Gloves or no gloves when doing service?

Early in my career I never wore gloves when servicing anything. Later, when I got older and tired of having dirty hands all the time even after showering I would use cheap vinyl gloves when I serviced oil fired and soft coal units. Wow, what a difference, I would have relatively clean hands with little or no oil smell and little or no black coal dust in my pores. There was a time and place for gloves. That said, when doing some of the work where your hands needed the sensitivity of "touch" the gloves came off.

It varies with what I'm doing. I have rather fragile skin (one of the joys of being in one's eighth decade) so anything rough, gloves — leather work gloves. Particularly timber work or heavy mechanical stuff or machinery. Appropriate chemical gloves for handling odd nasties. Otherwise, bare hands…

Between grime, health hazards from chemicals, burns, and cuts leading to infections, gloves are a good idea if they don't get in the way of doing something necessary. Not too many opportunities to wash hands at most job sites.

I worked with many different types of paint and chemicals as a teenager without gloves before getting into a mostly office job the past 20+ years and the exposure from my youth is increasingly evident on the affected skin as I've aged. The damage from exposure to things doesn't always show up right away, but it is there.

They are great for things that are nearly impossible to clean off like epoxy or pvc cement or silicone and good for things that would be 5 minutes of scrubbing with paint thinner or hand cleaner like alkyd caulks or roof cement or greasy parts. the one thing I don't like so much with greasy parts is it is hard to make the transition from the dirty part to the part you've cleaned off and don't want to get dirt inside the bearings and such.

No gloves for me.

The gloves with sheetmetal is a really tough one because you need the gloves to protect your hands from severe cuts but you also need your fingers to hold things you can't hold with gloves.

Depends.

I won't work on a carburetor anymore without gloves. I hate my hands stinking for day. I won't touch anything that's gasoline, diesel / heating oil without disposable rubber gloves.

At the shop, some things we use gloves for but often gloves are viewed as a serious safety hazard, even deadly. So, depends on what you're doing and what you're working with.

@mattmia2 We often use Hyflex 11-818 gloves for sheetmetal work. You can hold the metal better with the gloves than without.

Nitrile gloves whenever I do oil burner work or when I have to use PVC glue and primer. Milwaukee gloves for when I have to do sheet metal work or crawl around a dirty crawl space.

For what it's worth, I had an ex who loved how rough and calloused my hands are. She said the soft hands were a major turn off.

A sawstop is a a table saw with a very fast brake on the blade that stops the blade if it contacts flesh through some sort of electrical detection.

I don't think gloves and a table saw are a good idea, Sawstop or not. if your finger gets too close to the blade, which it shouldn't, there is a chance the blade will grab the glove and pull your hand in.

BTW. https://www.sawstop.com/

Table saw, router, planer, jointer… that's what pushers and hold downs are for. I agree, gloves are not a good idea on those.

Chain saw? As I said — full PPE. Steel toe boots. Chaps or sawyer's pants Vest or jacket. Helmet. Mesh face guard. Safety glasses (if you can't see out of them, throw them away and get a new pair from the truck). Hearing protector. Gloves (heavy leather).

Mostly,I wear gloves. When I started in my career as an aircraft mechanic, like all mechanics of the era, I swam in jet engine oil. Nightly. Latex gloves were unheard of. One night I was curious about the oil (because the stains will not wash out of uniforms and we washed our own uniforms at home) and sent an empty can to my scientist brother and asked him if this oil was dangerous. He called me and said this stuff will enter your body through your skin and will attack your organs. It will also cause infertility.

Guess who doesn't have kids? So, yeah, I wear gloves and other PPE.