How exactly do calluses form (such as callouses on a guitar player’s fingertips)?

Question

How exactly do calluses form (such as callouses on a guitar player’s fingertips)?

In: Biology

Answer 1

When skin gets damaged in the same manner over and over and over your body adapts to protect itself by growing thicker, tougher pads of skin that can withstand the punishment it is being subjected too.

That’s why “working class” people, in the historical sense, tend to have very hard and rough hands compared to white collar people with soft, smooth hands. The workers’ hand get cut and scratched and smashed and burnt and scraped all the time.

So, for the guitar player, the repeated scraping and friction from the strings, frets, and neck of the guitar, over time, promote the growth of a protective layer of skin that can hold up to playing without getting sore.