The best forestry gloves
After a fair bit of time in the industry, and plenty of gloves tested, we think it is time to share our findings and let you know what we think are the best forestry gloves.
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First, we would like to mention the main jobs we are carrying out because there are so many branches (sorry for the pun) in forestry. This article will focus on the best forestry gloves for planting trees, knocking-in stakes, hand-weeding and tying tubes. Spraying is a whole different story and has legal requirements on which gloves are used for spraying.
Most of the gloves we use are general outdoor gloves or gardening gloves, but we have a few cheeky tricks up our sleeves depending on the weather.
General Work Gloves
So we usually use these:
The best part about these forestry gloves is that the back is almost knit-like. It is breathable which you really need no matter what the weather. They let water/sweat out and believe me you want that. The other side (the palm side) of the forestry glove is covered with a flexible rubber/plastic mix. This makes the gloves tougher and protects you hand when doing some of the more physical jobs in forestry.
When we are knocking- in stakes we need to have a good grip on the knocker… otherwise you could end up with a nasty injury if your hand slips. Take the example below, one of our employees slipped while knocking in stakes and almost lost the top of his finger. Gruesome.
The harder side also allows for hitting in plastic tubes so that they seal into the ground. Often a good tap on the top knocks them in enough to protect the trees from any animals crawling under for a nibble.
The harder side also gives your fingers a good grip on cable ties when you are tubing up trees in forestry.
We actually bulk buy these gloves as they go like hot-cakes. There is nothing better for morale than starting back up after lunch with a new pair of gloves on.
Medical Gloves
We quite often using a general forestry glove with a medical glove underneath. We have a reason for this!
- On cold and wet days this prevents the freezing water from reaching your skin. You will get a bit sweaty but how cold your hands can actually get on cold days is unbearable. We always have medical gloves and think that layering them with the general gloves makes the best forestry gloves combination.
- On days that it is hot or you are spraying you can use powdered gloves to try and soak up some of the sweat. It doesn’t always work (I poured out sweat from my gloves on site last week and it disgusted the whole team) but the majority of the time it does. We have even gone as far as adding extra talc to help keep us dry.
Lighter Gloves
We do use some similar gloves to those general forestry gloves, but they are a much lighter version. We use these for the same tasks but usually on warmer days, or they are good for those who find pulling the cable ties too hard with think gloves on. The whole idea of the glove is the same but each part of it is much thinner.
We go through a whole load of these too. Some people just enjoy the more ‘fitted’ feel these gloves give. The first kind can be bulky and it can be hard to use your fingers in them, if that kind of thing annoys you then the thinner ones are better. Just remember, thinner usually means colder and I can confirm that your hands will be much colder in this type of glove. We typically avoid these on snowy or cold and wet jobs.
