Glove maintenance

[_MIA_]

You know what they say about hindsight?? Trust me, I'm right there with you!

yeah I forgot to add "along with being able to hit,field and throw.."...small omission.

 

[no_glove_no_love]

Dont leave your dd gloves in the trunk in the summer time or winter time.

I've done gloves for about 20 years now and TBH, the fastpitch gloves are the grossest gloves I, and other people in the glove community have told me the same, have ever dealt with. Many other glove guys just refer all their fastpitch clientele to me. It's good to see some parents on here starting to look at glove care.

Here's a few tips

Clean glove with Ball Player's Balm Glove Cleaner and the Horse Hair or Hogs Hair Brushes. (Fiebing's Saddle Soap also works well, get the white can) The natural brushes are better than plastic or other synthetic brushes. Avoid using harsh leather cleaners that will dry out the leather

Obenauf's Heavy Duty LP is pretty good stuff. Ball Player's Balm Pro Glove Conditioner or Pecard Leather Dressing are a little better. Put a little of it on your fingers and rub it in to the glove. After it's been on the glove for about 10 minutes get a horse hair shoe brush and brush the glove off, scrub around the laces so there's no build up of the conditioner.

For inside the hand and finger wells, Fiebing's Golden Mink Oil works best at keeping sweat from soaking in to the leather and then salting the leather as it dries.

The biggest issue with fastpitch gloves is how the girls treat or care for them. Walk behind a travel baseball team walking in to a park to play games or out of a park after games and the boys will have their gloves in their hands, their gloves in a mesh bag attached to their back pack or the glove will be clipped to the outside of the bag. The girls will stick a dirty, sweaty glove in their bag and not take it out til the next day that they need to use it.

Brush the grit and dust off the glove and allow the sweat on it to dry quickly and in the open, not in tha bag. If your player has sweaty hands then you may need to clean the inside of their glove, with the cleaners and brushes listed above, out more often. Sweat is salty, look what it does to shirts or hats, it is doing worse to leather because as the sweat dries the salt remains and it causes the leather to crack and rot.
The Golden Mink Oil by Fiebing's comes in a plastic tub, rub your glove hand in the oil and then rub that in to the glove, down the finger stalls and most importantly in the palm well and on the binding. The mink oil helps stop the sweat from soaking in to the leather and I have gloves that are 10-12 years old that still feel like new when you stick your hand in them.
Once the leather dries or cracks there's not much that can be done for it so you need to start caring for the glove when it's new

On my or my kids gloves... play year round in Southern California, though my wood bat Sunday league hasn't played in a year.
Clean the gloves with the cleaner and brushes monthly or after tournaments in AZ, Nevada, UT where there is much more iron in the dirt, making everything redder.
Condition the gloves after every cleaning making sure to brush off excess conditioner and give the glove 12 hours or dry before using again.
I tend to relace our gloves once a year. I dont recommend lacing gloves yourself unless you have a skiver and pocket grease/palm adhesive but then, even most the sporting goods places that do relace gloves don't skiv the laces or apply the palm adhesive either so just make sure that whether you're lacing the glove or having someone else do it, that it's done properly.

Sorry for being so long winded, gloves are sort of my thing.
Do you buy your palm ad online? Or do you diy pa yourself? David Wagner on hia utube channel saying PA will create some sort of bubble in the pocket over time if too much pa is use.

 

[Gags]

This palm lace is the perfect example of where I'm talking about skiving lace!
View attachment 21111

I'm still a little confused about the skiving part - are you rounding off the 90-deg edges (similar to woodworking), or actually making the lace skinnier? (3/16" --> 2/16"?)

 

[Schmick's Gloves]

Coming from hockey I’m always getting on DD about not letting her glove sit dirty and sweaty in her bag.

Hockey gloves traditionally use thin leather palms. And it’s amazing how you can actually watch the salt and bacteria eat away at the palm if not maintained correctly. And oh the smell......oof.

Appreciate all the tips and cleaner/brush info.

That lovely Cat Pee smell from hockey gear, I thought I'd never smell it again after my son quit hockey over 15 years ago. But then when I started working on fastpitch gloves it hit me like a ton of bricks.
When cleaning the inside of gloves, make sure to clean the foam on the back of the wrist straps. If it's a glove with a velcro wrist, remove the foam pad and let it soak in warm water and detergent. On the other gloves I use warm water and even pet spot deodorizing spray to get rid of the smell.
The reason I first started using Obenauf's Heavy Duty LP is because it has a nice smell and helped make the hand stalls smell better. It's also why I recommend the Fiebing's Golden Mink Oil for the hand and finger stalls now, it smells good and the first thing fast pitch clients do when they get their glove back is sniff them.

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[Schmick's Gloves]

I'm still a little confused about the skiving part - are you rounding off the 90-deg edges (similar to woodworking), or actually making the lace skinnier? (3/16" --> 2/16"?)

Not sure if this was covered because for some reason I can not see responses 11-20 on this thread on this phone app


While you can skiv the width of laces on the skiver (1/4" to 3/16" or 3/16" to thinner for vintage gloves with metal eyelets or finger holes) but I'm not talking about skiing the width on glove lace.
You have to skiv the thickness of the lace before doing the palm run (or runs on a Mizuno). Reason being is all of the shared holes on the shell side and close holes on the stall side. Most glove lace comes 3 mm thick and when it's going through the same hole twice or through holes, on the thinner leather hand stall side, that are a 5mm apart you can stretch or tear holes but you also leave what I call "knobs" inside the hand stall. Glove manufacturers will skiv their lace to 1.5 mm thick so the lace will lay flat and not leave the knobs all over the inside of the hand well. Unfortunately those skived laces often wind up in parts of the glove that need the thicker lace (like the web which should have 1/4" lace thats 3mm thick). If you've bought a couple A2000s you find that the lace the Vietnamese put in those gloves are all skived to 2mm or less and are often crusty, its why I carry lace and needles with me in my backpack to every game and practice, those crusty thin laces are brittle.

Again, apologies on being long winded.

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[ANNASDAD]

I'm still a little confused about the skiving part - are you rounding off the 90-deg edges (similar to woodworking), or actually making the lace skinnier? (3/16" --> 2/16"?)

Slicing it, actually making it a thinner piece of lace!

 

[Schmick's Gloves]

Do you buy your palm ad online? Or do you diy pa yourself? David Wagner on hia utube channel saying PA will create some sort of bubble in the pocket over time if too much pa is use.

I use Glove Grease that I buy from USA Sports Direct (also buy replacement webs from them). I like their palm adhesive over the others I have found because of its ease of use and it doesn't require you heating it up. I apply about a teaspoon or so to the inside of the glove and spread it thinly with the rubber spatulas (look like a single blade paint brush) that you can get from craft or leather stores. Then I put the glove on a pounding pad and mallet the palm flat before lacing the pinky, thumb and palm runs.
I wish I knew the recipe for their Glove Grease as it's kind of pricey and I go through about 75 bucks worth of it a month. I have taken gloves apart and found all kind of home remedies people have tried to use inside the gloves, pine tar, glue, rubber cement...

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[no_glove_no_love]

Anyone use the perfekpoket for their dd gloves?

 

[Towny9]

Anyone use the perfekpoket for their dd gloves?

Hers my DD does - it serves its purpose well. My DD likes it which means she is more inclined to use it. Win win

 

[erniekru]

all set up to get started!