How to Break in a Leather Sailmaker's Palm

There’s a lot of discussion regarding the best way to soften a sailmaker’s palm, and the internet has a lot of opinions on the matter. What's the best way to soften a palm? Get the palm wet and shape it to fit your hand? Apply coats of a leather conditioner and shape the palm that way? Just plain use it over and over till you break it in with time? We thought the best way to answer the question would be to test these methods ourselves and see which one we like best.

The William Smith & Sons Sailmaker’s Adjustable Palm, sold by Sailrite®, is a combination seaming and roping palm. It’s intended for occasional use, meaning it’s not meant to be the only means of sewing your sail. The Sailmaker’s Adjustable Palm is for sewing parts of your sail that are too thick for your sewing machine to penetrate or where your machine can’t reach. Palms are often used for installing the sewn rings in sail corners, installing leather sail corner patches, using twine to secure sail slugs and slides, among other uses.

The adjustable palm Sailrite carries has the extended thumb protection of a roping palm paired with the larger thimble (also known as the eye) of a seaming palm. Divots in the thimble fit the blunt eye end of hand sewing needles. It also features a buckle strap to accommodate a wide variety of hand sizes.

When you open the packaging, you’ll notice the sailmaker’s palm is very stiff. The palm is flat, the leather is hard, and it doesn’t fit your hand comfortably. The rawhide underneath the metal thimble is so stiff it’s almost impossible to bend. You might find it very uncomfortable to wear your sailmaker’s palm right out of the package, making hand sewing your sails a tedious and unpleasant task.

Ideally, you want to soften your palm enough that you can mold it to fit your hand like a glove without losing the integrity of the palm’s purpose. The hardness of a sailmaker’s palm is what gives it the leverage to push the needle through your thick material application. The pressure of pushing the needle into the sail material should be distributed evenly over your hand so you do not get a sore spot where the eye of the needle pushes against your skin. You will be able to sew for long periods of time without getting sore if your sailmaker’s palm remains stiff, but not inflexible and abrasive.

Method One: Leather Conditioner

The first method we tested was to condition a sailmaker’s palm with leather conditioner. There are dozens of leather oils and conditioners on the market, and not all serve our intended purposes. Some leather oils are meant to revitalize and polish leather furniture and shoes. Others are for leather car upholstery or horse tack. To make sure we purchased the right leather conditioner for our needs, we talked to Sailrite Sail Designer Jeff Frank. He recommended using the same type of conditioner you’d use to soften a baseball glove.

All the materials for our Method One testing.

Materials You'll Need:

• Sailmaker's palm
• Leather conditioner.
• Clean towel.
• Sandpaper and scrap leather (optional).

After researching the top baseball glove conditioners, we chose Nokona NLT Classic Glove Conditioner. Nokona is intended for bringing old, dried-out baseball gloves back to life, but it’s also used to break in new gloves. Even though we picked Nokona, there are several high-quality glove conditioners on the market with excellent user reviews. Choose whichever one you find appealing.

Using sandpaper to soften the edges of your sailmaker’s palm is an optional step. We decided to sand the edges of our Method One palm and not the second one to see how much of a difference sanding made. We practiced on a spare piece of leather first to decide which grit of sandpaper we needed. We highly suggest getting some scrap leather approximately the same thickness and stiffness of your palm to practice on.

Practice sanding on scrap leather to make sure you have the right grit sandpaper.

After trying different grits, we decided on 80 grit. Gently sand the inside edges of the palm where the leather cuts into your hand. It’s not necessary to sand the topside edges. Sand the edges until they soften and dull. You should sand the palm before applying conditioner.

Sanding the edges of your palm is an optional step.

When you apply a leather conditioner to your item, it reintroduces moisture back into the dry leather. Stiffer leather, like that in our sailmaker’s palm, may take longer to loosen up. Leather conditioners are designed to keep leather supple, flexible and smooth. They are intended as a maintenance product to keep your leather looking new and lasting for a very long time. But will a leather conditioner soften a brand-new palm enough to mold it to your hand so you can use it without spending weeks or months to “train” the palm? That’s what we wanted to find out.

With leather conditioner, a little goes a long way. Don’t over apply it. You want the conditioner to soak into the leather. It’s also very important to only apply the Nokona on the surface of the leather palm. Do not apply conditioner to the underside of the palm as Nokona conditioner is not meant to condition split leather surfaces.

