Anyone wear gloves to handle vacuum tubes?

@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. :)

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. 

@hilde45 

Do you remove teeth first or leave them in your mouth? 

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. 

@hilde45 

Got it. 

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.