Wearing Turning Gloves - A Spirited Discussion

Excerpts from The Messageboards

Dawn Adams asked: Does anyone here use a glove when turning. A large sized very sharp piece of wood flew off my blank the other day and stabbed my hand. Ouch! It was bleeding quite badly, so I put on a carving glove so I could finish turning my blank without blood getting everywhere (I could have taken the time to go upstairs and bandage it properly, but if I left the shop I may have gotten caught by chores needing to be done). I liked the way it felt turning with the glove on, but in the back of my mind I was very worried about catching the glove in the lathe. Could be dangerous. I have searched for posts on other boards and found varied responses (pros and cons for both sides).

George Troy: Yes, I use golf gloves for my left hand. I have been whacked before and stitches were needed on my hand. I believe if I had been wearing my golf glove I might have escaped with out injury. I keep all the fingers in my glove, I do not cut them off. I have seen demos at symposiums where the turner had them for both hands. Some turners also cut the glove fingers off. Not me.

Ken Oakley-Sunny St. Cloud, Fla: I have seen many really bad accidents involving gloves and spinning machinery. I would prefer cuts, slices, ripping, and piercing of flesh that can be repaired with stitches than some of the crippling damage done to fingers, hands, wrists, and arms when a glove gets caught on an object being spun by horse power forcing it to go from 800-1000 RPM or faster to zero RPM instantly. Long hair coming into contact with a spinning object can change your hairstyle in an instant also.

Maybe the fact that I started working with machinery 60+ years ago when gloves, long hair, loose clothing, finger rings were all no-no's make me old fashioned but I still have all digits, joints and appendages I started with 73 years ago.

Devon Palmer: Yeah, I wear either fingerless carpenter gloves or cycling gloves with Gel padding (helps with vibration, etc). I can only get a few months out of each pair as they get cut up, chewed up, and just worn out. They've saved the side of my wrist many a time from a sharp bowl edge. Good point on safety, though—usually only wear them for roughing out to limit the danger.

John Lucas: I will have to review my turning procedures. Years ago I wore gloves because I had the same problem with wood burning my hand or bark coming off and hitting my hand. I have turned 15 bowls in the last month all from rough stock and didn't even need a glove.

Here's what I think is the difference although I'm not 100 percent sure how I turned before. Okay, first I don't round the piece over by starting parallel to the bed and running back and forth to get the blank round. What I usually do now is start near the middle and true up the back working my way out toward the edge. I do this with the flute up rubbing the side of my side ground gouge. I try to get the gouge handle as low as possible so I'm getting a shearing cut which is a cleaner cut, safer and throws the shavings down and away from me.

As I start to round the bowl from bottom toward the rim I revert to a push cut with the flute pointing more or less to about 9 o'clock. To keep from getting beat to death by either hitting a large out of round area or low spots I anchor the tool with my left hand and pivot the tool in an arc. This allows me to take a very controlled cut that is never too big. This is the basic technique I use to get the blank round and roughly to shape.

I think what I used to do is push on the bevel. This made the tool bounce in the high and low spots and really wore me out. By doing the levering cut with a big bowl gouge with a long heavy handle I can take ½ to ¾" deep cuts and round off the bowl quite safely and quickly and haven't needed to wear a glove like I used to.

Not sure when or why I changed the way I was doing this. I know part of it was watching John Jordan demo. He was taking huge cuts and wasn't straining at all. I decided I was working too hard and there had to be a better way.

Darryl Hansen: When the bark is loose and/or the log dry I use a glove. The type they sell in boat stores as sailing gloves work very well. The tips of the fingers are off and the glove fits so tight I don't fear getting it caught. The Iron Clad gloves are also very tight and form-fitting and have non slip surfaces on the fingers.

Albertabob: I wear cheap utility gloves through most of the turning process and always during the sanding. Always have. You need to use due diligence with gloves just as you do with your bare hands. What possible advantage to your project accrues from burning your hands?

W.C. Turner: I always wear gloves. Could it be dangerous? Of course, but, so can crossing the street! Life in itself is dangerous. Woodturning, woodworking is inherently dangerous. You must exert diligence regardless of the undertaking.

JKJ in East TN: There was a recent discussion here about wearing gloves at the lathe. Try the Search. In an industrial setting, I've always been told that using gloves around rotating things was dangerous. I found and listed some cases in the thread of serious and fatal injuries.

JimQ: OSHA regulations forbid the use of gloves when working on lathes, because of the risk of snagging the fabric with a spinning splinter.

GeeSeaWhy: I sometimes wear a glove for roughing the outside of bowls. Once the blank is down to round, the glove comes off. I also keep a box of bandaids in the shop, just in case.

William Duffield, on the Cohansey: You've gotten excellent advise from those who warn you that gloves are exceedingly dangerous. You've also gotten opinions from some who continue to get away with wearing gloves. You have not gotten opinions from those who wore gloves but did not have good luck. They don't turn any more, or they don't type anymore. Some of them are dead, because the lathe started with the glove, proceeded to the hand, then the arm, and finally the rest of them. A Jet mini might bog down somewhere around the wrist, but you really need to develop safe habits before you graduate to a big lathe.

I don't make this stuff up.

LOML does safety professionally. A colleague was on a job site, doing some analysis of the company's machine guarding, and working with an operator of an industrial lathe. He turned away, turned back, and the operator was gone. The lathe snagged his hand, wrapped him around the spindle and killed him, instantly.

