Hello everyone. Here's a topic practitioners of WMA can relate to, I imagine: getting hit on the fingers. It's helluva annoying. I practice the German school of longsword (currently focusing on Meyer), and I tend to get hit on the fingers every couple of weeks. It is true that when the for is correct, and when i do things properly, that does not happen. However, when it does, the punishment is disporportionate to the crime, especially in sparring. Thing is, when i get hit a couple of times, I become reluctant, so I get hit even more often. So, I decided i shall do everything i can to protect my fingers. So far, i have found two things that work:

One, sword with a ring on the guard. Works wonders in zwerch, for instance.

Second, good sparring gloves. Now, this is a problem... I've tried many gloves, but none of them were prefect. They either had the fingers insufficiently padded (leaon paul) or limited movement (mostly of the thumb, lacross gloves, for instance). So I decided to risk 60 eur (with postage), and see if this would work:

http://www.thetimeseller.com/product.aspx?p=2...11&l=2

When i first tried them on, I thought them pretty good for sparring, still not quite what i wanted, though. The protection seemed great, but the thumb was one-piece and a bit stiff. Still, I worked with them. With some effort, i could do all the strikes with them, though the thumb did give me a bit of a problem. The protection, however, was awesome. A very nice, useful detail is that the side of the index finger is also padded.

Now, here's the good part: it seems that, with use, the leather on the thumb softened up, so now it gives me almost no problem (have the gloves for less than 2 months), and the protection is still awesome. It happened once or twice that i got a direct hit, and though it still hurt a bit, the pain was gone in a minute and no finger was swollen or anything.

Now, the downsides: While most of the gloves are leather, the few in-between parts are simply covered with some cheap plastic-like material, which peels away after a few days. A cosmetic thing, but still a bit annoying.

The other thing is that one of the padded segments was not sown properly on one side, so the thread let loose. So far, it hasn't effected functionality, but I believe it will require some work in the future.

Still, these are by far the best swordsman gloves i've ever tried, though still not perfect. Close enough, though. I'd say I'd give them a 8,5/10

Any other glove recommendations?

I've been studying the WMA glove problem for a while and have even conducted some informal polls about where people are getting hit.

To make a very long story short, we found that most (80%) of the bad injuries (broken bones and smashed fingers), happened in four different areas of the hands. essentially the outside exposed fingers. The worst injuries in order of most frequent to least frequent were :

1) The thumb on the lead sword hand including the thumb metacarpal.
2) The forefinger on the lead sword hand.
3) The little finger on the lead hand including the metacarpal.
4) The last two finders on the rear hand including the pinkie metacarpal.

I too practice Meyer and value the need for good dexterity in order to execute some of the complex handworks. Therefore, I am playing with ideas of taping hardened protection to the areas above and wearing a lighter gloves over them. Right now I am splinting my finders with popsicle sticks with a method we call "Dutch Knuckles". This method was invented by Arnoet Stahlenberg (Netherlands) so he could fight with a injured hand at the World Open Championships in Germany last year. The splints disperse the force of the blow just enough to help prevent some of the injuries I usually get. While popsicle splints are certainly not the answer to our glove problems, it does help for now while we try to come up with a more standardized HEMA pro gear.

I've never tried the gloves you mentioned.

I haven't found any rally good gloves either. Depending och what type of sparring you do different ones may work well enough. When I've used shinais for sparring, most kinds of lacrosse gloves work just fine. For sparring with federschwert the ones with scales seem to work ok. I don't think there's a really good glove that fits WMA/HEMA. I know that Wilhelm Schütz (who is a member of this forum) is trying to make some good ones with kydex. Ask him.

How about a pair of well constructed Visby or belled cuff finger gauntlets? Would this restrict your mobility too much?

I'm interested to hear forum member's experience with historically accurate gauntlets as I have my first WMA class tonight and will need some form of hand protection eventually.

Gauntlets have to made with proper ergonomic understanding to give full mobility; it is certainly not enough to ape the shape of period hand protection. An example would be the classic 15th century Italian heavy cavalry gauntlet. It is typically concluded that, since the gauntlets made by MODERN smiths have limited mobility, the ORIGINALS could not work very well, either. But how would you know if you had never handled a real gauntlet?

I find the biggest injury in our salle is from pinky finger hits. I used to get them a lot but have since gotten fewer when use proper guard alignment and cutting angles.

I think you will never get the perfect glove. I've even seen injuries when using metal gauntlets so finger injuries will happen. My view is a good glove "deadens" the force of the blow but doesn't prevent the full force of the blow from the hit.

A couple of years back I participated in a longsword tourney here in Vancouver where a number of people suffered nasty hand injuries. In most of those injuries the people were wearing hockey or lacrosse gloves. It is my opinion that hockey or lacrosse gloves are not sufficient protection for longsword work where the hands are a legal and legitimate target.

My sword caused one of the injuries. The gentleman I was matched with was wearing nice steel body, arms and legs but was running hockey-gloves. He misjudged the target of my blow and blocked with his hands. My blow put him out of the tournament with an injured hand and rather destroyed my enjoyment of the event.

I use EGG gauntletshttp://www.eggarmor.net/index.html for full speed sparing. They are not a perfect solution being somewhat bulky and plastic but they are light, inexpensive and protective.
Mackenzie