Leather Palm Guard

I had a steel roof installed on my house this Spring and after noticing the roofers wrapping their palms with Duct tape to protect them from sharp edges, I thought I could make something quick and simple to protect the palms of their hands. I have a few bags of leather scraps that I purchased at Michaels Crafts store. In it are many small but usable pieces of thick leather.

I found at a thrift store a few years ago a tool box that was labeled Sail Making tools. In it was this palm guard needle pushing tool. It's a piece of leather that wraps around ones hand with a rawhide piece and a metal disk for pushing the needle through the heavy sail cloth.

I traced the sail palm guard onto a piece of paper, then expanded it to cover the rest of the palm.

Then I traced the outline of my new pattern on a piece of the heavy leather.

I cut the leather out using a pair of heavy duty scissors.

I then punched some holes as you can see in the picture.

The piece that wraps around the thumb I riveted using the rivets shown. In other ones that I made I just used a short piece of rawhide lace to attach it, This has the added benefit of making the thumb hole adjustable for larger hands.

The strap that goes around the back of the hand I used a button snap, but in later ones I used rawhide lace as well which makes the back part adjustable.

Here it is, the finished guard. I ended up making three of them for the guys that roofed my house, they thought, to coin an old phrase " the greatest thing since sliced bread". The palm guard really protected their palm well and they were really appreciative and doing something like this buys a lot of good will as well.

They would come in handy for any job or task that involves repetitive use of your hands, like raking, shoveling, chopping wood, hammering nails, the uses are up to ones imagination.