I recently purchased a pair of ww2 Luftwaffe leather gloves.they are in very good condition with only a few small scratches here and there. My question is how would I go about caring for the leather and which type of conditioner to use ? I do have Renapur and Eastman leather cream ( Gliptone) which I use on my leather jackets and I assume that this would work. Somebody out there got any thoughts on the subject?
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Conditioning vintage leather gloves.
- Thread starter s4rmark
- Start date
- Messages
- 6,311
- Location
- South of Nashville
Below is a thread where conditioners have been discussed and compared:
https://www.thefedoralounge.com/threads/ultimate-leather-conditioner comparison-on-reddit.101735/
https://www.thefedoralounge.com/threads/ultimate-leather-conditioner comparison-on-reddit.101735/
Chevalier
One of the Regulars
- Messages
- 176
I think this is a valuable thread. Thanks for starting it. I have found a couple of considerations unique to gloves that are worth keeping in mind:
(1) Gloves tend to harbor a lot of dirt relative to my jackets of a similar age. Dirt also seems to get worked into the leather, especially in the palm and inside of the fingers. Cleaning leather opens up an entirely new can of worms of preferred methods. Also, I have found getting gloves to dry properly can be tricky.
(2) Figuring out when gloves can stand the strain of wearing (if that is what you plan to do with them) is tricky. I lost half a nice pair of early 20th century driving gauntlets when the leather tore with the strain of taking them off and on. I let the conditioner really sink into the next pair I got and had much better results. I also wonder, though, how much of the current condition depends on the quality of the leather initially used, how they were cleaned/treated while they were being actively used, and how they were stored until we came to have them.
(1) Gloves tend to harbor a lot of dirt relative to my jackets of a similar age. Dirt also seems to get worked into the leather, especially in the palm and inside of the fingers. Cleaning leather opens up an entirely new can of worms of preferred methods. Also, I have found getting gloves to dry properly can be tricky.
(2) Figuring out when gloves can stand the strain of wearing (if that is what you plan to do with them) is tricky. I lost half a nice pair of early 20th century driving gauntlets when the leather tore with the strain of taking them off and on. I let the conditioner really sink into the next pair I got and had much better results. I also wonder, though, how much of the current condition depends on the quality of the leather initially used, how they were cleaned/treated while they were being actively used, and how they were stored until we came to have them.
