Methodology: Fingers straight, wrist bent slightly backward, using a ruler or a metallic tape (non-bending), lay the ruler over the palm. From the tip of your middle finger, to the point at which your ruler loses physical contact with your hand, how long? Male or female?
Just about 6-1/2".
Bonus – finger length:
From web between ring and middle finger to tip of middle finger-- 2-7/8".
I’m female. I didn’t have a non-bending measure, so I used a soft measuring tape, like you’d use for sewing. I measured from the first crease of my wrist (where the palm ends) to the tip of my middle finger and got 7 inches. My middle finger is just a hair under 3 inches. I usually wear a ladies’ medium glove and my ring size is 6.5.
I have the smallest hands in my family, and now I feel like I have gorilla mitts.
From the tip of my middle finger to my crease of wrist is just over 6." Just about the same as the circumference of my wrist, actually. I can’t figure out what this “from web between ring and middle finger to tip of middle finger” is measuring, sorry.
That’s funny, because I’ve always thought of myself as having fairly small hands, and I’m quite a bit shorter than you, yet we’re about the same in terms of hand size.
I know what you mean. I never thought my hands were that big either. However, my rock-climbing buddies recently told me that my hands weren’t ideal rock climbing hands because of their size…
Those measuring to the “first crease”, that gives a measurement quite a bit longer than the method described in the OP (or it does for me, anyway).
With my hand bent back, fingertip to point where the ruler loses contact with my palm is exactly 7". To the first crease of the wrist it is slightly over 7.5". I’m male.
Incidentally, I have heard that the “middle finger tip to base of palm” measurement correlates very closely with, er, another crucial male measurement, as does the furthest span between thumb and middle finger with your hand spread out. In my limited experience (!) that seems accurate, any big-handed (or small-handed ) chaps able to confirm?