Ergonomic Tool Handles

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For those of us with a touch of arthritis
For those of us who just need a comfortable grip

Here's a great technique I learned from my old friend, Steven Beckley, the violin bow maker. Bow makers spend an inordinate amount of time scrubbing a tiny hand plane along a skinny stick of hardwood. They start to lose their grip after a while. (Not just metaphorically!)

I'll demonstrate the procedure using my little fret slot pick as a subject. It's a tool I have to grip very hard, and I'd like to try a better handle.

First I'll mix up a nice smelly batch of Quick Carve. It's a pattern maker's compound that carves easily with a knife or chisel and is used for filling and filleting in wooden patterns. It's really a lot like Bondo auto dent filler:

It's a two-part mix that hardens in about 5 minutes.

Next, I'll don the tradition latex glove, and rub on a little lemon oil to keep the stuff from sticking:

Gotta work fast now, so I'll glop on a big wad of this goo right all over the handle in the area I want a good grip:

I'm really moving! See the blur.

Now I'll grab hold of the glop and grip the handle in the position I use.

This stuff cures in an exothermic reaction. (It gives off heat, and the hotter it gets the faster it cures, and the more heat it gives off.) Yow! It's starting to hurt now! I think I can hang on until it gets hard but I'm not sure. Better hit the More button right away so I can take my hand off!

Thanks, that helps!

OK, now the stuff is cured and it really looks weird, sticking out all over:

All I have left to do is to trim the squeezed out mess so the handle has the grip I want without a lot of stuff I don't need:

Here's the result:

A handle that fits my hand perfectly and took almost no time to make! This is a new one for me and I'll see how I like it. If I don't like it I can just cut the Quick Carve off and start over or go back to the stock handle.

Here's the same kind of handle on a tool I really do use. When I refret an old Martin guitar with "bar" frets I have a LOT of aggressive filing to do. I really had trouble hanging on through the operation until I made this handle. I just epoxied a hardwood "spine" onto the back side of this double-cut mill file and used the Quick Carve technique to form the handle. I sprayed the whole thing battleship gray so it would show up well in this photo:

It fits so well, I swear I could grip this file all day and not get tired!
There's a socket for my thumb on this side and perfect recesses for all my fingers on the backside. If you're losing your grip you have to try this handle technique!