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New gloves for stage crew work

So I volunteer with a family community theater company. I'm usually in charge of stage crew for our main productions.

In the past, I have used regular work gloves from Home Depot for picking up and moving large sets, as well as using the fly-rail system to bring in our ariel sets.

The problem is a pair of gloves rarely lasts more than a show or 2. Plus, I lose tons of dexterity as they are too thick. The palms get shredded from using the fly-rail system.

This time, I decided to get a pair that were designed for handling ropes:
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They are actually intended for K9 handling. The palms are kevlar-lined.

I can't wait for tech week.
 
Nice! They look a lot like the gloves I have for State Emergency Service, which are also mostly used for using ropes- we have a tendency to need to lower ourselves from cliffs.
 
After as in shredded? I might have one of my more shredded pairs still around. I am really hoping that these ones don't as badly.

adrian, it wouldn't surprise me. 5.11 makes great gear. While I am not in Search & Rescue, Military, or Police, I have some of their stuff, because it's durable for what I need it to do. Plus, it's a great company.
 
I love 5.11 gear. Although when it comes to gloves, I usually stick with Mechanix. Nothing beats the durability/dexterity of Mechanix.

Still though, nice purchase. Those'll be great.
 

Toothpick

Needs milk and a bidet!
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I mean before and after on these new gloves. to see how well they hold up compared to your last gloves that only last 2 shows.
 
I never wore gloves flying or rigging, I couldn't feel my spike marks with them on. Having said that until you developed calluses in the correct place the hemp sliver removal process was interesting. The only times we wore gloves was packing or unpacking of the trucks.
 
I actually prefer no gloves, except that we only have 2 shows per year. After tech week and 7 performances, we are off for 5-7 months. By the time I start to get callouses, the show is over, and they have sloughed off in a week or so.

Luckily, both theaters we use have either black or white, synthetic rope. We use a spike tape that is a high contrast to the rope (either very light or very dark), and we have some lighting over our fly rail.
 
There are many styles of work gloves available now. I grew uo using the old White Mule split leather gloves, like a railroad engineer. Hrdware stores ns big box retailers have all kinds of more rugged, better fitting gloves these days tailored to specific jobs. Nice that you help with the community theatre.
 
I haven't used any 5.11 gloves, but most of their other gear is fairly nice.

My favorite gloves are made by Ringers. They make great and durable gloves.
 
I didn't know 5.11 made gloves, I'll have to check those out. How's the fit? Wide, narrow? I've got paddle hands and the only ones I've found that are wide enough and not too long are Firm Grips.
 
Mil-Surp/Emergency Services gloves tend to be the way to go. Bear in mind, anything will shred it just depends on how much 'doing' it will take. I have a pair of nomex gloves (aramid-- same family as kevlar, but less cut resistant and more fire retardant) that I managed to shred doing who knows what. Yet at the same time I have a pair of $10 home cheapos that I have used on MVAs and for rolling hose no issue.

Just be careful about getting too confident about the protection. With the cheapo ones, I am careful where I stick my hands. With the nomex ones, its easy to get that 'invincible' feeling... until a piece of glass results in a trip to the ER to get some stitches...

Again I've never worked theater... but I figure my application is probably just as demanding on gloves, so hopefully my insight is helpful.
 
I use the Kevlar mechanics gloves and mine still end up shredded but I work with lots of sharp metal and metal threads so they get torn up pretty fast.
 
We did about half of our hanging load-in today. Lots of rope work, and not everything was balanced, since we were just getting it up in the air.

These gloves rock. MUCH better dexterity. The Kevlar provides an AMAZING grip on the ropes. I love it!
 
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