Good gloves

They sell these as gardening gloves around here - I buy them all the time,

I agree that they are great gloves, but they dont last if you wash them in a machine. The coating softens and stops being so closely bonded to the cotton

I have acquired a fine collection of pink pairs which none of the blokes on site would be seen dead in ... there are advantages to being a female builder

Anna

I like Kevlar gloves, which are similar, but provide good cut protection as well.

Colin Bignell

How well do they stand up to handling blocks? I'm looking for a pair that will take more than 1/2 a days dry stone walling before a hole appears in the finger or thumb tips.

They are the standard you see used on building sites round here that enforce H&S. One pair with me survived cutting out a large hole in a brick wall for a bigger window and all the associated re-building so certainly not a too big expense. I use them for 'our' rigging work too - much better than the leather ones.

I prefer chrome leather welding gloves. As chosen by Clarkson, J. for use when stoking boilers.

Fine for lifting blocks - but not so good for using tools.

Wonder if the make-up girl who applied the 'soot' was sat among the coals?

I'll use riggers gloves for tools, depending on the type of tool.

Heh. I'm astounded they could get a cameraman, sound recordist and what looked like five blokes actually needed to run the train on the footplate. I noticed that Clarkson only did a tiny bit of shovelling, I doubt that he actually shovelled 6 tonnes of coal.

I doubt it as well apart from the physical effort firing a steam loco is quite a skilled job. It may be a small hole but the grate behind it is quite big (50 sq ft in the spec that's somthing 5' wide and 10' long...) and you need to keep it burning all over not just a little bit by the door.

I might have to give 'em a go. Handling sandstone and limestone lumps non-stop for a few hours is quite hard on gloves.

I use a cheap pair of gardening gloves but in the wet you do end up with damp hands. I can see these dipped things been better at being water proof and easier to clean the s*it (literally) off.

Impossible to shovel 6 tonnes of coal unless you do it daily.

I belive te record is 30 tonnes of ballast by an Irish Navvy.

As a summer job I used to work in a cotton mill shovelling 6 to 20 tonnes of wet cotton per day. It takes about a week or doing it 8 hours per day to get into it.

Hell. Although some of the blokes I used to work with were Irish Navvies so I can believe it.

The message from The Natural Philosopher contains these words:

I was under the impression that back in the days of steam the standard footplate crew was driver and fireman.

It is a very long time since I shovelled any quantity of coal. (I spent a weekend shifting 20 tons up to a mountaineering club hut in my Landrover with very little assistance circa 1970). However ISTR that it is harder to shovel than ballast particularly when you don't have a smooth surface to shovel it off. Clarkson of course would have had a tender floor to shovel off but he doesn't look the type to relish physical exercise.

My experience with ballast is rather more recent. I have just spread 66 tonnes of crushed limestone over my access track and yard, nominally 2" deep but in places rather deeper where the underlying surface was uneven. It took me the best part of 3 days to deal with each 20 tonne load. Depends what you do with it but I think even Clarkson could manage

The message from "Dave Liquorice" contains these words:

I have been using the Ultimate Riggers gloves for some years now. I find they perform much better with gritstone than the cheap gloves which have been known to wear out almost instantly. Like all leather gloves they go hard when they dry out after getting wet so I try to avoid getting the newer pairs wet.

They're also cheaper - if you buy them at the right place - than most gardening gloves. So a win win situation as our pal dribble would say.

Of course not. He's an actor. You could count on the fingers of half a hand the ones who are actually proficient at the things they portray.

The message from "Dave Plowman (News)" contains these words:

I thought Clarkson was supposed to be a journalist.

As to actors just the occasional one might be competent. A couple come to mind. Richard Todd; ok so he couldn't fly a Lancaster but ISTR that he came very close to playing his army officer self in one or more of the D Day epics he was in. And then there was Audie Murphy, allegedly the most decorated American soldier of WW2, who did play himself.

Badly.

Same difference.

Well most of his age would have been in the army, etc.

Standing on a box most of the time. Allegedly.

So that's two...