Lastly, never forget that as a hand-drummer your hands are part of your instrument. They determine your sound and you must protect and preserve them the same as your drums

The drumheads pull oil from your hands which must be replaced. Each player seems to have a favorite hand oil. 

African shea butter, cocoa butter, lanolin, castor oil, olive oil and peanut oil are all commonly used. My personal preference is a mixture of equal parts of shea butter, castor oil, and lanolin.

Because of very dry air, such as found indoors in winter, your hands may have a tendency to split. It's as if your fingerprints split between the ridges causing a fissure creating enough pain to really be annoying. To treat these sores and get them to heal as quickly as possible, I recommend first rubbing powered alum into the split (alum is the material in styptic pencils used to stop the bleeding from shaving nicks). Next soak a bit of camphorated oil into the pad of a bandaid and wrap it over the split. Usually this heals the splits in a day or two.

And finally we must mention that there is this tradition that urinating on your hands will make the skin tough and give you great tone. 

We haven't tried it ourselves, but we leave it to you to decide if you should shake the hand of any conguero you know!

Frank Jacoby   

Go Practice!