HEMA Gear: Gloves (2026 Update)
Please note: the opinions stated in these posts are my personal views, and don’t necessarily reflect official club recommendations or even a consensus at our club. Take them with a grain of salt!
My interest in gloves is first and foremost aimed at longsword fencing. Having a safe and reliable heavy glove for longsword is always going to be my first priority because Masterless is at its core a longsword group. However, I’ve also been very interested in finding gloves for other weapons, such as saber, sidesword, and rapier.
The truth is, regardless of weapon choice, there’s really no perfect HEMA glove. It’s a bit of a bummer, because the hands are among the most common and vulnerable targets in fencing, right up there with the legs and head. Mostly the issues I’ve seen with gloves have to do with durability, maintainability, and their ability to fail gracefully. The best gloves maintain their protective capacity late into their lifespans, are easily fixable at home, and do a good job at keeping you safe even in the event of failure.
I’ll cover the major pieces that I’ve used, encountered, and had hopes for here.
Sparring Gloves Infinities with Hourglass Cuff
Halfway through 2025, I switched from SG Mittens (reviewed below) to SG Infinities. I’ve been using them for fencing with longsword, messer, saber, sword-and-buckler, and even some sidesword for the past year, including at SoCal Swordfight 2026.
I love these gloves, but they’re probably not for everyone. I’ll start with the negatives.
First and foremost, these gloves require constant repair. Repairs fall into two categories: dealing with failures of the inner soft gloves, and replacing or re-tightening screws.
The inner glove is quite flimsy -- mine started to wear through in places within the first three months of use. The ball of the thumb, particularly the right thumb, and the pads of the middle and ring fingers wore through the quickest. I’ve dealt with this mostly by taping over the openings with hockey stick tape, which requires replacing every couple of weeks. I don’t get the feeling that the glove fabric is strong enough to handle darning with thread very well. I’ve also discovered that moisture seems to be a major factor in the durability of the interior glove. The Infinities don’t dry out particularly well after a sweaty sparring session, and prolonged wetness seems to make the glove more susceptible to wear. I purchased a glove dryer, and have found that trying the gloves out thoroughly between practices has improved their durability a lot.
Then the screws. Ugh, the screws. They come loose constantly, requiring re-tightening. They also fall out occasionally. I purchased a baggie of 100 replacement screws from a local screw supplier to keep in my bag. At about $7, it wasn’t expensive, but having to replace a screw once every couple of weeks isn’t exactly ideal. I could probably loctite each screw to extend the period between each replacement, but I haven’t, probably because I’m just lazy. The other consideration is that it’s easy to over-tighten the screws and rip the screw housing out of its cordura backing, which sits under the plastic plates. Overall, an annoying, fiddly process that requires constant attention.
The other thing I’ll say about these gloves is that they’re probably not great for beginners, since in theory the protection they offer is perhaps a bit less than what a mitten would provide -- impact to a single finger being generally felt more than if it were made to a mitten plate. I’ve also had the skin of my finger pinched once or twice by strange interplays of the finger plates.
Another thing: where the back-of-hand plate meets the heel of the palm, the coverage is good, but the shape and rigidity of the plastic can interfere with the grip on some sword hilts. For example, I use a Krieger Guardian arming sword for sword and buckler, and I can’t really grip this sword hilt fully with anything like a “hammer grip,” because the glove plates get in the way. This forces me to “post” my grip of the sword a bit more, or in other words, seat the pommel directly in my palm, or at least closer to my palm than a full grip would call for. I have actually come to like the “post” grip better, as I think it is a more mobile grip that’s useful for a wider variety of fencing situations, but some people probably wouldn’t like it, and some tournaments (such as e.g. Wine Country Sword Crush) disallow “posting” explicitly. The glove plates can also interfere with the grip on weapons with a complex hilt, such as a saber knucklebow or bell guard.
Finally, the texture of the inner glove tends to become slippery when soaked with sweat. Since adopting the Infinities, I’ve started dropping my sword a lot more. Part of this is probably also that the independent flexibility of the fingers means that my hand isn’t quite as locked in to a LEGO-like grip as it would be with mittens, but the texture of the inner glove is certainly a factor.
On to the positives.
I love the thumb on these gloves. It provides great protection while allowing me to use a variety of grips. For example, the “backstrap” grip on a saber, wherein the thumb rests on the backstrap rather than around the side of the handle: this grip is comparatively very difficult to achieve with SG Mittens due to the design of the thumb on those gloves.
