Falconry Glove - Functional Yet Fashionable

My wife loves the idea of Falconry.

I love my wife.

Therefore, through the transitive law of marriage, I too love the idea of falconry.

Throughout the last few months she has researched and studied countless books to prepare herself for the journey into the world of hunting birds. I think the idea is cool, but don’t quite share that level of dedication. For our last anniversary however, I encouraged her excitement by creating her a custom Falconry glove.

Why does one need a falconry glove?

Well, hawks are pokey and hands are soft. If you would like to maintain the structural integrity of your hand skin then a glove is required.

Perhaps if you are a masochist, or really into infections then you would enjoy handling animals bare handed, but most of us would like some protection.

Additionally, the glove acts as a harness to keep your bird attached to you when it isn’t flying.

Plus, they look pretty bad ass.

Armed with this knowledge I began construction.

Supplies

I used:

Welding glove that fit my wife

A larger welding glove

1’’ steel D ring or O ring

Thread

Chicago screws

Leather paint

Stencil material

Step 1: Tiny Welders Unite!

My wife has small hands and she could probably fit both of hers into one of my welding gloves. I called around and found that Roberts Oxygen (local supplier) had female welding gloves and I grabbed up a pair. Bonus was they were BRIGHT blue which I knew my wife would like.

Step 2: Regular Sized Welders... Prepare to Separate

Get a second “normal sized” welding glove. Harbor freight has them for stupid cheap and they work fine, plus they’re going to be getting cut up anyhow. These were bronzish colored so I ended up with a two tone glove that had the Harry Potter Ravenclaw color scheme… Super unplanned bonus for my wife!

Flip the glove inside out and tear out all the heat resistant insulation stuff, you won’t need it.

Step 3: Add Some Fashion

I worked up some falconry inspired designs to see if I could trick my wife into thinking it was purchased from a falconry shop. Next I traced the designs onto a sticky backed label material and stuck it to the glove (you can see I used a pair of my tan gloves for a trial first)

Using some gray leather paint from Michaels that matched the gray stitching of the glove I painted over the stencil.

It ended up better than I expected.

Step 4: Insurance Against Blood and Cussing

I’ve read that plenty of falconers use welding gloves and likely one welding glove would be sufficient, but in the interest of my wife not getting blood on her anniversary present and cussing me I decided a second layer of leather was good insurance. You don’t really need a second layer over the entire hand since the birds just chill on the top. Plus, this makes the glove two toned and more fashionable at all the Falconry get togethers.

Originally, I had planned to sew scrap leather I had into a second layer but the bigger gloves were just so inexpensive and already glove shaped that I couldn’t resist. So, that’s the route I went.

Cut the top layer of the big glove off including the trigger finger and middle finger plus a strip about 2-3’’ wide of the entire top. Roll the edges over and stitch them down (leather doesn’t fray but it looks better this way)

Now you are going to layer this new two fingered glovish thing overtop of the smaller glove. Line them up so it all looks good and either stich the two together, glue them, rivet them, grommet, or use Chicago screws to keep them from separating.

Step 5: One Ring to Rule the Bird

All falconry gloves have a ring to connect the jess/leash to when the bird is on the glove. The simplest way of connecting in my design was to loop it inside the two layers and run a Chicago screw through it. You could also sew it on using scrap leather from the second glove.