I’m not a big Social Media guy, and posting isn’t really my thing but given that a lot of daily life has been impacted I decided to take on a unique project.
The plan was to acquire a pair of gloves and totally overhaul them into something custom. The perfect candidate pair of gloves popped up on SLS for me - Warrior MIA Made in Canada Black Carbon Franchise in a 15”. The gloves arrived exactly as described from the seller - used, worn out palms, relatively filthy liners (I expected this) and perfect for my needs. Here they are in their former glory.
So naturally the first step was to start the dismantle process and remove the under cuff flap, seam rip the seam binding, seam rip the palms, seam rip the gussets and then wash the hell out of them! Honestly it was worth it just to get the liners properly sanitized!
From there it was the first customization decision. I love the look of the glove but I always hated the logos. The warrior logo itself is awesome but I wanted a very clean aesthetic and decided to remove the screened “Warrior” from the cuff and the undercuff. Also had to get rid of the “Franchise” on the pinky.
Next up was the palms. I’m a Vancouver local and after some searching I found a great place called “Max-performance sports & more” on West Broadway. This store is an easy one to miss if you are driving by but inside they have a full lineup of assorted gear and also some more unique items. One of those items was the Eagle Digital Palms I was looking for. They are an authorized retailer of Eagle and I was able to pick up my replacement palms from their store. (Also they sell online if anyone wants to try this project themselves). So with the palms I was now able to overlay the old warrior palms and custom shape the eagle palms to the same dimensions with a few personal tweaks. I went with a set of 15” palms knowing I could trim them and the palm would be wider at the base.
From here once they were trimmed I now moved on to the gussets. I wanted a black sponge mesh and was able to get the fabric from a local retailer in bulk. Gussets were interesting as the removal of the original gusset made a perfect pattern for the new ones to be cut out. I just used it like a tracing pattern and had my gusset material. I didn’t take pics sewing the gussets in, but essentially you are sewing them in upside down and then flipping them up to their resting position which leaves a little margin for error. Completed gussets looked like this:
Then it was time to stitch in the palms and reapply the trim binding. The palms were easier than the gussets but because of my custom fitting I had to use several fold back clips to hold the fingers and sides in specific positions so the palm wouldn’t slide around. Finished palm and binding looks like this:
The rest was just cosmetic touches now. Adding in the Canucks Flying Skate era Yellow and Red cuff roll colours and inserting a custom designed Carbon Canucks / VAN thumb shield logo. I designed the thumb logo and in an ode to the MIA logo made a stylized VAN version. The typical warrior logo is replaced with a flying skate Canucks logo. Then the image was given a Carbon effect.
Overall the final gloves ended up like this:
Really happy with the feel and look of these. I miss the days of seeing people posting Warrior Franchise Customs and Pro Stock from the original Made in Canada days. This was my own attempt at taking a potential throw away glove and turning it into a custom glove that I’d be happy to pay for.
Would love to see if anyone else has done their own work and post it up!
