Dust Mote

I picture this nearly completely sun-bleached glove stowed away and forgotten way up in the rafters of some school's field house. Blanched from nearly every turn of the sun for well over 25 years.

Pinckard - Pro 828 - c. 1994

Found it on Ebay for half the cost of it's shipping. Being my personal favorite line of gloves, and a now defunct company, I had to nab it even if it's left-handed... which I am not. What I am, I guess, is slowly building an arsenal of Pinckards to one day field an entire team. Which if I try not to scrutinize the reasoning, I can happily keep hunting for them.

This was my first dye job. Have to admit it was a learning experience and kind of botched the edges of the red patch. Used a masking agent around the borders which is supposed to cover and protect fibers as one paints, but in hand with a couple of glasses of wine, I failed to recognize the masking agent wasn't meant for the loose fibers. Got most of it off, but it still lingers on the borders. Luckily this glove was meant for me all along, so I'm just fine with it.

Other than extreme sun blanching (it's originally black), glove itself was nearly in perfect condition. Maybe used only for a season by an uninterested lefty. With as little use as it got, I still had to replace the internal finger felt with new ones. Have a feeling the original palm adhesive had made quick work of tearing the original felt up.

Used a deglazer as well as isopropyl alcohol to get whatever sheen was off of leather. Then applied 3 passes of Fiebing’s Black Pro Dye, buffed like crazy in between applications to get excess off and sealed it with Resolene by Fiebing’s as well.

Before paint process I deep cleaned glove with Ballplayer’s Balm cleaner and used their fantastic conditioner afterwards. Hand skived the laces provided by Flatbill Baseball and upgraded web to quarter inch. Added the right type of palm adhesive with Gluvluv deemed 'glove grease' due to it's proper viscous nature balanced in hand with tackiness. If leather and internals can't slide over one another, they'll rip as you see in the pictures of finger felt. Was honestly surprised to see how fast that process occurs though.

Was a tremendous learning experience all around and have done many more dye jobs since with incredible results. Those shall be posted... in time. Maybe.