Need help with my pro issue pro preferred..

Please share your knowledge on how to keep your vintage gloves in great shape and looking sharp.

Postby BretMan » October 1st, 2008, 8:36 am

Hi JD,

From a cosmetic standpoint, I would think that just about anything you put on a glove will affect the color somewhat. Even just plain water will make the glove look quite a bit darker- at least initially- but the color will seem to lighten as it dries. Anything that's wet will darken leather at first, but the effect usually isn't permanent.

It is kind of hard to guess at what would discolor a glove the least. All grades of leather seems to react differently when cleaned and conditioned, depending on its porosity, thickness and how the leather was treated from the factory.

My own experience has been that Lexol products seem to cause the least amount of color change or darkening compared to other treatments.

I would be curious to know why you are "not a fan" of the Lexol cleaner (orange bottle). I've never had any problems with it and wonder if you had a bad experience with it or if it didn't give you the results you were expecting.

The 50/50 mix of Murphy's Oil Soap and water I mentioned earlier is a good, safe cleaner for leather and works great on gloves that are lightly soiled. There again, just getting the glove wet will make it look a lot darker at first, but once it dries the color should be pretty close to original.

I haven't had a chance to check out one of the new Pro-Preferred glove care kits yet. Being a "two-step" process- one cleaner and one conditioner- and being advertised as not affecting the glove's color, I can't help but wonder if these two products are something similar to what Lexol already offers. Lexol has long had the separate cleaner and conditioner and one thing always touted in their advertising is that their products don't change the color of the leather.
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Postby wjr953 » October 1st, 2008, 9:17 am

JD,
I have to agree with Bret on the Lexol Orange. I have found it be an excellent product in terms of deep cleaning of glove leather and restoring proper PH levels to the leather. I clean first working up a good lather with Lexol Orange thoroughly inside and outside of the glove. Next, after rinsing thoroughly with clear water (twice), I usually follow that up with a very, very light coating of Vaseline Petroleum Jelly just before the glove is fully dry. I then let the glove set for a day or two, preferably in a room temperature or (warmer) environment. Once the glove has absorbed all of the VPJ, I may apply another coating (depending on how dry the glove was/is) and let it sit again for a day or two. After the final coating of VPJ, I buff the glove out with a shoeshine brush to disperse the rest of the residual VPJ. I finish it with Lexol NF, and buff the glove again. I've been doing this for a while now with all of my gloves (Nokona, Rawlings HOH, Akadema, Wilson A1000), and it works very well. The gloves repel water very well and clean up nicely after each use. The gloves don't darken in color and they don't get heavy like they can when using glove oil. I don't bother with the Lexol Brown anymore because I just don't like the finish that it leaves on the glove. This is my two cents, hope that it helps.

br
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Postby Mike_2007 » October 1st, 2008, 10:59 am

I fully agree with br's method. The glove will look great and work great.
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Postby mrh64 » October 1st, 2008, 9:27 pm

This may be an amatuer question but what is the best way to clean or condition the inside of a glove?
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Postby wjr953 » October 1st, 2008, 11:41 pm

I clean the inside of my gloves the same way I clean the outside, with a clean sponge, Lexol Orange and warm water. The only thing that you have to be sure of is to wipe the glove down thoroughly with clear warm/hot water after you've cleaned it with the Lexol. I usually take clean sponges and I fill two rinse buckets (old plastic ice cream containers) with clear water, to make sure that I wipe the excess Lexol Orange off of the glove. This is what seems to work best for me. It's my opinion that cleaning the inside of the glove, especially the palm area is extremely important. This area gets soaked with human sweat and that eventually causes the palm area to dry out and ultimately rot out. A good example of this problem is the older Wilson A2000's. If you see one on eBay, the outside of it usually looks terrific, but the palm area usually has rotted out from not being cleaned properly. Replacing the lining is possible, but that's very expensive as well. Human sweat and human saliva absolutely kill the leather in baseball gloves. To avoid that problem, I've gotten into the habit of cleaning and (mild) conditioning the gloves that I use regularly, at least once a week during baseball season. These gloves are very expensive, and because I laid out a lot of money for them, I want them to last for a long time. To me it's worth the extra effort if it prolongs the life of the glove. Just my two cents. (FYI, I use a 20" box fan to dry the glove thoroughly after it's been wiped clean.)

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Postby ebbets55 » October 2nd, 2008, 12:22 am

Bret & Br, thanks guys. I totally trust you and will give it a shot. You guys have a ton of experience with the new hides. I don't. All of my experience is with older gloves, mostly horsehides, buckskins and other vintage types of various quality. I only own a handful of new gloves.

