Brians Opt1k 9.0 Glove

[ArdeFIN]

Started this glove as it seemed to be only a dismantle - see through - back together project with nothing stellar to happen and do.

Just a minor rip on the jenpros that are an easy fix when the glove is dismantled into pieces.

Then the findings from the inside are some mis-matching on the break

Interesting build with half of the lacing hidden inside. Yes it keeps the palm area nice and clean but also lets the jenpro to greate a sort bubble underneath.

Ecopro foam I assume covering everything from thumb to wrist area. That slide in the middle is awkward and just doesn't fit in there. But isn't anything that couldn't be made better.

This was interesting structure as usually the plastic is up to the cuff or cut off at the cuff curve. Propably a build I'm not going to do in the same way as the plastic is really difficult to mold into shapes used here. Also the bent edges that make the plastic stiffer have been broken as they usually do. Similar effects on Bauer and CCM gloves atleast.

So this simple open and learn experiment just got into normal scale of repairs.

The filth gathered inside the glove is once again disgusting.  The original color of the fabric is revealed from under the lacing. Even the nylon lace is in the same brown color and infused with the smell. 

So basic measures of cleaning the gear. First of is the 24 hour bath in cold tap water and some vinegar. About 2% mix if you wan't to know. Some mixing in between for a few times and then a good hand wash with some sport detergent. 

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One picture of the marinated vinegar soup. After this bath I rinsed everything for three different pure water sets until the water stayed pretty clear. Then I added a "whitening" dirt remover cloth detergent (Oxy clean might be close to that) and let it soak for few hours. After that I used some classic hand wash skills. Then again three times of rinse with water until clear. At this point the inner fabrics were still brownish so I just thought I'm not in a hurry with this one and added a sport detergent and let it soak for over night. Then again the hand wash with and old tooth brush to clean the small disclosures and all and then excessive rinse for so long that the water stays clear. Takes a lot of time and effort but now the glove is clean and fresh again and you can feel it when the glove is ready. 

After all the washing and drying process I started to look the parts through. First notification is that the felt on this glove is super thin, soft and airy. I would say it's 4mm thick but it's a bit of a quess since it really is soft.

The structural lacing has been somewhat off from where it should've been and that is why there are a lot of wrinkles here. Part of the reasons the glove wasn't closing really well. Closed but it felt like it wasn't willing to.

 

The felt layer was a lot out of place too what was already visible on the dismantling picture. Brians has made some cuts to the break line they designed the glove to operate at. Atleast for my hand it isn't there at all and from wrinkles on all layers it seems that none(?) of the previous owners were able to use the glove on that way. The liner is on the picture to show a straight line and the glove has been closing on the seam next to liner which propably has led into a bit stiffer operation too as the glove was supposed to bend only a little on that line.

Then I measured the holes comparing the felt and palm jenpro. There were slight offset but not much and a lot less than I expected which was good. Black dots simulate the holes on jenpro. One hole is somehow not there at all right at the heel area.

Then I settled the felt over and marked one of the holes with a paracord needle to hold things on place. The thumb area goes quite far off the edge but that is a normal thing to happen thumb is actually located at over the line of holes. In this design there is no holes on the jenpro so problems here!

But eh, how can I check that the holes would match each other as there is a mismatch on the amount of them at the heel area?

And then I tried to figure out how they should be aligned to get even close. Or to get some idea where I need to punch a few new holes. Geez!

These two holes should match the first two holes on the felt layer. One is close but to the other hole.

Can't figure how these holes should align. Some new holes are needed and luckily I'll only need them on the felt layer so it won't be visible if I have to make a few and then move them for some reason.

This picture visualises the difference on the break lining between felt and the inner lining. T spine is attached to the hole on the left ("TS")

Didn't take any pictures but I also tried to fit the top layer over the felt and nothing but more problems. Not that bad though as there are no holes on the jenpro layer so I can punch new holes to the felt. Only just have to figure how all of the layers should fit together to match everything properly...

Really sucks how much there are problems in a simple glove like this. And all this is from design as all of the holes in every layer are made with an automated cutter. No wonder these offshore gloves are not so good. But why is it worth to produce this s***? Or not to make these properly with parts fitting together easily.

[ArdeFIN]

I just hate everything that is supposed to be pretty straightforward then turns into a full scale operation with all kinds of difficulties that should've not been there.

There is a lot of excess material which I can't figure any reason to be. Just useless and when I tried to lace the perimeter to see how things are it came out awful. Would've been better with all the padding and plastics in but not good.

Thumb side is good, there is everything needed and that's all. Fingerside then...

Then from heel side looking at  the same area. Needles are on the holes that should be laced together to get the idea.

Then I have the needle through holes that should be (and were from factory) laced together. The shape of the layers are a few holes offset?

After some settling and measuring and trying to fit the holes and shapes and all. This is the extra material. And one hole too many on the outer layer.

Brian's gloves are said to feel good and work very well. With all this. How good they would be if everything was done; may I say properly?

 

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So get rid of the extra material and all of the holes, then make a new set of holes matching the inner layer.

Inner layer had some ripping on the perimeter lace holes which were fixed by moving the double layer jenpro a bit towards the edge and new holes made.

T had already pulled the lace halfway through the holes so double layer reinforcement was added there. This is practical here as that area isn't involved to the golve break so adding two layers of jenpro don't change the closure at all. Some other holes are a bit pulled too but I hope that with the new fitting of the layers the holes are a lot closer to each other and will fare a lot better without fixing them now.

