Best way to make existing leather gloves work with touchscreens?

[dawei94]

Apologies if this has been definitively answered before, but I'm wondering what is the best way to make an existing pair of leather gloves work with touchscreens? I have a pair of Lavabre Cadet gloves that were sized to my hand but were made before they developed a touchscreen-capable leather (which is also limited to black anyways and mine is a dark brown), so it currently doesn't work at all. I was wondering if there was a liquid solution or something that can be applied to the fingertips of the gloves (have seen reference to something called Nanotips) and was safe to use with high quality leather gloves?

 

[ter1413]

I would not add anything. I would simply take off the gloves.

 

[dawei94]

That’s fine if I only need to do it once or twice, but it’s a huge hassle to do it repeatedly throughout the day, particularly when it’s cold outside

 

[stuffedsuperdud]

Can confirm it's a hassle to keep taking on and off fitted dress gloves, and even painful and dangerous when the windchill hits. OP, the easiest thing to do is to just carry a stylus.

Beyond that, you have two options, as far as I know, and both of them depend on you being kind of a tinkerer. The first is to sew conductive thread into your gloves, which might be pretty discreet if your gloves already have some big fat stitching on it. It'll help if you can find a fine-gauge conductive thread on Sparkfun ro something, and are handy with a needle.

The other thing you can do is that Nanotips thing you suggested. It's just conductive particles (probably graphite) homogenized into polyurethane. The particles are probably why it's black, and I think it'll be relatively invisible against a brown background, but but if you want, you can try making your own brown formulation. You need to get some polyurethane and graphite, and then some sort of dye that can tint the polyurethane brown. I see there are some recipes floating around online, so no need to reinvent the wheel.

Might be a fun little DIY project. Make sure you test on an invisible part of the glove before going full-send...

 

[Andy57]

Your Lavabre gloves are very nice gloves. I wouldn't mess about with them.

 

[dawei94]

Your Lavabre gloves are very nice gloves. I wouldn't mess about with them.

They are, but they get almost no use as putting them on and taking them off every time I need to use my phone is too tedious to be worth the trouble, and there's very rarely situations where I'm just walking out an about for an extended period of time and have no need to check my phone at all, so I need a better solution than "take off the gloves"

 

[Mirage-]

I have the same problem, though mine are much less expensive being from Boggi, and have found no easy solution this far. I end up wondering around with a single glove on most of the time, which probably looks quite funny to people and my hand isn't very happy either. At some point I'll probably have to buy a pair that does work.

 

[dawei94]

Checking back on this, has anyone found a solution to this? “Take off the glove” does not count as it is not practical for repeated use when it’s cold out, as many have noted above. “Don’t mess with them” is equally unhelpful, the gloves have been sitting in a drawer for the entire time since I started the thread because they are not practical to use as is

 

[GaiusM]

I've found that most leather gloves have a sweet spot somewhere that works with smartphones. Unfortunately it is rarely the tip of the index finger. One pair of mine works with the inner index seam, another with the outer edge of the pinky. Mess around (indoors) with them and you'll probably be able to find some part that works.
If all else fails use a stylus as suggested above. I would not alter gloves.