Leather Working Gloves Common Uses, Types and Qualities
Leather Gloves Common Uses
Common uses for gloves may be during sports such as handball, football, baseball and cycling. But also during other activities such as driving, gardening or bar keeping they can be very useful. Gloves also provide protection from occupational hazards.
Leather Working Gloves Types
Type is the most important factor in choosing leather working gloves. The main type of these work gloves includes cowhide, deer, goatskin and pigskin leather. Most of Working Gloves are manufactured by the following types of leather.
Cowhide Leather
Cowhide is one of the cheapest leathers used to manufacture leather working gloves due to its easy availability, comfort and strength. Specially, it is good for dexterity, stability, elasticity, cut resistance, and puncture resistance. Cowhide keeps hands warm. It dries inflexible when it gets wet, becoming stiff and losing its elasticity.
Pigskin Leather
Pigskin Leather is soft and flexible, which makes a glove that is more spongy, more relaxed and resistant to humidity, but not quite as warm as cowhide Leather. High lanolin content keeps this leather soft which does not dry out and crack after getting wet. Pigskin is an cost-effective alternative to cowhide, offering more dexterity and breathability with superior flexibility. Pigskin leather is very durable and provides the greatest scratch resistance of cowhide, goatskin, and deerskin.
Goatskin leather
Goatskin leather is very easy and elastic that retains its elasticity after getting damp. It has the highest organic lanolin ratio, which makes it a Goatskin offers the improved dexterity, elasticity, and breathability of pigskin over cowhide, but does not offer the resilience. Scratch and puncture resistance are almost same as cowhide, while goatskin does not provide as much guard from the cold as cowhide.
Deerskin leather
Deerskin leather is extremely lenient and flexible, offering very good dexterity and excellent pliability. Deerskin gloves do not harden after getting wet repeatedly. Flexibility also causes them to easily lose their form with irregular wear. Deerskin gloves are best for ease, but sacrifice durability, scratch and puncture resistance. Deerskin glove breathability is partial, like cowhide, and they provide less guard from the cold, similar to goatskin and pigskin leather gloves.
Leather Industrial Gloves Qualities
Leather types are further categorized by cuts or splits on leather which offer different levels of quality.
Top / Full Grain leather
Full-Grain, also called top-grain leather, is the finest raw material including the outer water-resistant skin which provides a heavier, more long-lasting glove with greater scratch and puncture resistance.
Split leather
Split leather is acquired by splitting the bumpier interior side of the skin (drop split) from the supportive external part (grain) yielding a softer and more flexible glove with greater dexterity. Split leather can be further categorized into 3 types, subject to which part of the animal the hide is cut:
1.Side split leather is the most durable and uniform split because of its high fiber density. It is made by splitting the hide in half along the backbone
2.Shoulder split leather is taken from the neck and shoulder of the animal and provides scratch resistance in a more cost-effective leather.
3.Belly split leather is from the underside or belly of the animal and is less reliable in texture and presence, but the most economical type of split leather.