Bret, I have never gotten great results with the orange bottle Lexol and thus, hardly ever use it. It doesn't do well with the thick grime on older gloves like neatsfoot oil or tobacco juice from 80-100 years ago. It might work better for light cleanings on new gloves but I have never liked the way it left the glove feeling or looking afterwards even after using a conditioner followup. I have cleaned a ton of gloves in the past and the orange bottle was my least preferred method. I think it's cool that we have all gotten different results with the same products.

I have a comment regarding breaking in a glove with shaving cream coontaining Lanolin. My buddy was drafted by the Angels right out of high school in 1987. As a minor leaguer he received a couple of gloves a year from Rawlings. Over the years he accumulated a bunch of them, all Heart of the Hides. He gave me one from the late 80's that he used shaving cream to break in. The glove leather is rock hard today. He said they used the white foamy kind with lanolin in it. Just an observation on how an HOH from the 80's held up over the years. By the way, it was hard right after he gave it to me in 1994ish when I got started collecting. That's the length of my experience with new gloves. I love my kip PP fastback though. Thanks again.

JD
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Postby RedSoxFan81 » October 2nd, 2008, 2:07 am

My brother used to work out with an ex pro baseball player and he also used the white traditional foamy white shaving cream on his gloves. In my honest opinion the camel pro preferred's are great if you are buying one to just have to look at, or to play light catch, but if it's gonna see game use it's gonna get some pretty decent discoloration. Mine still is pretty light after the cleaning however there's still spots where there's discoloration, I don't care though, it's my gamer so I can let it slide.
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Postby BretMan » October 2nd, 2008, 9:50 am

JD, I will agree with you in respect to using Lexol cleaner on really, really grimey old gloves. While I wouldn't hesitate to use it on the Pro-Preferred in question, for those old gloves with ground in oil and dirt stains I would probably use something a little bit more aggresive, like Fast Orange.

Shaving cream, I'm kind of on the fence about.

There are certainly worse things you could use, but there are certainly better things. Anything that's wet will provide some lubricating properties to leather and make it more flexible. Water will work, and so would spit, coffee or Kool-Aid- at least initially, until it dries. But any of those could, in the long run, be detrimental to leather.

Part of the theory on shaving cream is that any lanolin in the cream would help the leather. However, the vast majority of shaving creams do not contain lanolin!

I've actually gone through a drug store aisle and checked the ingredients of perhaps twenty different brands of shaving cream and only ONE listed lanolin as an ingedient- the Barbisol "Beard Buster" variety. What they did all have in common was that they contained harsh soaps, water, emolsifiers and a host of other chemicals with multi-syllable names I could hardly pronounce. Soap can have a drying effect on leather, and who's to say what stearic acid, tocopheryl acetate, phytantroil or "PEG/PPG 17/6 coplymer" will do to your glove?

Here is a passage regarding shaving cream from Noah Liberman's book "Glove Affairs", on the subject of glove conditioning:

"There's conflicting evidence here. Scads of major leaguers put a dollop of Gillette Foamy on their gloves. The product is supplied to every major league locker room, and for decades players have assumed the lanolin in it would help soften their gloves. But glove manufacturers disagree. Bob Clevenhagen, who has been designing major league gloves for Rawlings for 26 years, says, "It might make it feel good for a little bit, but it doesn't do any good." Longtime Wilson executive Al Oldenburg said the company used to recommend shaving cream for its new gloves only because it knew kids couldn't overuse the fluffy stuff, as they could with neats foot oil. And, finally, a Gillette spokesman notes, "To my knowledge, there's never been lanolin in Foamy."

From everything I've found, shaving cream might help a little- at least at first- but doesn't come anywhere near the lubricating and protective properties you get from using a product specifically designed for leather care.
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Postby RedSoxFan81 » October 2nd, 2008, 6:01 pm

It seems like the best thing may be the old tried and true just play catch with a new glove and don't put anything at all on it.With my next new glove I am going to try and be very careful about where I store it even though it's a gamer. I know it's tough for most of us especially vintage glove guys being that most gloves we get from previous owners so they may have had a different approach. I've seen those rawlings glove bags they have for the primos, are there any other options for storing gloves that work good?
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Postby wjr953 » October 2nd, 2008, 10:59 pm

I like to use 16 qt clear plastic totes with covers that snap in place. You can buy these at WalMart or Target, or even Home Depot. I usually keep my gloves in these totes when I'm not using them. Palm side facing down. If necessary, I put an old softball or two in the pocket area so the glove keeps it's correct shape. If stored in an area that has moderate temperatures and minimal moisture dampness problems, the gloves will stay in good shape for a long time. I have a rack dedicated to gloves in storage totes in our finished basement, and that seems to work just great.

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