I also like the flexibility and feel of my fingers moving independently. Contrary to what you hear a lot in old-school HEMA circles, I don’t actually think that five-finger gloves offer any functional advantage over mittens, but to a large extent glove preference comes down to feel, or vibes, and I’ve come to like the comparative lower rigidity of grip that the Infinities afford generally. As noted above, this lack of rigidity is probably a major contributor to me dropping my sword a lot lately, but honestly I’m not mad about it.
And, although I’ve complained a lot above about the constant repairs these gloves require, it’s good that they are repairable, and without any specialized tools beyond an allen key, as well as without requiring any real crafting ability.
Finally, I would be remiss to not discuss protection. I initially bought these gloves lightly used from a clubmate because I had been stabbed almost completely through my hand -- the tip of a Sigi King went in through my thumb webbing and nearly out the bottom of my palm -- while wearing SG mittens, and I was looking for a glove with a bit better protection in this area. While I don’t think an injury like that could never happen with the Infinities, I do think it’s less likely. In all other respects, the protection these gloves afford has been great. I took one bad hit to the thumb while fighting with messer that turned my nail purple, but I think it was one of those “perfect hits” you see people sustain with any glove. Generally I’ve been very happy with the protection on the Infinities.
As my current pair of Infinities continues to wear, I’m considering what heavy glove to buy next. Infinities are a strong contender.
Sparring Gloves Mittens with Hourglass Cuff
These are the longsword gloves I used for a long time. I bought them a few months ahead of IFG Spring Fling 2023, and was initially unsure about them because I had been using soft leather gloves (yikes!) exclusively, andthe SGs felt comparatively very stiff. I initially felt like I couldn’t get the correct grip on my sword and couldn’t correctly perform guards like ochs/finestra.
So, it’s important to note that these gloves do have a long break-in period before they become reasonably flexible -- one to three months, to be moderately precise. But once I got used to them, I came to love them for their execution of the trade-off between protection and mobility that I mentioned above.
They are protective, but they have a major flaw, which is that they don’t cover the webbing of the thumb very well -- the spot where the base of the thumb and forefinger meet. About a year ago I took a pretty gnarly injury while wearing these gloves: I was stabbed through the top of the thumb webbing, down into my palm and almost completely through. This was normal sparring with a normal longsword with a spatulated tip. I had been wearing nitrile-coated gardening gloves as undergloves, and they did basically nothing to prevent the injury. Before moving to the SG infinities, I added additional protection by wearing an 800N MOF glove on each hand underneath the SG Mitten. This is a big improvement to the protection of these gloves, but adds about $150 to the price tag. I used to be pretty content with the protection of the SG mittens, but my enthusiasm has been abated quite a bit by my injury.
Being made of Styrogum, glue, and elastic cord, these gloves are exceedingly durable. There are no rivets to break or hard plastic plates to crack. All materials hold up well under sustained punishment. The two main issues with these gloves’ durability, as I see it, have to do with quirks of manufacturing.
First, the elastic cord that the gloves ship with is very prone to breakage. It’s thin and very much exposed to strikes from a sword, and it will break fairly quickly -- within the first three months of use, probably. The upside to this is that the cordage can all be replaced very easily by more robust material. I have been using 1/8” marine-grade shock cord wherever replacements have been needed (eventually everywhere), and this much more durable cord has worked incredibly well. Note that square knots will not work with this kind of elastic cord -- it will come untied because of the stretchiness -- so I’ve been using a knot called a Zeppelin Bend, and I haven’t had any of these knots come loose. IMO, if SGs started using this kind of elastic cord right off the bat, these gloves would be a no-brainer from a durability perspective.
The second issue that I’ve experienced with SGs is that the styrogum on the upper, interior side of the cuff tends to split just behind the thumb. I believe this is simply a design defect that they haven’t caught yet, and expect that they’ll eventually figure out how to remediate this. In the meantime, I’ve managed the splitting with a combination of glue and additional lacing. This solution is not particularly elegant or pretty, but it has kept my gloves functional far past the point when the glove cuff would have otherwise come apart, and doesn’t look to be failing anytime soon.
A final, minor issue that I’ve experienced is that the fabric covering the interior surface of my fingers of my left hand was eventually (after about a year) worn through by regular contact with the faceted pommel of my sword. This is an issue with the durability of the fabric material, and my solution was to glue matching pieces of cotton duck fabric to both the interior and exterior of the original, worn-through fabric, and this has worked well as a fix. I have to suspect that there are more durable fabric choices out there, and I think it’s another area where the glove design could be improved.
