Cut-resistant gloves used today are generally seamless knitted gloves, with or without coating (polyurethane, latex, nitrile, PVC or the like).
Most gloves offering high cut resistance contain fibreglass. For example, document EP 1160363 describes gloves knitted in a cut-resistant composite yarn comprising a fibreglass core around which at least one metal strand and at least one non-metallic covering strand is wound.
In Europe, these gloves are subject to standard EN388 which serves to test the resistance to cutting and also to abrasion, tearing and perforation. However, the cutting test of this standard is controversial because it does not represent a real risk of cutting and enables fibres like fibreglass to obtain very good performance (level 5/5), whereas fibreglass does not really provide protection against cutting and is also highly allergenic. In the context of the cutting test of standard EN388, the fibreglass therefore owes its very good performance to the fact that it blunts the blade which tests the sample.
Furthermore, other cutting tests are available, better representing a real cut, and highlighting fibres offering real cut resistance. This is the case of the test of standard ISO 13997, which is a very good complement to the test of standard EN388.
Fibreglass-free gloves are already known. Thus document U.S. Pat. No. 6,874,336 describes a cut-resistant glove, which keeps the warmth but preventing or at least absorbing the perspiration, prepared by knitting with a technical side knitted with metal core fibres surrounded by cut-resistant fibre, in particular aramid, and an opposite side of hydrophilic fibres, for example polyester, which extend up to the first technical side. Document U.S. Pat. No. 6,534,175 also describes a cut-resistant glove knitted with metal core yarns and a para-aramid fibre winding. Although these gloves represent an improvement over the two gloves which were customarily worn one over the other previously to obtain the same thermal results, they are still open to improvement, in particular in terms of flexibility.