Kevlar or Chainmail gloves?

UKworkshop.co.uk

Help Support UKworkshop.co.uk:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

wizer

Established Member
Joined
3 Mar 2005
Messages
15,589
Reaction score
1
Never heard of woodworkers wearing these. Are they feasible? I have seen it stated that you should not use Chainmail with machinery. I don't think Kevlar is strong enough for woodworking machinery is it? Interested in your views.
 
Wearing gloves is not a good idea unless you are using them to protect your hands from the material. And then with extreem caution.
 
I saw a program about people using chain mail suits to swim with sharks - I thought of you and exactly the same thing !

but thinking about it more - I have my doubts.

Butchers use a chainmail glove I think

be interesting to see what others think
 
If you are thinking in terms of using armored gloves near rotating machinery to protect your fingers then just stop and reflect which you would rather loose, some Skin, possibly a Finger or a Hand, Arm etc.

A glove may stop a butchers knife or cleaver from doing serious damage but that cutter has only the horsepower of the butches other arm to drive it.
A powered machine will just do its best to swallow the obstruction, after all it has been designed to overcome the odd difficult bit of timber or whatever gets thrust at it.

A chain saw can still do some serious damage to a leg or hand whilst it is chewing into kevlar trousers, gloves etc. hopefully it chokes on a mouthful of hard to digest fabric before it manages to start on the bones or wrenches itself from the grip of the operator that's all.

A workshop machine has all the inertia of the cast iron base, workshop floor, or heavy workbench to hang onto whilst it tests it's horsepower output figures.
 
CHJ":1ivzbv1s said:
A workshop machine has all the inertia of the cast iron base, workshop floor, or heavy workbench to hang onto whilst it tests it's horsepower output figures.

I think that's the key really - doesn't bear thinking about really. Chainmail gloves are great for butchers and carvers, I've used Kevlar gloves on site for handlng flight cases - metal splinters are really unpleasant - but I wouldn't want to be manipulating anything near machinery with gloves on. Having said that machinery's just nasty anyway- you don't need it you know. Back away from the router table. :)

Cheers Mike
 
Wizer,
I just realised why its you asking.

Say you had been wearing gloves in your recent nasty accident; the cutter would have snagged the glove and it would have been your whole arm dragged in there.

In engineering workshops using gloves near rotating shafts is a cardinal sin.

Person protective equipment is alway last control measure & not a very good one at that.

Guards & distance are much more reliable
 
Wizer, heed what the others say...


As a previous career butcher, and having used them the mail gloves are designed to stop a small/slow inertia stabbing punture wound ie knife, and in some cases animal bites, but against a fast spinning rotary device as lurker? said "would have been your whole arm"...but saying that they may have some use in bench work using chisels and suchlike, but personally i would nt push my luck anymore than I had too
 
lurker":avnlv9az said:
Wizer,
I just realised why its you asking.

Say you had been wearing gloves in your recent nasty accident; the cutter would have snagged the glove and it would have been your whole arm dragged in there.

In engineering workshops using gloves near rotating shafts is a cardinal sin.

I do know of a case of a bunch of engineers coming into work in the morning to find the body of one of their collegues who had been working late being dragged around the shaft of a large metalworking pillar drill, all because his sleeve had got caught up.
 
Tusses":1208w0rp said:
I saw a program about people using chain mail suits to swim with sharks - I thought of you and exactly the same thing !

but thinking about it more - I have my doubts.

Butchers use a chainmail glove I think

be interesting to see what others think

I think that using chainmail suits to swim with sharks is wrong on so many different levels.

Firstly the weight, if anything goes wrong you are going to sink, and a full suit of chainmail will weight about a lot even if you make it out of something lighter than iron.

Secondly the protection provided by chainmail is all about stopping slashing cuts, which is why it was used against swords and axes. Chain is rubbish against crushing or piercing forces (which is pretty much what the bite from a shark is going to be).

You still need a thick layer of padding under chain or you end up with intact skin and broken bones.
 
Having seen the effects of a hand being dragged into cutters by cotton gloves I would think that something even tougher would result in even more damage to a limb.
Remember WiZer that chain mail does not protect from crush injuries and when used in warfare was normally worn over thick felt or leather to resist blows from Hammers, Morning Stars and other blunt instruments.

