Need conditioner advice for '40s split finger...

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

Need conditioner advice for '40s split finger...

Postby green rhino » May 6th, 2009, 3:40 pm

The darker brown Hutch glove is quit soft still. The inside leather is cracking (but not badly, about at the same level of deterioration as my own glove from the 80s...) I want to better the glove but not soften it too much so nothing would rip or fall apart. Leather has not lightened/darkened too much from believed original color. Leather stringing in great shape.

Local leather repair shop recommended Lexol (brown bottle) accompanied with Lexol (orange bottle) if desired...Of course dude sells it at about $6.00 per bottle.

Thanks for any advice.
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Postby green rhino » May 6th, 2009, 3:42 pm

I, myself, know nothing about glove restoration. I don't want to ruin this glove on my first go around doing this.

My previous knowledge handling gloves is limited to oiling my fielder's glove once before every baseball season.
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Postby Number9 » May 6th, 2009, 4:45 pm

A light rub down with Lexol should do the trick. Don't go too heavy. Once it's cracked there's nothing you can do. At this point you're just trying to make it stable so it doesn't get worse.
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Postby green rhino » May 7th, 2009, 2:07 pm

Thanks. I paid $20 for the glove so I don't even want to spend that much on cleaners/conditioners.
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Postby cbrandis » May 8th, 2009, 12:18 am

try Horseman's One Step.
about $8-10 for a small vat (15 oz.)
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Postby BretMan » May 9th, 2009, 9:19 pm

The cheapest route to go, if that is an issue, would probably be to try a couple of light coats of petroleum jelly. Just about every household has a jar of it already, and if you don't you can get one for a buck at a discount store.

Petroleum jelly is a tried-and-true leather conditioner. Personally, I prefer the results I get from either Lexol, pure lanolin or a lanolin-based product. Those can be kind of pricey. Petroleum jelly comes in a close third for the results you'll get and is dirt cheap.

PJ will give you some cleaning benefits, as well as softening the leather. It tends to cause dirt to come out of the pores of leather a bit and it can then be wiped off.

If the leather is dusty or dirty, a good cleaning can help with the glove's appearance and softness before applying a conditioner. Even just hitting the glove with a shoe brush, or wiping it down with a damp sponge or rag can remove a lot of dirt.

Lexol makes a great cleaner, but is is as expensive as their conditioner. Fast Orange hand cleaner, designed to dissolve grease and grime, can be found for a couple of dollars a bottle in some discount stores. It's the stuff I use on the dirtiest, grungiest gloves I restore.

A pretty good- and cheap!- leather cleaner can be made from a 50/50 mix of Murphy's Oil Soap and water, mixed in a spray bottle. This does a great job on all but the grimiest of gloves.

The expensive cleaners and conditioners can give you fantastic results, but almost as fantastic results can be acheived with relatively cheap, readily available household products.
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Postby green rhino » May 11th, 2009, 2:33 pm

Thanks. I cleaned it with the Murphy's Oil soap mixture and conditioned with Lexol brown. Seems to have worked great. It may have worn down the leather stitching a little bit but the glove is soft and the leather now looks much younger. It took a couple of days after these applications for the glove to dry/be done conditioning itself. Now it's good to go.

This is the first vintage glove I have cleaned so I'll see if it is too soft and falls apart during use. I hope not.
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Postby BretMan » May 12th, 2009, 12:43 am

The Murphy's Oil Soap and Lexol are kind of my "default" glove cleaning methods, for gloves in good shape but only needing a light cleaning and conditioning. I save the hard stuff for the hard cases.

One thing to watch for if you use the glove- up until the maybe the late 1950's, gloves used cotton thread for all of the sewn seams. That thread tends to really go bad over time and is nowhere near as durable as the nylon thread used since then. If yours is in bad shape, you can easily tear out a seam. The bad part is you can't really tell if it's going to break until you try it and it breaks.

And watch out for those old laces! Sixty year old laces might not be all that strong and be ready to pop the web out on a hard throw! I've just about caught one in the nose that way while playing catch with an old vintage glove!

If everthing seems structurally sound, you will be in for a catching experience. You will also very quickly learn the meaning behind one of the oldest baseball adages: Use two hands!
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