Until recently all of my finishing has been with water-borne materials. I have been using disposable 8 mil nitrile gloves. They do a nice job for me. The 8 mil is even thick enough that I can re-use them a number of times.
On occasion I have used alcohol based dyes with DNA as the carrier, and shellac dissolved in DNA. The gloves work quite well.
However, I have had some special projects recently that required solvent-borne finishing products. The nitrile gloves protected my hands well during most of the process. However, during gun clean-up with lacquer thinner, I noticed that the gloves "stretch out" (are no longer tight around my fingers and hand) and I could feel the thinner penetrating my skin with a burning sensation. Of course, I stopped, removed the gloves, and flushed my hands with lots of water.
What I am wondering is what type of glove will better protect my skin from lacquer thinner? For what it is worth I am using MLC's Standard Lacquer Thinner. This stuff seems to be much more potent than what is available at the big box stores.
From contributor Ke
for cleaning guns etc, consider a thick pair of gloves similar to dish washing gloves. They have them at hardware stores made out of different materials. The back of the package tells you what solvents they are resistant to. these gloves are good to use when using stripping chemicals too. That stuff BURNS!
From contributor D
Look for chemical resistant gloves.
From contributor Da
For the slow thinners, which are a often mix of stuff (toluene, hexane, xylene, etc), it's hard to find stuff that works really well. This includes ml campbell's standard thinner (C160 36).
If you want disposable, the "silver shield" gloves from honeywell work, but are expensive as hell.
If you want non-disposable, as others say, compare a manufacturers glove resistance chart (they all have them) against the MSDS.
If you are using VOC exempt thinner, they are almost always just acetone, and you want either latex (disposable) or butyl rubber (not).
Latex is *much* better against acetone than nitrile. In most disposable latex gloves, you'll get about 10 minute breakthrough time (and often more).
The downside is if you have a latex allergy :)
butyl rubber does even better, but you really can't find disposable butyl gloves
