Poor man's cordovan?
If you look back to a blog post last year, you'll find one in where I mention making your own Hill style shooting glove. I exhibit a set of instructions that were originally published in the old Longbow Digest. Following those instructions and adjusting where needed to fit your fingers and hand will provide you with a Hill style glove that will last for years.
However, some people don't feel they're all that crafty. I think that personalizing your archery gear, whether it's making bowstrings, arrows, quivers, armor gloves can really help immerse yourself into the sport in a different way.
A good way to get a high quality glove without spending as much money as buying the top dollar gloves, is to buy a EW Bateman single layer glove for around $26.00 from E.W. or 3 Rivers Archery. Shoot with it for a few hundred shots or more and get a feel for how it may need to be modified in the fingerstalls to work better for you. Then go shopping... And make new fingerstalls by using the original glove stalls as a pattern.
Horween leather company offers a tanning called Chromexel. To my mind, it is a close second to shell cordovan without the price. It is a slick, slightly waxy leather with great durability and feels and shoots very much like a cordovan glove. You can purchase smaller leather panels from various sources... I buy from The Buckleguy. A piece that will make two sets of finger stalls, when added to the initial price of the cheaper glove, will give you shooting glove options for years at less than the price of a cordovan glove.
The lining leather, waxed thread, sewing needles, and plastic/nylon inserts can be sourced wherever you can find those items for as little as you want to spend.
But this post is to give a shout out to the Horween Chromexel leather for making shooting gloves, or just glove stalls.... It's just a grand leather for this use.
Shoot Straight
I was looking for Cordovan a while back and learned a lot about it in the process. One of it's flaws is that when making the shoes, it often cracked. The Cordovan that is generally available for tabs and such come from the shoe offcuts, which would tend to be more marginal as one got to the edge. Made me wonder, how on earth could most of that stuff in tabs be actual Cordovan? Plus I have handled Cordovan at archery shops and it did not look very different from a lot of other leathers. Must be, just surprised at the limitations in flexibility.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hpDO1W5-vY
How do I figure what size glove to order from Bateman?
ReplyDeleteIf you're using it for a pattern to eventually make your own fingerstalls, I'd err on the larger size. Some of the fit is trial and error
ReplyDeleteSo the size is based off of the finger stalls? On the tabs I use they are always mediums and I still cut them down. On the gloves I’ve tried mediums and even smalls fit my fingers well, they are just short from fingers to wrist strap.
DeleteThe size is based on overall hand size like buying a work glove. If you have large hands and thin fingers, you should buy the large or extra large for the length needed and then sew the fingerstalls tighter along the top seam to fit each finger. Once you've got that figured out, you can make new stalls the correct size if needed. The Bateman glove is more forgiving of hand length due to its design than other glove styles
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