No matter how many weights you keep in the studio or lab, somehow there’s always a project where you just don’t have enough! Or maybe the ones you have in stock aren’t quite right – too slippery, too light, too heavy, or the wrong size for what you need.

Here’s a quick and easy option for rustling up your own DIY sandbag weights in a pinch. This is a nice way to reuse gloves that have been worn but aren’t contaminated, particularly if you have limited options for recycling them in your area.

1. Fill a glove with dry, clean sand. You might need to squeeze/shake the glove to make sure the sand fills the fingers evenly, particularly if you’re using coarser sand. You can add more or less sand depending on how heavy and rigid you’d like the weight to be. I generally find two-thirds to three-quarters full is plenty for the type of projects I work on.

2. Tie the open end of the glove in a regular knot, just as you’d tie a blown-up balloon. If you find you haven’t got enough material to do this, you’ve probably overfilled the glove and should tip a little sand out. Make sure to tie it tightly to avoid spilling any.

3. Add a smiley face (optional).

I use nitrile gloves, which provide a little useful friction without being too ‘grippy’. Aside from using as weights, they’re also great for supporting drying repairs or fragile areas of three-dimensional objects. These ‘glove buddies’ were a very popular feature in my university lab, where most students had at least one to hand on their workbench!

Images by Emanuele Casafredda and Caitlin Jenkins

Caitlin Jenkins is a conservation move assistant at the Natural History Museum, London. Since training in object conservation at Cardiff University, she has worked on collections move and museum redevelopment projects for the Royal College of Surgeons of England and the Parliamentary Archives.