Over on the Garage Journal forum, someone asked about PPE. I wrote up a fairly detailed response that I figured would be good to keep here as well. There are Amazon links included with most of these items for convenience.
Hands: Standard shop gloves are Maxiflex 34-874. They have good grip, good dexterity, and are form fitting. I will put the cheap HF nitrile gloves on over these if I am working on really greasy parts, otherwise I just wash them like I wash my hands. They last a good long time.
Eyes: I wear prescription glasses. My go-to OTG glasses are Uvex Ultra-Spec 2001 glasses. They work well, are fairly comfortable, and have good scratch resistance.
Face: For grinding and plasma cutting, I have two Uvex Bionic Face Shields, one with clear lens and one with shade 5 lens.
Ears: I pretty much always have in a pair of 3M 1100 ear plugs. I keep a pair of 3M Pro-Protect headphones for when I want to listen to music. For all day (or night) amazing sound reduction, I use 3M E-A-R Classic 312 foam plugs. These are what they gave me when I got an MRI a few years back, and they work almost too well.
Head: I usually just wear a no button ball cap, but I keep a Bump Cap on my PPE rack for when I need some protection, but don’t need a full hard hat.
Knees: My preference is to wear work pants with knee pouches for pads – Duluth Trading and Cat branded ones typically. Otherwise I use knee pads or kneeling pads.
Feet: I almost always wear steel or composite toed work boots with inserts custom made at my podiatrist. My go-to are 8″ Danner work boots, but I have a pair of Sketcher’s that I use on occasion
Torso: I wear a basic Tillman welding jacket or a cheap leather HF welding apron for welding, a Duluth Firehose Apron for woodworking, and a basic blue denim machinist apron for lathe/mill work.