Leather Glove Repair??

crankcall said:

that piece of leather may be sheepskin, sheepskin has no real grain pattern like other leathers and is pretty easy to tear if you get a pull on it. Its used a lot in Indo/Pakistani goods because it easy to work with and plentiful.

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Hmm, I'm not so sure. Some Danier leather jackets are sheep skin and they are strong enough. Sheep skin is very soft, with a nice feel to the hands, but abrades easily. Sheep skin also stretches much more than cow. That still does not explain how the OP did such a catastrophic rip. I certainly would not use sheep in MC gear, especially gloves. Only the OP can verify the glove's leather. I've only used cow to repair any MC gear. A tad less flexible than sheep, but more abrasion resistant.

Just went to Sam at 2150 burnamthorpe in the mall. Fixed my jacket zipper for $8! Thank you! Saved me $60 which some other donkey quoted me. Now, I just need to a reasonably priced leather dry cleaner.

Dry cleaning leather tends to be very expensive because of the care the cleaner must use to make sure the leather doesn't dry out.
I use saddle soap on my jacket.
Make sure the soap is very diluted with water as it can dry out the leather if the solution is too strong.

crankcall said:

that piece of leather may be sheepskin, sheepskin has no real grain pattern like other leathers and is pretty easy to tear if you get a pull on it. Its used a lot in Indo/Pakistani goods because it easy to work with and plentiful.

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TorontoBoy said:

Hmm, I'm not so sure. Some Danier leather jackets are sheep skin and they are strong enough. Sheep skin is very soft, with a nice feel to the hands, but abrades easily. Sheep skin also stretches much more than cow. That still does not explain how the OP did such a catastrophic rip. I certainly would not use sheep in MC gear, especially gloves. Only the OP can verify the glove's leather. I've only used cow to repair any MC gear. A tad less flexible than sheep, but more abrasion resistant.

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Sheep skin is super easy to tear. My gf ripped the arm right off her Danier jacket when it caught on something. She didn't pull hard. I also have one of their sheepskin jackets. I would not want sheepskin for anything that is supposed to be protective.

thanks, i'll try using saddle soap. I took another jacket to Sam at 2150 Burnamthorpe and this time $5! Someone told me using a majic eraser from Mr. Clean works well. Anybody tried this? It's a white leather Dianese that I'm trying to get respectable!

If the underlying leather is sheepskin and is inherently weak, then adding a patch to a weak leather would be ineffective, as the original leather would rip just outside of the patch. You could consider replacing that complete section of leather with cow, but now this gets even more complex. This also means that the other hand is also prone to rip.

Do not use a dry cleaner if you wish the leather to be protective. If it is fashion leather no problem but the life will be shortened. Never put or do anything to leather you would not do to your skin! Dry cleaning will dry the leather. If your leather is white and seriously dirty,, slim chance you will get it clean "as new" with out taking off the colour. We clean hundreds of suits a year and trust me ,, the hard part is getting it nicer looking with out wrecking the leather.

The Glove,, most gloves today are made with Lambskin or Kangaroo. The leather is thin so you get that feel. But when you stitch it you perforate it, obviously and it usually rips near or on a seam,, unless reinforced, So the next step is they reinforce the leather but then it does not stretch. Fixing that glove,, to do it as cost effectively as possible. I would patch it on the outside and figure how to reinforce that area. If there is a linner inside,, well it would still be there but you would have sew through it. Or,, you can take the whole glove apart,, dismantle and try to put it back together. I would not do that for anybody as the cost would be prohibitive. I fix hundreds of gloves a year too.

TorontoBoy said:

That still does not explain how the OP did such a catastrophic rip. .

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It ripped because the cuffs on most sport gloves is very narrow. So they must be pulled on with a pretty good force to get your fingers/palm through the narrow cuff. The cuffs are made narrower now to help reduce bulk around the wrist. Some gloves they make the wrist area too tight and this happens a lot. It's not specific to any glove I have fixed all Five,Alp*,Dainese,and more, they all have problems today. Thinner leather, tighter fit, more armour,, all adds up to more seams and shorter life span.

Bickle Racing said:

It ripped because the cuffs on most sport gloves is very narrow. So they must be pulled on with a pretty good force to get your fingers/palm through the narrow cuff. The cuffs are made narrower now to help reduce bulk around the wrist. Some gloves they make the wrist area too tight and this happens a lot. It's not specific to any glove I have fixed all Five,Alp*,Dainese,and more, they all have problems today. Thinner leather, tighter fit, more armour,, all adds up to more seams and shorter life span.

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Thanks for the explanation, John. As I don't use racing gloves I did not realize the tension on the wrist, nor the extra narrowness around the wrist. Good to know.

There is near no room in the wrist area. How would you go about reinforcing the rip from the back without disassembling much of the wrist area?

When you pull the gloves on try to not pull on the gauntlet part and push your hand in while holding the wrist of the glove. My race gloves fit really tight in the wrist and I've found this to be the best way to get them on.

TorontoBoy said:

Thanks for the explanation, John. As I don't use racing gloves I did not realize the tension on the wrist, nor the extra narrowness around the wrist. Good to know.

There is near no room in the wrist area. How would you go about reinforcing the rip from the back without disassembling much of the wrist area?

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Well, the glove is basically non repairable to return to "like new" I would make it as cosmetically appealing as possible. Then you have to figure how to move the stress down and around. So reinforce the area. It would be creative. It is doable and easy in fact. You just loose a bit of cosmetic appeal. But you just oversize the patch as much as you can. You have to have a patcher to do it.
The wrists are so tight and the leather is so thin,, happens a lot more then most would think.
When I designed our glove we used cow for this exact reason. Just to get more life out of the glove for people.