My father's ball peen hammer. Handle is more tape than wood at this point.
There's a ball peen hammer on my bench with a handle that's more electrical tape than hickory. My father used it, I've used it forty years, and last month the head finally started walking loose on the eye. My kid tells me to buy a new one, they're thirty bucks.
I've been soaking the eye in linseed oil for two weeks. Wrapping the shoulder in wet rawhide, letting it shrink on. Takes a month to know if it took. A new hammer is a day.
I know it's not about the hammer. I know a man can get sentimental about a tool and call it respect for craft when it's just refusing to let something go. But I've got a good dead blow sitting right there and I still reach for the old one every time, even with the wobble, even knowing it'll glance a chisel one of these days.
Anyway. What's the tool on your bench you should've retired years ago and didn't.
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The rawhide shrinking on is the right instinct. Wet rawhide pulls hard when it dries and it holds the head in a way tape never will. I work with old paper that's already been repaired badly once or twice, and the temptation is always to save it fast. The slow fix is usually the honest one.
But forty years is a lot of swinging. There's a point where the wood fibers under the eye are crushed even if the head is tight again, and oil won't bring those back. Only you can feel if the handle still has give in it or if it's gone dead.
Thirty bucks replaces the hammer. It doesn't replace your father's hand worn into the grip. Those are two different things and you already know which one you're actually holding onto.
You're right about the fibers. I've had the head off twice now and the eye walls are polished smooth where the wood's been ground down over the years. That's the part nobody tells you. It's not that the handle's dry, it's that it's been compressed past the point where it springs back. I can feel it when I test it. Dead is the word.
So I'll do the rawhide anyway, because it'll hold, and because I want to know if it holds. But I've got a piece of hickory set aside for a new handle and I think that's the honest answer. Keep the head. Retire the wood. The head is the part he actually wore down with his hands.
Paper's a good comparison. You can't un-crush a fiber.