Something interesting I realized when looking at pockets (from discussion on another thread) was the amount of room in the hand warmers due to their construction. I've heard people saying the hand warmers on some jackets were too small to be useful or barely fit their hand and on a ToD jacket the pocket might physically be too small, but on my LC jacket, even though it has the tallest pocket of any of the Indy jackets I own, it has the smallest actual hand warmer area.
Here's a photo to show what's going on. My finger is pushed as high as the inside of the hand warmer will allow and you can see on two jackets this goes all the way to that 45 degree reinforcement stitch while the other stops short of that stitch. This was also true on the bottom of the pockets as well. So if you add up the difference over the two ends it makes a big difference in how wide that pocket feels and how easy it is to slide a hand in.
As a guy who doesn't use his handwarmers much if at all, I favour better reinforcement over handwarmer size. The jacket's design has the handwarmers, so I'm glad to have them. However, if the pocket gets snagged on something, I don't want it to rip.
Nevertheless, interesting. And it's always good to see side-by-side comparisons. Good thread.
MY OTR raiders pockets are just big enough to hold my big hands in, but usually I use it to either store my wallet in or keys. There's enough room though but then again tall pockets !:P
