by BretMan » April 5th, 2008, 1:18 am
I haven't personally had a glove become "sticky" from using pure lanolin, so I'm not sure what happened on your glove. What kind of leather is it? If it is "oil tanned" leather, sometimes those don't want to absorb conditioner very well. My best guess would be that, even while being careful, you might have used too much.
I have bought the small tubes of Lanisoh and it is expensive. Since then, I have found a drugstore in my area that sells tubes of "generic" lanolin at about 1/3 the cost.
When using lanolin, I do rub it in very thoroughly. You said that you used it sparingly, but when I use it I use it REALLY sparingly! Maybe there is a fine line between "just the right amount" and "too much".
To give you an idea of how much I'm using, I would say that one of those small tubes will let me treat anywhere from 15 to 20 gloves- easily- and that is with giving the gloves a couple of very light coats.
I get just a tiny bit on the cloth I'm using to apply it, maybe about a pea-sized drop, and rub that in to as wide an area as I can until it seems dry, then another small dab, and so on.
Instead of getting the glove soaked in lanolin, think of an approach more like waxing a car, where you use small amounts of wax and wipe it over a section at a time.
Rather than "sticky", many of the gloves I treat with lanolin will end up with a smooth texture. That is similar to what is described in the book "Glove Affairs" by Noah Liberman, where he discusses various leather treatments.
In regards to lanolin, which he thinks is the best possible treatment, he notes that, "Its minor drawback is that it leaves a dry slipperiness on the leather until there's a little dust on the surface".
That has been my experience, more often than not. On some gloves, I guess depending on the type of leather, the absorbtion of the lanolin does seem to raise the natural grain of the leather a bit, and that seems to give a grippy feel that offsets the smooth, dry texture.
So- what should you do with your glove that seems "sticky"? My first suggestion would be to wipe the glove down a few times with a dry cloth- to kind of buff it out. That may take away some of the lanolin that stayed on the surface.
Something else that might help would be to warm the leather to open the pores and allow any excess lanolin to absorb. An easy way to do that is to just leave the glove in your car on a warm day. I've done that before and had a glove absorb conditioner like a sponge!
Hope that helps. Check back in and let us know how it worked out.