Baseball gloves are one of the most treasured tools for baseball players. Unfortunately, sometimes the webbing, such as trapeze, gets damaged, or a lace gets torn in baseball and softball gloves. In that case, rarely would you want to discard your attachment to your old gloves and start the process of conditioning a new glove again. Fortunately, you can relace a trapeze baseball glove and save yourself from letting go of your old buddy.
There are many types of webbing in baseball gloves that serve different purposes. Among these, a trapeze baseball glove has quite an intricate and extensive lacing pattern. So naturally, relacing a trapeze baseball glove can feel extremely daunting. Nevertheless, it’s possible to relace a trapeze baseball glove with little effort, whether it has a regular or modified trapeze web.
Fortunately, relacing gloves isn’t that hard. Many baseball pros relace their gloves on their own. However, even you can do it with the help of this guide. The entire process shouldn’t take very long.
Relace A Trapeze Baseball Glove: Things You Will Need
You can relace your trapeze baseball glove on your own at your home conveniently. To do that, you will need the following tools:
- U-wire / straight-laced grooved needle
- 6 baseball glove laces
- Conditioner
- Knife
The above supplies will be enough to relace your trapeze glove or any other type of baseball glove. Actually, most baseball gloves require fewer laces than a trapeze glove.
If you are feeling swamped about the process of relacing your glove, just gather the above tools and follow this guide. I will make this easy, comprehensive, and stress-free for you.
Relace A Trapeze Baseball Glove: Before You Begin
Before starting, take pictures of the old lacing from different angles before removing them. As a result, you can return to these pictures if you lose track of the lacing pattern while replacing them.
If you are entirely new to relacing and afraid that you might screw up, there’s an easy hack for you. You can replace a hole with the new lace as soon as you unlace it. Although this hack will make you confident about not losing track of the pattern, using this trick makes the process of relacing quite tedious.
After unlacing the glove, apply conditioner to your glove. This is an excellent opportunity to apply conditioners in difficult to reach when the glove is laced. Your glove must work the conditioner all over the glove, even on the inside.
Furthermore, put some conditioner on the new laces that you’ll be using in your glove. This will make the process of lacing smoother.
The steps mentioned above should make replacing very easy for you.
A word of caution
The conditioner you use might have byproducts that are harmful to animals. For example, if you have a pet around, it might accidentally chew on your gloves. Therefore, make sure your conditioner is safe to use around animals.
How To Relace A Trapeze Baseball Glove
After you have gathered the necessary tools, taken pictures of the old lacing pattern, and conditioned your glove and laces, you can step into the main process of lacing without further ado.
- First, create a small hole with a punch on one end of the lace. Then, stick in the U-wire needle through that hole.
- After that, tie a knot at the opposite end of the lace.
- Now, you should start relacing from the palm area, which happens to be the most difficult area to relace.
- Look for a hole in the backside of the pinky finger that doesn’t seem to belong there. On a right-hand throw glove, you will find this hole on the right side of the pinky figure, while on a left-hand throw glove, you will find the hole on the left side of the pinky finger. This is the hole from which you should start lacing.
- Insert the needle in that hole from the backside of the pinky finger and start lacing down the line to the palm area.
- Ensure that the flat surface of the lace is exposed while lacing.
- Usually, for this line of holes in most gloves, the pattern of lacing is lace, lace, lace, space, lace, lace, lace, lace.
- Although the first few holes might feel difficult to lace, don’t get discouraged. It will get easier down the line. Try using your non-lacing hand to feel the holes from the other side.
- After you have reached the web area, tie off a knot in the lace using the closest hole.
- Repeat the same method to lace the rest of the glove.
- Relace the webbing. I have written a more detailed guide on this specific part below.
- After you have laced the webbing, complete lacing the fingers.
How to relace a trapeze webbing
The process of lacing the web is not that much different from lacing the rest of the glove. Nevertheless, I will give you easy directions to complete this step.
As I have previously emphasized, make sure that the webbing part of the glove and the laces have been conditioned well. After that, follow these steps:
- Using the lacing method you have learned so far, start lacing the web from the thumb side of the glove.
- From the backside of the glove, insert the lace into the hole near the edge of the bottom part of where the webbing is supposed to start.
- You should leave some lace out to be used to tie with another piece of lace at the end of this process.
- Now, lace the web by following the trapeze pattern of the glove. In this step, you can use the pictures you took before unlacing them as a reference.
- Follow the pattern from the bottom of the glove to the top of the glove.
- Repeat the same pattern on the other side of the web.
- Tighten baseball glove laces.
- You mustn’t miss any holes. Loose laces or missing holes in the webbing can let a baseball breakthrough. This is extremely dangerous, not to mention inconvenient.
- Your relacing should end at the bottom and one hole away from where you started.
- For the last step, cut the extra parts of the laces dangling out of the holes. You should cut them to the same length and tie them together into a knot.
Once you finish
When you have finished lacing the fingers after lacing the webbing, the process of replacing the trapeze glove will be complete.
If you have laced the webbing correctly, the pattern should look symmetrical. In addition, put on the gloves to check if the lacing has been satisfactory.
In the end, you will have a functional and perfect trapeze baseball glove that is uniquely yours to catch those balls in the field.
Further References
To understand the process easier, you can see this video of relacing a baseball glove with a trapeze web.
Frequently Asked Questions(FAQs)
How hard is it to replace a trapeze baseball glove?
To relace a trapeze baseball glove all you need to do is follow our simple steps mentioned above and you will have relaced your baseball glove in no time.
What is a trapeze baseball glove?
A trapeze baseball glove is a baseball glove with a trapeze web pattern sewn between the thumb and finger slots.
What is the best trapeze baseball glove?
There are a bunch of baseball glove brands that use trapeze web patterns in their glove design. My favorite baseball glove with a trapeze pattern is the Rawlings Pro Preferred baseball glove series.
Are there better baseball glove webs?
Most baseball glove companies have their personal designs for glove web types however there are about eight types that are the standards.
Final Words
Relacing a baseball or softball glove is an essential aspect of glove repairing that you should definitely learn.
Gloves are dear accessories for those that love to play baseball and softball. Naturally, therefore, it goes without saying that taking care of gloves on their own is a core part of their sports life for baseball and softball players.
I hope this guide to relacing your trapeze glove will help you add to your skills. Good luck!