Apply leather conditioner in light coats, waiting until the conditioner has fully soaked in before applying another coat.

It might take several coats applied over a period of time to soften your palm enough to your comfort level. Make sure you let a coating soak in before applying another. Once the conditioner has soaked into the leather, you should begin flexing and shaping the palm, working the leather. Another way to shape the palm is to wear it after you’ve conditioned it. Even if you’re not working on a hand sewing project, create a practice project so you can sew with your palm and start loosening up the leather and fitting it to your hand.

Method Two: Wet & Shape

The second method we tested was to spritz the palm with water and work the leather until it became pliable enough to shape it. Though there are metal parts on the sailmaker’s palm, you do not need to worry about the metal tarnishing. Moistening the palm should not jeopardize the metal in any way.

All the materials for our Method Two testing.

Materials You'll Need:

• Sailmaker's palm.
• Spray bottle of water or damp cloth.
• Leather conditioner.
• Sandpaper and scrap leather (optional).

If sanding the edges of your sailmaker’s palm, do this step before spraying the palm with water. Spray the palm with water and begin working the leather, moving it back and forth and working to open it up and remove the stiffness. You might need to spray it more than once as you work the leather to make it more pliable and moldable. Instead of a spray bottle, you could also use a damp cloth.

As you're working the leather and shaping the palm, buckle it to your hand at a comfortable notch on the buckle strap. Once the palm is shaped to your hand, gently remove it and set it on the towel to dry. Leather is elastic and stretches when wet; it will shrink back as it dries, though perhaps not to its original size. When the leather is drying, do not set it in the sun or heat. Exposure to sunlight and heat will make wet leather shrink. You do not want this!

While the palm is still wet, buckle it to your hand. The leather will be very pliable.

You'll want to condition your palm before it completely dries out and stiffens past the point of usability. After our palm was mostly dried, we coated it thoroughly in a layer of the Nokona conditioner used in Method One and set it aside to dry overnight.

Results & Conclusions

Before (left) and after (right) of our sailmaker's palms. The top right palm was tested with leather conditioner and the bottom right palm was sprayed with water. 

Method One required several coats of the leather conditioner. We applied a new coat about every 30 to 60 minutes, and we flexed, twisted and worked the palm between applications of the conditioner. We applied four coats the first day and two the next day, flexing the leather and shaping it between applications.

Method One softened the leather and made the palm wearable, but it did not break in the palm as much as Method Two. The rawhide is still stiff and hard to bend; we were able to curve it slightly, but not as much as getting the palm wet. The palm is wearable but much stiffer than the Method Two palm. Sanding the edges with sandpaper helped soften them; they do not bite into the skin as much as they did right out of the package.

Method Two was definitely a quicker and easier way to break in a brand-new sailmaker’s palm. It did not require as much time spent conditioning the palm multiple times. Spraying the palm with water made the leather more pliable than just using leather conditioner. We noticed that water made the leather darken, though, along with some wrinkling.

Our Method Two palm already looks like it’s been broken in and has been used. Spritzing with water did discolor the leather and rawhide, so conditioning the leather is a needed step to ensure the leather doesn’t dry out and become brittle.

Final Thoughts

Both softening methods work well enough to break in a sailmaker’s palm so that you can comfortably hand sew with it in a day or two. Using water changed the shape of the palm more dramatically than applying multiple coats of a leather conditioner. Choose whichever method you feel most comfortable with. If you need your palm broken in right away, spraying it with water and shaping it while wet is the way to go.

The most important thing to remember is that no matter which method you choose, it will still take some time to fully break in and soften your sailmaker’s palm. Just like breaking in a new pair of leather shoes — or a baseball glove — repeated use is the surefire way to break in your palm. Once you’ve broken in your palm and it’s comfortable to wear, remember to keep it well maintained so it lasts.

Keep your sailmaker’s palm stored when not in use to keep it clean and out of the sun. Oil or condition it at the end of every sailing season before you pack it away. Remember that leather was once an animal’s skin. Your palm needs to be moisturized the same way your skin needs lotion and sunscreen. The better you take care of your sailmaker’s palm, the longer it will last.