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Calluses - How do you maintain your fingers?

11K views 28 replies 20 participants last post by  Laobi 
#1 ·
Hi,

This is something I always wanted to ask. In order to be able to play, I must regularly shave/peel calluses from my finger tips and treat them with moisturizing creme. I use the creme every two days and shaving/peeling every 5-7 days. Now, if I don't do this, the calluses get very hard and I no longer can hold the strings; they just slip off my finger tips, absolutely no grip there :(

Thankfully, the "maintenance routine" I described prevents this. :mrgreen:

Anybody else with "no grip" finger tips from calluses without "maintenance"?

Regards,

JP
 
#2 ·
that doesnt sound good at all! :(

i find that if i dont play for a while, my finger tips go soft, and i cant play for as long, but they soon toughen up again. and they kinda become like the skin on the heel of your foot - tough/hard, but not in need of shaving/moisturising!

have you tried different brands of strings/other possible variables??
 
#4 ·
I play since I was 6 and I am 45 now, and as long as I can remember as soon as I play long stretches every day, my tips get hard and loose grip. That happens on both classical and electrical guitars. I also never sweat in my hands. And believe me, I tried every string on the market. :mrgreen: I nowadays buy bulk whatever is in sales offer. Just bought a 10 pack of GHS boomers :) for $7 a pack. :D

Regards,

JP
 
#13 ·
I was in the same boat. It took a while to build my stamina back up after carpal tunnel surgery. Now I can play for a good 2-3 hours before my hand starts cramping. Otherwise I've never had any issues with callouses other than I can't play for too long when I don't have any. :confused:
 
#10 ·
It's a good question.

What gauge strings do you use??

There are little things I do to NOT soften my callouses like wearing a rubber glove when I am doing dishes if I know I'm going to play afterwards and things like that.
56 to 9 on 7-string
46 to 9 (basically a 10 set with a 9 on the 1st E) on 6-string

Wet soft fingers suck indeed :mrgreen:

Regards,

JP
 
#11 ·
I have never done anything to maintain the callus's on my fingers, playing seems to keep them good. I also asked a bunch of people who play guitar/bass and they also don't do anything to their's. Maybe you have a thing like my sister, on her feet skin grows faster than normal leaving huge callus's and she also has to shave skin off regularly.
 
#15 ·
Based on what I'm seeing in that pic, I wonder if using an emery board would be a more controlled way to reduce them? Cutting/shaving calluses can be tricky business (I've only done it on my feet, and accidentally cut too deeply once or twice).

Maybe get 2 emery boards... 1 pretty rough, and another that's finer. Hit them first with the rough one to knock down the bulk, then finish it off with the finer one to remove any ragged pieces of skin that might be hanging off.
 
#16 ·
That looks bad man! I play ALOT and never get much damage, i guess after you finish and before you start playing you could try soak your hands in warm water, thats a good way to warm your hands up aswell as helping you to grips strings and soften callusess.

i will admit, yours is a strange problem, usually its the other way round with people wanting to develop calluses, but good look man!
 
#19 ·
I've had something kind of like that since I was a teenager. The pads of my thumbs seem to naturally grow calluses very quickly. They don't get rough, but they start to bother me every several days as I can feel that I have a spot of dead skin there.

I wait until my hands are soft after a shower and then I take a cuticle knife life this:



You can basically cut it away in little strips. It leaves the surface full of ridges as you can imagine, so then I use a pumice stone and make everything flat.

I have no idea why it happens, but that works for me. I also get a callus lower down on my thumb where I would rest a pen (I don't hold pens correctly). The odd thing is that I do so little handwriting any longer, so I'm not sure why it keeps coming back?

I noticed the calluses on my thumbs for the first time in high school when I was working at a grocery store and was counting money all day long. It's almost like once calluses form, your body just keeps making them come back in the same spot, even if you aren't doing the thing that caused them any longer?
 
#25 ·
Interesting question.
I have pretty well developed callouses from years of playing but one things that will make them vanish is baby moisturizer. When my daughter was born there was a span where I couldn't play much guitar and I was always applying baby lotion to the kid. The callous on one finger literally peeled away with nice repaired skin beneath!
I've since rebuilt the callouses but i also wash my hands a lot - also more so due to parenthood. With the smooth tips on the callouses and less oil on my hands from all the hand washing I do tend to drop things all the time. Mostly its the screw top of the milk or the top of the jelly or similar items where one would use a similar grip.
 
#28 ·
Interesting question.
I have pretty well developed callouses from years of playing but one things that will make them vanish is baby moisturizer. When my daughter was born there was a span where I couldn't play much guitar and I was always applying baby lotion to the kid. The callous on one finger literally peeled away with nice repaired skin beneath!
Well, as if I needed another reason never to have kids... :lol:
 
#26 ·
I tear the tips of my fingers up from playing during the day, overnight they grow back and the callous is so hard I can't even feel them, I can tap them on a hard surface and it makes a hollow click just like tappinf a piece of plastic on a window. Then, I tear them up again, and repeat.

I have sweaty hands so that might be the reason the callous softens up and rips off.
 
#27 ·
That's crazy man. Every once in a while I'll tear up my fingertips a little while playing, but that's usually when I haven't been playing a lot and then play a ton. Normally, they're pretty hard, and they hold up well while I'm playing.

If you're playing and ripping them up while playing that's one thing, but if you're intentionally shaving them off because you have trouble gripping the strings with calluses, I'd say maybe look into changing how you fret, as callused fingertips should make playing EASIER, not harder.
 
#29 ·
My advice would be to do nothing with them and keep playing. If there's a week or two I don't get time to play, my callouses soften a little and I get some skin peeling off my fingertips. It looks sort of like the site of an old blister, at this point if I play for an extended time (a few hours) they get red and sore), but next day they begin to harden and if I keep playing over the following days the callouses reform. My callouses are not like the ultra hard sandpaper type ones I used to get when doing lots of knuckle pushups, they're hard with a little give, smooth with a slightly plastic feel.....hard to explain, but they feel sort of like the pad on a dogs foot. I play better with the callouses, if I have been travelling and they fade it feels like my fingertips snag the strings. So leave them be for a while, keep playing and see what happens, often that peely, leprosy looking stage is the inbetween stage, sort of like a chrysalis stage where it looks messy and doesn't feel too good, this should form into nice callouses.
 
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