HF rant about their Nitrile gloves..

The fingertips are the thickest part of the glove, and the wrist is the thinnest. Gloves should be rated for thickness at the palm.

You also get what you pay for, but as far as gloves go, COVID blew that rule apart.

I tried their heavy black 9 mil gloves. No powder, and I can barely get XL over my hands if there's any humidity in the air. Chemical resistance is good and they are tough against stretch tears, but if you get a pinch or puncture they split open as easily as a 3 mil glove. The 7 mil gloves from Lowe's with the lizard texture are 10x better overall for every other reason. At only $2-3 a box price difference, I'll be sticking with them from now on.
 
Yeah, wanted the 26x22 single bank box, now up to $359.99, used to be a lot less. They have a "deal" where you pay $29.99 for the Inside Track club, and you can buy it for $329.99. Saves me 1 cent, what a deal. Not enough of a deal to make me buy, plus I get the bonus of endless email!
 
pontiac428 said:
Gloves should be rated for thickness at the palm.
Click to expand...
Since you appear to have some knowledge of this, is there an industry standard or national standard for glove measurement points and thickness? Could you supply a reference or URL? Just wondering about it, not going to set up my own manufacturing line! It's fascinating to experience the very wide experience base embodied by all of the HM membership. Always learn something interesting here.

There's no doubt that HF sells off beat or not quite up to snuff stuff, along with (very) occasional good stuff. And one generally gets what one pays for...

ps. That Pakistani huge gear making video was amazing in a lot of ways. I wouldn't be wearing flip flops there...
 
Not just hf these days. I find I can go to the store and by a name brand and it’s not the same as the last same item at the same store. same store, same brand, same box, but it’s been cheapened in one way or another that just makes it junk.

Seems like the “race to the bottom” has only picked up speed these days…
 
That's manufacturing-displaced capitalism for you. Since profits must be maximized and extracted at every step, every middle man, every part of the logistics train, through distribution to retail, the business is pushing the limits of what you'll open your wallet for and doing a damn fine job of gaslighting the process... We can't make gloves domestically for under $30 a box retail, so the chinese sell us their leftovers (since we are left with little choice at any price point) for $25, and that's what we get- we don't contribute enough profit to deserve quality products. Today's quality guarantee is "caveat emptor", which is as ridiculous as social darwinism. In other words, you're on your own bub, if you want quality you have to make it worth the capitalist racketeers' while. Else you accept the status quo of junk carp at low, low prices. I'm just waiting for the dollar store to change their name to the ten dollar store. The populous won't know the difference, and if they did, there's nothing anyone can do about it.
 
WobblyHand said:
Since you appear to have some knowledge of this, is there an industry standard or national standard for glove measurement points and thickness? Could you supply a reference or URL? Just wondering about it, not going to set up my own manufacturing line! It's fascinating to experience the very wide experience base embodied by all of the HM membership. Always learn something interesting here.

There's no doubt that HF sells off beat or not quite up to snuff stuff, along with (very) occasional good stuff. And one generally gets what one pays for...

ps. That Pakistani huge gear making video was amazing in a lot of ways. I wouldn't be wearing flip flops there...
Click to expand...
Wobbly, it's your lucky day. I do have the ASTM and ANSI standards on exactly that. Additionally I have the testing standards protocols and bound books of compatibility and chemical breakthrough charts. I use these references on the regular in writing my reports, and I can go way down in the weeds on the subject. Like, to a level of detail that begins to blur the lines between good hygiene practice and ALARA (as low as reasonably attainable) to zero-tolerance, where any amount of exposure is unacceptable unless it is zero. Whether you're handling a chemical warfare nerve agent like VX or a tube of Prep H, I can certainly tell you more than you would ever want to know about selecting gloves.

BUT... I have all that expensive documentation on my computer at work. I'm in the field this week on second shift auditing the lead (Pb) program and engineering controls at a world-class 30,000 sq ft indoor firing range for the squids and grunts, but by the end of the week I can post some good attachments to this thread on skin/hand protection.
 
so I just measured where they broke. 2mil.
The very tip is 5mil, it doesn't go to the first knuckle back from the tip, it drops to 3.5 by the time it reaches that knuckle.
So in my mind, it's not 5mil, they can call it a standard if the tip is 5mil, but what good is it if the entire finger isn't 5mil.
And it often rips right where it did, at 2mil. BS.
20230208_144854.jpg
 
woodchucker said:
so I just measured where they broke. 2mil.
The very tip is 5mil, it doesn't go to the first knuckle back from the tip, it drops to 3.5 by the time it reaches that knuckle.
So in my mind, it's not 5mil, they can call it a standard if the tip is 5mil, but what good is it if the entire finger isn't 5mil.
And it often rips right where it did, at 2mil. BS.
View attachment 436755
Click to expand...
I'm not apologizing for HF gloves by any means. In the old days (pre-Covid) the HF gloves were cheap and serviceable, but not great. I ripped many of the old 5 mil gloves. I can't tell if the standards (for HF) have reduced over time. It would surprise me at all, since that seems to be the trend - racing to the bottom by making the most unserviceable stuff possible.

From what little I have read, gloves are dipped and the finger tips are naturally thicker than the rest. It seems we may have to wait a bit for @pontiac428 to access the relevant standards, but I was hoping to see if there were actual standards for gloves. Not so much the chemical compatibility, or permeability which I found a bit of information on, but more for how (exactly) and where they are physically measured.

I found some references online that talked about the glove industry moving away from this "standard" (which I don't even know what it was!) to simple total weight. To me, total weight is a bogus standard as it doesn't really help the average consumer, who are being sold gloves by their thickness! To me, what is important is the material first, then the minimum glove thickness, and the finger thickness. Minimum thickness is sort of a proxy for durability, at least for that material, and finger thickness, gives you an idea about dexterity.

It's a sad state of affairs when gloves (or whatever) are not fit for purpose. And it's pitiful to think that society has degraded to earlier times, where every item must be analyzed, measured and weighed to determine if it's real or counterfeit, substandard or dangerous. Caveat emptor indeed. We haven't progressed since Roman times. What a sad state of affairs. That's my rant, on top of yours...
 
At least the Romans didn't have to support a bureaucracy with taxes that is supposed to create standards and enforce them in the name of "consumer protection" but doesn't.
 
When the gloves are manufactured (you can find video clips of this on YT), the material flows with gravity toward the fingertips, so they are never even. But those transparent spots tell another story... a story of cut corners and a lack of concern for the wearer's health and safety.

I'd double up the gloves (a common practice) and junk the outer layers as they need replacing. Probably okay for dirty automotive work, but when the paints and chems come out, use the better gloves.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top