http://www.revivalclothing.com/catpages/cat_paddedgloves.htm

anyone seen or heard anything about these? why black or red? cant anyone have a natural color?

worth the 40 bucks?

They're a little heavier duty than typical padded fencing gloves, but not much more. They're good for things such as shinai, or for drilling with heavier weapons that might accidently bump your hands harder than you'd like. They're not good for full speed bouting with anything much heavier than a shinai, though.

They're excellent for rapier, as I get the occassional cut to the back of the hand in which case the padding is nice, but at the same time they're light and flexible enough not to impede the movement of the fingers.

They won't help much if you get smacked by a wooden waster either. I think I tossed mine after the first day at practice.

ah ok hehehe if ther eno good with wood then steel would be right out? heheheh

Well padded mitens will do; We use mittens with 3-4 layers of woolen carpet as padding...
alternately, you can use hardened leather, stitched to gloves, with one or two layers of carpet underneath.
You can also make a miten shaped padding, and stitch it to a regular glove.

I've been wondering about these gloves for a while, too.

What about for full-force, full-contact sparring with padded weapons (such as those used by ARMA)? Would you judge these gloves to be sufficient, or lacking?

We've had good experiences with these for our aluminum longswords. They work great for light, incidental hits, and after we've been playing for a few months we tend to expose our hands a lot less. :)

Hands are fragile. My group has been inactive for two months. The instructor broke two knuckles performing a rehearsed drill with wasters when a very respected and internationally well known counterpart that did not perform their part as expected.

Another point on the gloves I recieved, they were ordered and recieved marked as "Large". They were in fact too tight for all adults, women and male alike. This could have been a fluke, but I would be prepared to order extra large and return them if they turned out too loose rather than repeat the mistake of ordering the large size for a very average adult hand.

When it comes to sparring gloves, the DIY ones are often better than the commercially avialiable ones. Especially as you can tailor them to your individual needs.
Our gloves are mostly linen over layered wool, with a leather inside, similar to Kendo kote. They can be made solid enough to allow steel sparring, with hand hits.

If you are looking for gloves fit for harder sparring, lacrosse gloves are a pretty good choice.

No "appropriate" look at all, but very good protection and far less movement restriction than plate gauntlets.
ProLax has some pretty good ones. Just give it a try.