No. Normal skin oil is no danger to the tubes. You know what is a danger to tubes? Dropping them. And what makes one more likely to drop them? Those cheesy, slick white cotton gloves included with some tube gear. It’s fine if you use gloves with a better grip than bare skin.
Think about a 100W incandescent bulb - that’s pushing out at least as much heat as a power tube like KT88, with a much thinner and weaker glass envelope - and we don’t worry about skin oils there either.
I guess we’re all still paranoid about skin oils from those horrendous halogen bulbs of the 1990s.
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@mulveling
Interesting. I haven't dropped any yet but they do not improve grip, that's for sure.
Hated the halogens, at least in the house. Good for starting fires, not much else. OTOH, I had halogen bulbs in my truck that lasted over 120k miles and they were on 100% of the time. It's the only good thing I have to say about them but............there is that. :)
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When I owned tube equipment, I always wore the cotton gloves.
ozzy
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I use kitchen tongs.
Just kidding. I use my teeth.
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No, but I wash my hands if they're oily.
Gloves might be nice if they aren't slick. I don't like to wait for the tubes to cool off.. 🙂
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I used to until I found out it doesn't matter.
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I always wear gloves. Kevin Deal, IMHO, one of the top authorities on tubes and who I've known for over 40 years, says the oil from your hands won't hurt the tubes in any way...I still use gloves.
To quote Kevin:
"As for the glass itself, despite what some people might tell you, the oil on your fingers will NOT damage the glass or leech through it. Tubes are not halogen bulbs. Tubes may get hot to the touch, but your finger oil will not cause the tube to break when heated up, nor will it affect tube life or sonics. It will not go through the glass."
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Thanks all. I was never concerned that my skin oil would penetrate the glass but wondered if it could more or less "burn" to it. Some people have marked with some sort of paint on their tubes. I don't but I suppose if they use the right stuff, it can't be any worse than the original paints that mark the tubes. Some of that is better than others. Bugle boy white paint is one of the worst at wearing off.
Anyway, I'll worry maybe a little less about it but will probably still use them. If I feel particularly dry, I tend to worry less and then I still wipe them down after putting them where they are going. Can't hurt to keep them clean I guess.
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Not always, but was careful to clean them with alcohol wipes before turning them on
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If the tubes are hot and there is not time to wait for them to cool sufficiently for safe handling, by all means wear gloves.
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I wear gloves if the tubes are still hot otherwise no.
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Always wear cotton gloves I get from Dan at dedicatedaudio.com
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I’m pretty sure that back in the heyday of tubes, the 50s and 60s, no one wore gloves to handle them. Glove wearing may just be more audio tweakery.
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If you have expensive NOS or OS tubes you might want to wear gloves to help prevent body oils from removing the sometimes delicate silk screen tube markings. Nothing to do with decreased performance or longevity, but merely cosmetic
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I just got an idea to market audiophile vacuum tube gripper gloves... 
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I use kitchen tongs.
Just kidding. I use my teeth.
@hilde45 , 😆
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I wear gloves with the grip dots which helps keep hold of the tubes. As for the why, I do it for aesthetics. I keep my gear clean, and oil from the skin attracts dust. Anyone who has ever pulled tubes from an old TV or radio knows how dingy they look after many hours of baking on the dust that has settled on them.
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I use these when I want to swap out a tube that is too hot to handle!
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I've always used gloves, just to be safe & no fingerprints. Its like chicken soup, it can't hurt.
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Maybe one doesn't need to wear some type of glove when handling tubes, but I always do.
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@hilde45
Do you remove teeth first or leave them in your mouth?
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Thanks for all the replies. Much appreciated. The gloves that I use are ones that I have for handling coins, just plain white cloth, made for keeping fingerprints off of valuable coins. I value my tubes much as much as I do my coin collection. Many are NOS and as old as I am. I have handled them with bare skin before but if so, I wipe them with clean cotton cloth after. Maybe it's just a nutty audiophile thing to do but it's OK with me to take the extra precaution. Back in the 50's, when I was a kid and tubes were in all of our TV's and radios, we never used gloves and would have thought you were nuts if you did. OK, we're nuts.
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I just put a pair of white sweatsocks on my hands - clean, grippy and insulated from the heat.
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Used to. Not so much any more. The reason it was recommended years ago was a myth.
As for the oils on your fingers, the oil won't in soak, penetrate, through the glass envelope of the tube, therein the myth, But it will smear the fragile labeling, printing on old vacuum tubes. Especially those made in the 1950s and 1960s.
When handling old tubes I am very careful to not touch the printing on the tubes with my fingers. Even wearing gloves. Any accidental wiping on the fragile printing can destroy the printing. YMMV.
.
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Who was it who said:
"You can use your bare fingers to handle tubes, just make sure you wipe off the peanut butter first."
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If you wear gloves your fingerprints can't be found and you have plausible deniability.
