Link: http://HarborFreightReviews.com/HFRreviews.html

Item: 5-Pair Black and Yellow Leather Work Gloves
Item number: 66291
Retail price: $9.99
Frequent sale price: $5.99 (with coupon)
Target price: $5.99
Item Link

We love our roping gloves reviewed earlier but for more serious work you need a more serious work glove, and Harbor Freight offers this heavier work glove in a very cheap 5-pack. That's right, this is a FIVE-pack that at our target price puts these gloves at just over a buck a pair. You'll pay that or more for cotton "work" gloves at the big box retailers and probably end up with cut and calloused fingers. But how good are they?

These medium-duty work gloves offer great hand protection for material handling and other manual work that would otherwise leave your hands cut, abraded, or calloused. They are medium-thick leather with a canvas back. This design keeps your hands a bit cooler but most importantly prevents the gloves from being overly stiff. You still get a decent feel for the piece you're handing, unlike full leather work gloves that are stiff and somewhat more tiring even to wear. Interestingly, your hands get rather 'dirty' in these gloves; some combination of the dye and/or dirt filters through the gloves to leave your hands dirty after working in these gloves for a while. Of course you're doing serious work when you don these gloves, so a little dirt is not bad to remind you that you were working hard. In contrast, our preference for an all-round work glove (roping gloves, click here to read our review) leaves your hands as clean as they were when inserted into the glove, so they're a much better choice for carrying in your vehicle for loading and for all but the heaviest yard work.

We rate these conservatively as medium-duty work gloves only because once you jump into the world of real work gloves some types get noticeably heavier. They're great hand protection for heavier jobs, but they don't keep your hands clean like our recommendation for light-duty work (click here to read our review of our favorite all-round work gloves).

At around a buck a pair even the frugal Harbor Freight customer can afford to trash a pair up now and then. This makes them great for 'dirty work' that might leave concrete, epoxy, or other building materials on the gloves. They're even inexpensive enough to loan a pair to your helper when handling plywood or other materials. (Don't volunteer what you paid for the gloves and they will be impressed that you thought of them.) And at this price, leaving them accidentally at the job or dropping them down a big hole is no real loss, just as long as you have another pair handy for replacement.

If you're working professionally with these gloves, expect to go through a pair a day. But just as it's nice to start each day in clean, fresh work clothes, at a buck-a-day you get to start with the feel of clean gloves as well. They may last longer even under heavy use, but keep your expectations low commensurate with their price and you won't be disappointed.

Bottom line: A great buy on medium-duty work gloves when purchased at our target price. The canvas back leaves them supple enough for most work, while the leather palm and fingers offer good protection.

Link: http://HarborFreightReviews.com/HFRreviews.html

Item: Roping Gloves
Item number: 35166
Retail price: $7.99
Frequent sale price: $4.99
Target price: $4.99 (drops to $3.99 with 20%-off coupon)
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I buy several pair of these gloves a year. They're my favorite all-round glove for working in the yard, moving equipment, and other general work around the home and shop. The fit is reasonably good and they generally wear well, although occasionally I get a pair that split at the seams prematurely. The leather is supple enough for a good sense of feel, providing just enough distance from your work piece to keep your hands clean and protected while providing a good sense of feel for what you're handling.

By working glove standards these are soft leather gloves. For anyone who has every owned a pair of Italian leather driving gloves, you know that "soft" is a relative term (there's that Einstein stuff again). But we're working men and women when here at Harbor Freight Reviews, so we'll call them "soft leather gloves" within this context.

Years ago I gave up that rough, working-man look (or more correctly, feel) for the softer, more gentile hands of a 'surgeon.' Nothing wrong with those well-earned calluses, it's just not my style anymore. (If you don't understand the difference, you need to shake hands with more ladies. Trust me, you'll figure it out quickly, especially if you're a big guy whom they expect to have big, rough hands.) Enter soft leather roping (AKA working) gloves: they keep the hands soft and uncallused yet they don't give that clumsy feeling that thicker, less supple leather gloves produce. Of course for real heavy work a heavier pair of gloves is demanded, but I personally seldom do really heavy work. Thus, these are my all-round favorite gloves and we enthusiastically recommend them to everybody. I have different pairs with various degrees of wear-and-tear for different applications -- the old, well-worn pair are delegated to yard work, while the new, clean pairs I keep in my vehicles for unexpected materials handling (e.g. lumber or plywood pick-up).

There are a lot of better quality roping gloves on the market. You'd generally expect to pay $20 to $30 for good-quality roping gloves. If you work as a laborer or other professional who needs this type of glove for continuous use, you may want to invest in a better quality glove. For those of us who only occasionally do manual work or do only light work, these are the gloves to buy saving a lot off the cost of better-quality roping gloves.

If you like splitters from handling plywood and those rough calluses from shoveling and raking, these gloves aren't for you. But once you discover that you don't have to trash-up your hands to do work, you'll not want to go back to roughing it. And then there's the ladies . . .

Bottom line: The best all-round glove for light work around the home or shop. Sold down-right cheap when on sale at Harbor Freight. You can even use a 20%-off coupon almost stealing a pair of these soft leather gloves for just $3.99!