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The felt was the next as I had the other layers pretty well aligned and hopefully working. Cannot say anything about that yet from what I've learned so far it should.

So inserting the felt between and align as many holes with outlines aligned I marked the holes that didn't match and punched new ones with 5mm punch. For 3mm lace this gives a nice space for error and has basically no negative effect for protection. The heel area was messed up. Holes to be used are circled. Black dots were from first mockups and appeared to be far out from actual fit. 

Notice also there is a lot of sewing and holes from sewing that was before. I changed the angle of the closure to match that of how the glove had actually closed in previous use. Brians has and interesting approach of trying to make the glove close at the line where there are openings cut through. That is at about where I had my knuckles but trying to close the glove with just at that line didn't feel good at all. Actually really weird and difficult. Really artificial and not at all what my hand would do naturally. That could just be me though as I was able to use that with slow motion and careful movements. Just like we do when we catch pucks flying 60+mph. 

Then it was T time. The T had that Brians legendary fold-in opening which I tried to remedy with cutting the excess top edge from the lip. AS the pocket lace is done through there too I had to move the holes on all support layers inside too. Tocise the really sharp corners on the plastics that were already cutting through the top jenpro. Shaved them off a bit too. In the picture below nothing is cut except the T is "fixed".

Then some cutting done. The thumb side was cut shorter some 10mm more and the angle on the thumb side end was cut a lot as the closure of the glove changed a bit due to other mods and the T then folded as in 580 glove but to the other direction which wasn't really nice. But that was due to the reinforcement being too long and that pushed the break point of the T off.

First finger side.

Then thumb side.

When the pocket opening and the T looks weird it can be because the materials have bent to some odd shape from tapping the glove open against blocker or something else.

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All of the fixing and inventing done it was finally time for some building. This naturally included some new holes for the T ends and this and that but everything went pretty smoothly anyways. This is the first setup to see if something has gone really wrong.

Nothing really problematic was found and everything seemed to work as planned...

A bit of frustration was when I got this far and found out that the T is still folding a bit in. No matter how I tried to fix it with simple tricks. I also made a lot of comparing to my other gloves where there is no problem with that. And could not find anything that could be done to fix the issue. That said it really is only a few millimeters of changes to certain places and it would work a lot better but when you don't know where to cut or make a new hole it is difficult. It's not really big problem as you can see the issue isn't noticeable with pictured opening, but then again the glove opens now to a full pancake and then T folds and could cause some pucks slipping to the outside of the pocket. But yeah you should catch the puck clearly inside the pocket and not with the outer edge...

A little odd feeling with glove now is that my fingers are pointing weidly inside the glove. This is evident when putting hand into the glove as it takes a moment to find the right spot and then there is no problem. But this wasn't there before the modifications and nothing was done that should have any effect here.

Then the pocket was just the same old. Once again I enjouyed making the Brians style webbing. It just is so simple and straightforward. And quick to do.

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Just to test you all I didn't write the usual "that was it and then to the next glove or project". Well actually it wasn't done yet but I only found that out after attaching the backhand protection and took the "complete" pictures and all. Here's one:

And another. Nobody notices anything fancy and neither did I.

So after shooting the pictures I took my newest collective and tried it on. Felt good before I closed the glove. Then it gave me this and felt really stiff compared to previous tests before completing.

 

After a bit of tinkering it was all good for closure.

So what the hell was going on? First noticing this:

So backhand protection is somehow wrong. Then I opened all the straps and it worked again.

All straps are far from where they should be at. And then glove closed looks like this.

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Ok. So the backhand protection isn't fitting anymore. There was no problems before but sure the glove is with a bit different break and what ever other small changes. But the amount of effect here was surprising.

With a frustration I took the backhand piece of and cut it in three parts and started to mold it to fit and work.

I lost the few pictures that I took so only in words and few pictures of now complete glove.

The part protecting finger tips is original except for it is now laced on both sides too in the sectiong where the B-star logo is.

The mid piece was the core of this trouble. It is now attached to the glove with laces that hold the finger tip protector and this allows enough hinge for the glove to open and close freely. The strap on the thumb side should be moved closer but attaches well enough that I might leave it as is. The heel side strap is moved to the cuff part and the needle holes on the mid part tell the original position. This mod also helps the mid piece to move along from closure to full open.

The mid piece was also cut quite a lot at the T to make some room and also on hell edge fit it inside the finger tip protection. Cuff is pretty soft and only attached on the thumb side and didn't really affect much in this case. Only the heel strap was sewn to cuff and the cut bindings fixed. A bit of innovation from Warrior was implemented here too.

Now the glove doesn't open as good as before but good enough to dry the glove properly. The backhand velcro was moved towards wrist as I like that more than pulling it evenly on both sides of thumb. I really can't tell if this makes any difference but I had to shorten the strap anyway as it was 2 inches too long.

I did even remember to weight the glove now that it's ready. Nothing stellar but not too heavy.

EDIT: Checked the glove weight database and it seems I saved 12g. It was 1018g before. 

Had this on ice yesterday and it was a good glove. Just to repeat myself not a stellar sample but just a good glove. Didn't suit me perfectly as I took notable amount of shots to thumb area that popped out. But also a lot of good catches so it would work really well if I just used it more. Maybe I will as it is a good feeling glove. Interesting to see the differences when I get onto GnetikIV glove.

Edited July 15, 2022 by ArdeFIN

[ArdeFIN]

Just because I learned how to do it and it shows the change made: