what to buy- leather? material?

[skeetly]

rst leathers any good?
And if so which ones in their range?

lozzo I do apologise, I just caught the end of your post. I have now opened my eyes and seen all of it and the mention of the halvarssons gear.

Why do you think I mentioned the Halvarssons Safety Jacket, which is a CE approved textile and performs much better than most leather suits you can buy off the peg. Virtually all other textile jackets offer almost zero abrasion resistance to be perfectly honest, my own included. Even cheap leather will outperform the more expensive non CE approved textile jackets in abrasion tests. This kind of thing has been my bread and butter for years and I take an active interest in motorcycle clothing safety developments, I do know what I'm on about.

As far as the trading standards people and myself are concerned, if it doesn't have a CE label on it, then it's not a safety item and should be treated as a fashion item - it really is as simple as that. Getting CE approval for a product is not expensive and once you have it you can call the tune on price and it will sell to the safety nuts like myself. If more manufacturers could be bothered to submit their clothing we the consumers would have a better idea of what's worth buying, and 2 Italian leathers companies would either go out of business or start justifying their huge price tags.

Originally Posted by Keith1983

lozzo I do apologise, I just caught the end of your post. I have now opened my eyes and seen all of it and the mention of the halvarssons gear.

That's ok, I was typing my typically long-winded reply when you posted your apology.

Originally Posted by skeetly

rst leathers any good?
And if so which ones in their range?

General opinion seems to say don't bother with them, cheap and nasty.

Teknic are cheap and good.

[yorkie_chris]

Originally Posted by Lozzo

Halvarsson's Safety Jacket at a cost of over 800 quid.


Leathers will offer you much more resistance to abrasion, but again, unless you spend alot of money on specialist brands (not the high priced fashionable Italian rubbish you see in flash bike shops)

Halvarssons gear is excellent IMO, though some of their cheaper stuff isn't legally rated, it's nice and warm and waterproof and they seem to have taken care in making it. (my jacket's RRP ?190)

However if I knew I was going to take a slide I'd far rather be wearing my leather jacket, which is also not legally PPE, but is still double layered full thickness leather, double and triple stitched in places.

The fashion jackets make you look like a poofter anyway.

I hate the fashion jackets that are sold as bike jackets, I think a nice thick knitted cardigan would offer you about the same level of protection in an off!

[yorkie_chris]

Italian style, never much saw the point of putting form above function.

My leather jacket's a belstaff and you can tell they wanted the collar to look good, because it's the only bit that annoys me.

In one Cambridge test a pair of £4-99 Tesco Value Jeans got a better abrasion test time than a very expensive Italian leather race suit. My source wouldn't tell me exactly what make of leathers, only that they were a high profile Italian company.

am I not right in saying that one magazine, who I can't remember found that a cheese and pickle sandwich had a better impact rating than some of frank thomas's old style knee armour?