Vintage Baseball Glove Forum

I primarily use Glove Honey by Glovesmith on all my gloves. I've been really happy w/ this product as it contains Lanolin. I do have an old glove that is so floppy it lays completely flat. I was in Dick's the other day and noticed they have a product call "Hot Glove" which claims to restore the shape of your glove. Apparently you lather the glove up with this foam and heat it in the oven. It seems a little overboard, but this glove definitely needs some "body"...any other suggestions???

There are 2 tried and true options both involve the laces on your glove. The first option is to tighten up the existing laces - all of them - and remove the slack. If you have not done this before it is fairly easy and you will learn a lot about lacing patterns.

The second option is to replace the laces. If you have the interest, patience and the ability to follow a little string through holes I would relace the glove. You can find suggestions on where to get laces and what simple tools to use on this forum under the Glove Restoration section. If you don't have the time/patience then find a person with experience relacing gloves. You can find some folks on the web, many of them also post to this forum. You would be amazed at the difference a new lace job will do for a floppy glove. I just had a first basemans mitt relaced and it now plays almost like new.


Good Luck!

I have yet to come across a floppy old glove- no matter how floppy it is- that cannot be stiffened up by tightenting or replacing the laces.

The laces are the key. Even a brand new glove would seem kind of floppy if you removed all the laces from it. The laces are what holds everything together and gives the glove form.

In fact, when I replace all of the laces in a glove with new ones, the glove is usually so stiff that most people will want to do a little break-in work to get it loosened up a bit.

I have to concur with Bret on this one, he's absolutely right. If the glove is that floppy, the laces are probably fairly stretched out and I would recommend replacing them. It will not only restore the shape of the glove, it will actually shrink the glove just a tiny bit. A re-breaking in is required which only takes a couple of games of catch. I actually had one customer tell me after re-lacing, that he thought I had given back him the wrong glove! The glove had been thoroughly cleaned, conditioned and re-laced, and it really did look like a completely different glove after it was done. He gave me a flattened out glove that hadn't seen conditioner since it was made, so the glove leather was almost white and really, really dry. The laces were so stretched out that if you were using the glove and there was a ball going over your head, you could almost throw the glove in the air and the glove would catch the ball all by itself! lol After he got the glove back and broke in the new laces, he loved it, and this glove will now last him another 15-20 years if he takes care of it properly. I can't believe that people let their gloves get in that bad of a shape, but I'm not complaining because it keeps me busy year round repairing them!

VBR, br