Kinco HydroFlector Buffalo Mitt

Warm and durable leather mitts have been a recent favorite, and I love the budget price. Knit wrists keep out the cold, and an innovative pocket on the back of the hand lets you put in hand warmer packs. Important to treat these with waterproofing, they’re kind of a sponge otherwise. One oddity I didn’t expect is that the interior has fuzzy separators for each finger, so they have a glove-like feel underneath the mitten. Spacious if you want to wear a liner and extend the temperature range.

Kinco is primarily known for making work gloves. However, if you have spent any time skiing in the Northeast, you probably saw some people skiing or operating lifts or snowmaking equipment with Kinco’s insulated pigskin work gloves. Kinco’s insulated gloves, which I previously reviewed here, are reasonably warm, very reasonably priced if you buy them from a hardware/work wear store as opposed to an outdoors gear website, and overbuilt unlike pretty much any warm glove I have used. Downsides? the warmth is kind of limited, and the reinforced pigskin takes a lot of leather treatment and use to really break in. 

I bought these mitts in an effort to address those shortcomings because mittens are usually warmer than gloves, and buffalo leather tends to be more supple and forgiving than cowhide or pigskin. These mitts delivered on both counts. The leather took no time to break in, and my fingers don’t start to feel tingly in these, assuming i’m moving around some, until around 20 degrees. The insulation is synthetic, what Kinco calls ‘heatflector.’ 

It’s safe to assume you could wear these in colder weather too because there is plenty of room inside to wear a glove liner, and because that little slash in the leather on the back is an opening to the insulation beneath—made to put a chemical handwarmer pack in. I haven’t needed to do that yet, but it’s a nice feature.

Something weird/unexpected was the finger separators inside the mitten. None of Kinco’s literature mentioned that. It means you can’t wear a mitten liner to expand the temperature range, just a glove liner. It hasn’t translated into cold hands, though, so I‘m learning to live with it. 

A word on waterproofing—the company does make clear that these mitts, and most of their leather gloves, aren’t treated for water resistance. They soak up moisture if you don’t. I heat our oven to 180-200 degrees, put a piece of foil on a baking sheet, thoroughly smear the leather with Obenauf’s Heavy Duty LP, and heat them for 8-10 minutes. The conditioner/treatment soaks right in, and they do a fine job with moisture after that, so long as you treat them on reasonable intervals (once a year has been working for me). It gives them a leathery/beeswaxy smell. 

HOW I HAVE WORN THEM

The mitts have been my cold weather handwear for the past few months, including several days out in temperatures down to the low 20s, and occasionally in borderline rain/sleet. I haven’t yet worn them in snow. 

Background

A few months of cold weather walking and hiking.