No gloves, no necktie, no long sleeves, no ring, no watch, no necklace, no iPod, no headphones, no pony tail, no handlebar moustache. I even tell the Benchdog, "no panting!" when he gets close to the lathe.

Albertabob: “A colleague was on a job site, doing some analysis of the company's machine guarding, and working with an operator of an industrial lathe. He turned away, turned back, and the operator was gone. The lathe snagged his hand, wrapped him around the spindle and killed him, instantly.”

Was he wearing a glove?

Was he distracted by the presence of a stranger?

There are so many factors that contribute to accidents. Proper technique and safety should be mandatory for hobbyists that want to enjoy using large machinery. Currently they are not and that produces the vast majority of problems.

I remember my basic training in the Army well enough to say that we are not all equal when it comes to dexterity, reflexes, and problem solving.

William Duffield, on the Cohansey: What's the point of your questions?

Assuming he had not been wearing a glove, is your implication that perhaps if he had been wearing a glove he would not have been pulled into the lathe?

Assuming that the distraction was a contributing factor to the accident, are you implying that one should only use a lathe when there is absolutely no possibility of distraction, real or imagined, from any source?

The point I was trying to make with this anecdote is that lathes are dangerous, and we should try to do whatever we can to mitigate that danger. In this case, the issue that got the safety person involved was machine guarding, which if it had been implemented according to the industrial standards for this machine, should have prevented the worker from getting the catch that killed him. Wood lathes used in non-commercial, non-industrial applications, do not have these government-mandated safeguards, so the user has to use some intelligence to protect him or herself.

Terry Daniel: Bill, I have been involved in designing high speed machines for a good part of my life. I have seen some pretty bad accidents and sadly some of these were because of safety guards. I have also grown up around old farm machinery with the long, flat belts driving saws and such with no guards and I still have all my fingers and limbs. I have nothing against safety guards when they are properly designed—unfortunately though, we now expect safety guards to protect us from everything and thus we have let our own guard down.

We must always be careful (and thoughtful) when working around any machine. I worry much more about a person wiping the toolrest with his fingers while the lathe is still rotating than I do about a person wearing a snug fitting pair of gloves. If a person does not do anything with the gloves on that he would not do if not wearing gloves then I don't see any possibility of him getting hurt because of having gloves on. Perhaps if one was to extend the jaws out of the chuck body and then grab the chuck while still spinning the gloves could get tangled in the jaws and pull the operator into the lathe? If this is the case that we are talking about then I would suggest that this operator switch to a treadle lathe which would be much safer for him. I am groping here but I just can't see any other way that a tight fitting pair of gloves could become a problem.

Wally Dickerman in AZ: Terry, I agree. I occasionally wear tight fitting golf gloves when a situation calls for it. Such as cutting dry wood when the tool and chips get hot, or when loose bark, etc. is apt to fly off the piece. My hand is always on the back side of the tool rest.

JKJ in East TN: “If a person does not do anything with the gloves on that he would not do if not wearing gloves then I don't see any possibility of him getting hurt because of having gloves on.”

This doesn't make sense to me. In my opinion: although touching the turned object with the bare hand might be uncomfortable or even painful, the threads of a cloth glove can get caught on the wood and in a flash pull on connected threads and then pull the entire hand around the rotating part. Given a strong enough motor and workpiece and the arm follows. Such accidents have been documented by the safety industry and are the reason for prohibiting gloves around rotating machinery when it is in operation. Of course you will not have an accident if you never get near or touch a spinning part, but who can guarantee that will never happen even unintentionally, let alone while tired or distracted. Consider the definition of the word accident.

Remember that people have lost fingers in their home workshops by polishing a piece on the lathe with a cloth with one end wrapped around the fingers. A demonstrator at our club described such an accident. This is why it is recommended to use paper towels or very tiny cloth squares instead of a larger cloth. Same thing with using steel wool on a turning part—it can catch in a flash (and is as strong as steel!)

A loose glove could certainly be a hazard if the hand comes near a part or machine component that protruded, such as a chuck. But whether a specific tightly fitting glove would catch on a piece of turning wood and cause an accident would depend also on factors including the surface roughness and frictional properties of even a smooth surface, which can change quickly. (for example, while applying friction polish)

Tight cloth gloves would help prevent the protrusion case but not the surface case. Unless the bundle comprising the threads across the entire width of the glove was weak enough to break, the hazard still exists with tightly fitting gloves (gloves made of paper towel material that would tear away would be much safer but I've never seen them).

There is a basic flaw with anecdotal evidence of a lifetime of method proving something safe—just one contrary case proves it wrong. Any one person may use gloves without an accident for his entire life, a flat worker might use table saws for a lifetime without guards, and three generations of farmers in one family might jump up and down on the post hole digger. The next guy might have a different experience.

Each person must evaluate the known or perceived risks and make his own decision. I personally take many risks in life but I am not willing to take that particular risk with my hands. Chopin and Liszt would certainly suffer on my piano with a few missing fingers on either hand. Of course, I probably wouldn't type such long and wordy messages then.

Russ Fairfield: Keep your fingers behind the tool rest when the wood is spinning. It won't make any difference whether you are wearing or not wearing a glove if your finger gets caught between the wood and the toolrest.