What to look for in Welding Gloves

Welding gloves.

There are many different types of welding gloves to choose from.
First I’d just like to reiterate, why even bother getting weld gloves? Won’t my leather work gloves be fine for just a quick weld? In short, no. When you’re welding you are dealing with extreme amounts of heat and a lot of variables, a few simple settings being a little off and/or low quality materials can cause molten metal to splash everywhere while you are welding. I’ve learned this myself the hard way by wearing work gloves to do a hard weld and having a popcorn kernel sized piece of molten medal fall in-between my glove and my hand severely burning me and scarring my hand for life. This could have easily been prevented by simply wearing welding specific gloves with the longer sleeves.  So now that we know that we definitely want welding gloves, how am a supposed to choose a pair from the plethora of options? You may be tempted to just go to your local harbor freight or Walmart and buy the cheapest option they have, which though better than nothing are low quality, and in my experience the Stitching begins to come undone after a bit of use which can be very dangerous, especially if you’re not aware of it. These types of gloves are also not size specific and quite bulky so you’re sacrificing a lot of dexterity. 

I’d recommend something that has different size options so you can get a tight dexterous fit. On the subject of dexterity there are many different thicknesses and materials that affect this quite a lot, gloves are going to have different thicknesses depending on what you’re doing (tig/mig specific gloves) Obviously the hotter welding you are dealing with the thicker gloves you will need. As far as material goes there are a lot of different variations of leather, higher quality gloves will have a more supple leather which again helps with dexterity as well as comfort.
Another cool material I’ve had the pleasure of trying is Kevlar. Leather gloves lined with kevlar can provide a nice breathable puncture resistant insulator.
 

As a recap welding gloves are a must.
Higher quality size specific gloves are highly recommended. And buy the right glove for your application.