hdeephole(Home depot) used to carry the grease monkey black nitril. Great gloves ,good price ,nice fit, different sizes. Sounds like a great product for consumers I'm sure that is why they discontinued them and brought in a bunch of C-r-a-p

I use the Harbor Freight mitral gloves as well. The blue 7mm ones on the bikes and the black 9mm ones on the cars. I’ve not tried picking up a dime with them but you do get a nice feel with them, especially for the small nuts and washers. Prices have come back down since Covid-19 has been de-escalating.

 

[OldSkipTooth]