As I see it, the main competitor to Sparring Gloves, in terms of function, cost, and reputation, are HF Armory Black Knights, and whereas BKs can be tricky to repair when they fail, SGs do not have this problem that I have seen.
One more thing: I purchased mySparring Gloves at a size up from what would be “best fit.” My hands fit snugly inside a size L, but I use the XL. This was initially just based on my best guess about what I would need based on my hand size, but I’ve since come to the opinion that the larger sized glove both increases the mobility of my grip on the sword by not restricting my hand quite as much, and creates “standoff” between the styrogum and my hand, making for less pain from direct hits than I would otherwise experience with a tighter-fitting glove. The downside to using a larger size is that my thumb tends to slip out of the glove unless I apply a 1/2” wide band of tape to the thumbpiece to increase the surface area of the thumb enclosure. This is a trade-off that seems acceptable to me, but others may dislike the idea of having to modify the gloves they just paid $250 for, so your mileage may vary with this advice.
I’ve recently bought a second pair of these gloves because I like them so much. They’re not perfect, but IMO with a few tweaks in their design they could be very, very close. I look forward to seeing how the Sparring Gloves company adapts their products to feedback from the growing HEMA community.
Overall, due to the above-mentioned protection problem these gloves have over the thumb webbing, I have a hard time recommending these gloves anymore to anyone who is reasonably risk-averse. We’ve seen similar injuries in the past couple of years to the webbing of the thumb and forefinger to fencers wearing the SG mittens, though none as serious as mine, and I’m just not sure that having to buy 800N-rated MOF gloves is really a great answer to that problem.
HF Armory Black Knights
Ok, I have not personally used theHF Armory Black Knights extensively, I don’t own a pair. But I have watched several members of our club use them regularly, so I’m going to give my opinion regardless.
From my perspective, these gloves are great -- you can’t go wrong with them. They are reasonably priced for heavy HEMA gloves, they offer great protection, and they are reasonably durable.
But! But. When they fail, it kinda sucks, because in many cases self-repairs aren’t really possible; you have to send them back for a return. And I’ve seen many pairs of these gloves fail in the last year. Whether it’s the thumb plate popping off because of an unlucky thrust, or a cuff rivet snapping, or the leather underglove tearing, issues with these gloves seem to be common -- at least as common as any other glove.
I’ve heard some rumors that it was just one batch of gloves from the manufacturer that suffered manufacturing defects -- that because my clubmates all bought their gloves within six months of one another, they all got the same bad batch. That could very well be the case.
It should be said that HF as a company has been very willing to replace broken gloves under warranty. Still though, if your glove breaks, you have to go through the trouble of sending it back for an exchange, to say nothing of the question of what you do in the moment when your glove no longer functions. One of my clubmates experienced a breakage during an eliminations match at SoCal this year -- he had had the foresight to bring a spare set of gloves, and was able to continue fighting, but without the spares he could have lost an opportunity to progress in the event.
The bottom line is thatBlack Knights have earned their reputation as one of the best options in the sport, but watching people use them has not convinced me to switch from my Sparring Gloves. I continue to be open to having my mind changed.
These gloves continue to be our official club loaner and recommendation for new folks, despite the tendency of the thumb cap to break.
Thokk Weaponmasters
I had just ordered a pair of Thokks when I originally wrote this post, and had not used them extensively at that time. In the 1.5-2 years since, I’ve had a lot of opportunities to use these gloves.
My primary use case for them is for rapier — both single rapier and rapier-and-dagger. For this weapon system, I have no basis for comparison — Thokks are all I’ve used. And I’ve been very happy with them. They provide great protection for the back of the hand and to a lesser extent the fingers — though I use a Sigi rapier with cup hilt, so my fingers are generally not exposed.
The durability of the exterior of the glove has been great — in addition to standing up to wear and tear from regular sparring and tournament use, they bang around in my fencing bag constantly and at this time show no signs of impending failure. There have been little bits of yellow foam that have come out of the gloves’ interior, but overall this doesn’t seem to affect the gloves’ protection or mobility overmuch.
The one downside to these gloves is that they are bulky. Fitting my gloved hand into my rapier hilt is not “difficult,” but it doesn’t take no effort either. Some of the people I fence with regularly dislike the Thokks because of thier bulk, especially those who have been fencing rapier for a long time.
For me, hand safety is the number one priority, and I have learned to fence rapier using Thokks from the beginning, so it’s an easy choice. For weapons with complex hilts like rapier and sidesword, my personal take is that there’s no better glove currently on the market.
