Hi, I’m trying to find something like a rubber cover for my padlock. I’ve tried searching on google, Amazon and even the Abus website without luck, so I’m looking for help from this community. I’m hoping to 1) eliminate the metal on metal tapping; 2) eliminate the sharp pain from the padlock corners digging into my skin. Would anyone have any ideas please? Ideally in the UK!
You could cover it with the soft side part of Velcro. Most Velcro has a rough part and a soft part. Then the opposite side has a self sticky that would adhere it to the padlock.
I never had issues when my device used a small brass padlock luckily. Maybe a random noise very rarely bit no worse then keys or change in my pocket. I've seen to use a rubber band wrapped around it or velcro it in my place though. Wondering how long velcro hold up in the shower though.
I used to use a "rubber thumb" when I used an external padlock. For me it worked quite well for the 2 problems you wish to eliminate. You might have to experiment & test different sizes. Here's a link to something very similar I used. It's a U.S. Amazon link, but you could probably find something similar in the UK. https://www.amazon.com/Tory-Fingert...?keywords=rubber+thumb&qid=1706570090&sr=8-16
I actually tried electrical tape on mine once just to see how it did and it lasted about a month before I had to remove it
You could use heat moldable plastic, it comes with many trade names, "polymorph" is one of them. If you warm the plastic in hot water to 60-70C then it becomes transparent and soft like plasticine. Once it cools down again it goes pure white and hard like nylon. To remove it, you can either cut it or just warm it up again. One advantage of using it is you can make different shapes with it, for example not only just warp it arounf the padlock, but have a 'string' of it connected and wrapped around the cage to hold it still. I have used it to just cover the sides of the padlock, and also to cover the whole lock, key entry hole as well, so making it less accessible for impulse unlockings! Another way of doing what you want is to get some heat shrink tubing, the type that's lined with glue on the inside is the more robust. It's normally used to wrap electrical cables and terminals together, so most electrical component stores sell it. It comes in many different sizes and colours, and you just need a heat gun or a hair dryer to shrink it into place. The cheap and cheerful way is to use some rubber bands, wide flat ones are less likely to 'roll off'. Regarding the lock being sharp, use a small file to round off all the edges of the padlock, the metal is soft and easily rounded, and smoothing just a tiny bit off the edges and corners makes a world of difference.