Roy.
 
frugal wrote
Chain is rubbish against crushing or piercing forces (which is pretty much what the bite from a shark is going to be).

I understand what your saying Frugal, but I have been on the receiving end of more than a few of those misjudged slips, and I still have all my fingers thanks to chainmail :D
however I did state that chainmail is only good for slow inertia stabs/slashes and in some cases animal bites, I`m not talking several thousand pounds of crushing bite exerted from the jaws of a shark, but I have known animal welfare officers use them in an unknown situation with dogs and the like.
As for the peircing aspect , they are still functional to a point (no pun) as the point of a knife widens along the length of the blade, so the actual aperature of the individual chain link acts as a collar denying all but the very point of the knife, yes you probably have a small wound, but no trip to A&E as a result..
the reason arrows can peirce chainmail is the fact they are not slow inertia weapons ie lets say a 2oz head on the arrow travelling at 40-50 mph (cant do the math :oops: but Im sure one of you engineering chappies will :D ) turns out to but a pretty hard stab..Sorry if this bit sounds like grannies and eggs :lol:
 
Fortunately I never had to cope with such an incident but one of the gallery of 'don't do it' pictures that used to circulate was the resulting mess of a conscientious workshop cleaner who wore gloves to clean up hazardous swarf from around the machinists to reduce the trip hazard.

He decided to help out even more by removing the swarf from a milling machine bed whilst it was still cutting. He apparently walked into the supervisors office minus his dust coat and most of his arm because the designer of the machine had not allowed enough clearance for his body to wrap around the horizontal spindle.

A tungsten tipped Circular saw blade or Router cutter will quite happily cut though steel, who hasn't rued the day they didn't check for hidden nails or screws, it may suffer a few chips but it won't care in the least about it.
 
By the time of the classical engagement at Agincourt Neil the English archers had got all that sussed out and chain mail, if you could afford it, was by now two layers thick.
The archers countered that with the Bodkin point. It was long, square in section and thicker at the shaft end than the shaft.
This meant that the point had a good chance of of passing clean through the mail links, and as the shaft was smaller the shaft's inertia carried on pushing it.
The point was socketed and not a particularly tight fit so pulling the shaft would normally leave the point inside the wound.
This happened to the 'Black Prince', he was saved by a device made especially for the job that had two spoon ends that were open and closed by a thread. It was pushed into the wound then opened to pass either side of the point then wound closed then withdrawn taking the point with it.
Infection was prevented by plugging the initial wound with Honey then sealing the wound after wards with more honey. He survived to the age of 45.
 
Digit":duurhih2 said:
By the time of the classical engagement at Agincourt Neil the English archers had got all that sussed out and chain mail, if you could afford it, was by now two layers thick.
The archers countered that with the Bodkin point. It was long, square in section and thicker at the shaft end than the shaft.
This meant that the point had a good chance of of passing clean through the mail links, and as the shaft was smaller the shaft's inertia carried on pushing it.
The point was socketed and not a particularly tight fit so pulling the shaft would normally leave the point inside the wound.
This happened to the 'Black Prince', he was saved by a device made especially for the job that had two spoon ends that were open and closed by a thread. It was pushed into the wound then opened to pass either side of the point then wound closed then withdrawn taking the point with it.
Infection was prevented by plugging the initial wound with Honey then sealing the wound after wards with more honey. He survived to the age of 45.

And he did all this when he was 16. He spent several days with a stick packed in linen and honey stuck in his face to keep the wound open whilst they made the little tool. Nothing but brandy and poppy to dull they pain as they changed it every few hours... Character forming ;)

The change from Type 16 to short bodkin to long bodkin to balista bodkin as the armour changed fom leather to chain to double linked chain to plate is one of the best examples of the arms race ;)

We did have one guy come up to us at an event and claim that his chain shirt was so good we could not piece it. He even challenged us to shoot at him whilst he was wearing it. We conviced him to let us try it with just the chain shirt hanging on the boss first. After we put several arrows all the way through his nice new chain, he went a bit white, then red then away ;)
 
So I'm not alone in being a student of history Frugal?
That's nice, gets a bit lonely otherwise!
The trouble with history is that it is a record of steadily improving methods for killing each other I fear.

Roy.
 
Back
Top