Recycling - Shock Sleeve Collars for Hand Tools

Here's a quick rainy day weekend project!
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I'm sure most people have older hand tools stored away in the garden shed that have had a hard life - as you can see my mattock that I picked up from a garage sale is no exception. This one in its past has suffered a few "miss hits" causing split damage to the timber handle.

Recently I went on a hunt to find some rubber collars to help prevent future damage or worst case - the timber handle braking off totally!
But no one seemed to stock them anymore, So I thought I'd recycle what I had in the shed..

Saved from the trash, I found a length of unused rubber radiator hose from a modern vehicle, This length had an inside diameter of 30mm or 1.18~ inches

Tools needed for the job:

Conduit / pipe cutting tool
Silicone spray or linseed oil
Hobby knife

Strong hand muscles!

Cut a length off the hose aprox 3 inches long or 2 inches for smaller hammers or hand-tools using a conduit pipe cutting tool.

I found that the pipe cutting tool gave me a nice clean and safe cut (avoiding any hobby knife slippages)

(You may need to finish the cut using a hand knife if your tool doesn't make it right through in one pass)

My hose was a tight fit so I used a few squirts of silicone spray on the inside to help ease it on to the timber handle.

What I also found that helped was the liberal application of linseed oil which in long term has the bonus of protecting the hardwood timber.

Before applying lubricants, you could try rolling the hose on a flat surface, This generates heat and helps to make the rubber more stretchy :)

In order to protect my smaller diameter handled tools I used black insulation tape (approx 3 turns wrapped around the handle) to help sleeve and hold the rubber in place on the handle.

Obviously a smaller inside diameter hose could have been used, however I wanted to use what I had on hand.

The picture shows all handles oiled with linseed and all sporting professional looking shock collars.

Ready for spring!