Other Mentions
High Guards
Purpleheart releasedthe High Guard glove this year. It seems to be intended to fit into the glove niche that Red Dragons once occupied, somewhere between motorcycle gloves and heavy longsword gloves. As far as I can tell, they are manufactured by SupFen as an inexpensive emulation (though an unfaithful one) of Thokk Weaponmasters -- many of the design principles, such as interior finger caps and a plate on the back of the hand, are similar.
I ordered a pair of High Guards when they came out, as did a few other people in the Eugene fencing community, and I did not feel at that time that the glove was quality. I had issues with the material and construction quality of the glove, as well as the fit. The clubs in the area that trialed these gloves have all since abandoned them for gloves that provide either better protection or better grip and feel.
I see the High Guards as the budget alternative to Thokks for light weapons like rapier. I haven’t cared for the fit, feel, or construction quality, and frankly wouldn’t use them for anything except possibly rapier, smallsword, or rattan. I don’t think the High Guards have enough protection for any weapon that uses lots of cuts, and I’m skeptical of their puncture resistance. Their durability has also been lacking -- the backplates and cuffs of all four of the pairs I’ve seen in our community have quickly cracked from regular use.
Pro Gauntlet
In case you haven’t heard,Pro Gauntlet discontinued their gloves in mid-2023, and then promptly went out of business. It’s too bad, because although they had their problems, mostly relating to maintainability, the Pro Gauntlets seemed to have a lot of potential for iteration and improvement.
I did not own a pair, but one of our members did, so I got to see them in action. They seemed to strike a really nice balance between protection and mobility, and could even be used with finger-loop blades -- although the forefinger tended to get “locked in” by the hard plastic. However, the gloves’ use of many tiny, fragile elastic loops certainly seemed to be their major flaw. The loops were constantly breaking, requiring regular replacement, and the company was very slow to issue or even sell replacements.
Being no longer available, the Pro Gauntlet is a bit of a moot point now, but it would have been nice to see what they could have done with a longer runway and a few more iterations. Maybe we’ll see someone try something similar in the next few years.
SPES Lobsters
I would be remiss not to mention theSPES Lobsters. My impression is that these are a bit of an “old guard” heavy longsword glove, but they are similar in both price point and availability to the Sparring Gloves Mittens and the HF Black Knights. We do have some members that ordered and used these early on, but most, if not all of those folks have switched to the HF Black Knights, because of the BKs’ slimmer profile and better reputation for protection.
However, theSPES Lobsters, especially the new v3, still seem like a totally viable choice for anyone looking for a heavy longsword glove. The few new pairs we see in our club are bulky but relatively lightweight, and the improved thumb design looks at least pretty protective.
My personal opinion would be to reach for Black Knights before SPES Lobsters, but I would still use these gloves if neither of the others were available.
HF Saber Gloves
Despite having ordered aSigi Basic Saber (the type with no knucklebow), I purchased theHF Saber Gloves because I had decided on a whim to compete in the Saber event atSoCal this year. SoCal providesBlackfencer 1796 sabers to all competitors, and I knew that these did have a knucklebow, and that my XL Sparring Glove Mittens would not fit inside them.
There are some folks in the Eugene HEMA community who use these saber gloves for longsword fencing, and I think that is an incredibly risky proposition.
The major issue with these gloves is that the thumb lacks any hard plastic protection. I did use them as-is for Saber Tier C at SoCal without any injuries, but have since taken a couple of painful strikes on the thumb that has led me to discontinue using them with my Sigi Basic Saber in favor of my Sparring Gloves Mittens. It would be possible to insert a hard cap into the thumb pocket, and I’m a bit surprised that that isn’t part of the native glove design.
I’ve also used theHF Saber Gloves for rapier and sidesword, sacrificing the finger-loop grip I might get from a lighter leather glove for the better protection that these Saber gloves offer. This inferior grip definitely affects my fencing abilities with these weapons, but I’m generally unwilling to assume the risk of a serious injury to my hands that fencing with light leather gloves would require.
Overall, I think these gloves are good for use with saber, but they should be augmented by a hard thumb cap. They are very much a niche, specialized glove, and do not have a ton of value for other weapons.
Other Resources
My clubmate and fellow club officer Frank Torkel maintains an incredibly thorough and up-to-date review of the many other gloves he has tried out. Check out hisLongsword Buying Guide and other great gear and fencing articles at fechtclub.com