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@mclinnguy ,
I believe it was John Harvey Kellogg.
Yeah, no matter how you pop tubes in and out, be careful of smearing the printing.
I grab it at the top, gentle wiggle back and forth, then pull it up by the bottom.
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I believe it was John Harvey Kellogg.
@thecarpathian
Close, it was Roger Modjeski:
When asked to comment on the subject of NOS verses current production I demur. On cryo treatments I chuckle and on the white gloves I say. "Skip the silly gloves, these are not quartz lamps, just wash the peanut butter off your hands first, that gets kinda messy." BTW, Who started this silly notion that you can’t touch the glass?
https://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=58144.msg519785#msg519785
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Do you remove teeth first or leave them in your mouth?
Those tubes like a little bite along with the pressure, so I leave the teeth in.
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Bare hands give better grip, wipe clean with dry microfiber cloth after.
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I use special hand stitched, exotic leather, custom made "Audiophile Hand Enclosures - Explicitly designed for handling vacuum tubes and touching high end audio gear." I got ’em from the emperor’s tailor.
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@vuch I use special hand stitched, exotic leather, custom made
Would that be fine Corinthian leather?
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Make sure they're cool and use cotton gloves, finger cots or surgical gloves. The acids from your skin on hot glass can over time etch the surface making it porous causing the tube to lose vacuum. I'm sure someone is going to dispute this, live and learn!
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Whoever first spread the rumor years ago that skin oil damages tubes was an absolute fool, but washing your hands before handling them is a good idea.
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I’m sure someone is going to dispute this, live and learn!
@faustuss ,
You are correct!
I’m totally disputing this. Since the ideal material for storing acids is glass, and highly corrosive hydrofluoric acid is about the only acid that etches glass, this is pegging my Poppycock meter to the point I had to unplug it and take an aspirin. Some manufactures literally acid etched their date codes on their tubes without stressing the integrity of the glass after decades. 🤔
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@thecarpathian I do not think this is the case with Vacuum Tubes. This is very much so true when handling Halogen Light Bulbs as they run very hot and would could burn the oils deposited on the bulb from your hands. KT88 not so much.
I still am cautious and do wear gloves when rolling tubes.
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@texasblues1959 ,
I'm confused by your response, which is not unusual for me. Are you agreeing? Disagreeing? While you decide, I'm going to take another aspirin.
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@thecarpathian I can see where it could be confusing. I am disagreeing that the oils in our skin would cause hot spots on the surface of a vacuum tube.
Easy on the aspirin they will burn a hole in your stomach.
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@texasblues1959 ,
It's all right, they're baby aspirin. I'm Quite delicate...
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I never used gloves, even when I removed my 3b22 rectifier tubes, which run hotter than most power tubes, and have a 6amp filament current. I sometimes leave them on 24/7 and have had no problems for over 6 years.
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Yep, literally just swapped tubes in my DAC 5 minutes ago. The ones supplied with my DAC have little sticky nylon or silicone dots for grip.
I would not used the white slippery ones that came with my TT though.
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@faustuss ,
You are correct!
I’m totally disputing this. Since the ideal material for storing acids is glass, and highly corrosive hydrofluoric acid is about the only acid that etches glass, this is pegging my Poppycock meter to the point I had to unplug it and take an aspirin. Some manufactures literally acid etched their date codes on their tubes without stressing the integrity of the glass after decades. 🤔
They also store caustic acids in polyethylene, its not the end of the world and its not 400 degrees fahrenheit plus!
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I know a number of old timers who have used everything, including high power transmitter tubes that get very hot, to tungar tubes, and mercury vapor tubes, and they all handle the tubes without gloves. Tubes are nothing like halogen or metsl halide bulbs. These fail because their high heat carbonizes oils from skin to form a dark spot on the glass. That spot then absorbs light instead of letting the light pass through and that spot then heats up to a much higher temperature than the surrounding glass and this creates a weak spot that fails and causes the bulb to explodes. Also, the internal gas in these bulbs develop extreme pressure (it is not a vacuum). Even if a tube had a dark spot on it, it doesn’t emit enough light to heat up and fail. People write on tubes with marker pens to no ill effects.
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Interesting responses. Thanks
I'll keep doing what I've done, which is mostly using cloth gloves. If I don't, I wipe them down with soft cotton cloth. I don't normally handle them when hot/warm but if I do, I have used the gloves. They don't seem to be terribly hot, certainly not like a halogen bulb which would cause severe burns, would even burn your cloth glove.
Thanks for all the input.
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The only times I wear gloves is when it's wood (not mine....Lumber....) or the 10' pole I carry around Here. 😏
John Harvey Kellog....wade into this morass.... and there's a whole lot of it... ;)
Other times...heavy, oily, caustic... I'm fond of the skin on my digits, 'cuz they allow me to 'do other things'....
@hilde45 ....more 'lubricious', right? *L*
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