I've just completed a couple of surf rods (spinning) with cork tape as the rear grip . I've done a couple of decent butt wraps above the fore grips, but the rear grips are quite long and plain . I'm thinking of doing an under wrap on top of the tape, 8-10 inches in the center of the grip with moderate tension in NCP , then a simple diamond wrap over to spruce the grips up a tad . Have any of the beach chuckers done anything like this ?? Or am I in for a mess. My concerns are finnish running through the thread and into the tape , causing some unsightly dissfigurement...........Thoughts please. Thanks, John

I would remove the tape from the area where you want to do the wrap. Spiral cut with a razor blade and peel off. Then make your wrap and take your tie off wraps up and onto the cork tape. Slope the cork tape edges so that your tie off wrap can climb up onto them.

John,
Yes I've done that several times. The best effect I got was when I applied a coat of two part (guide finish) epoxy to the area of cork tape first. A lot of that will soak into the cork (cork composite) tape. After that has dried then do an underwrap and color seal it (if light color thread) finally proceed with the overwrap pattern. The times I tried it without the layer of epoxy the cork sucked the life out of the thread colors and it looked ... well, terrible. The other problem you may face is wear on the finished wrap - a surf rod going into / coming out of a sand spike takes a lot of wear in the area that you are thinking of wrapping - so put on two coats of epoxy - one of hi-build to seal it in.

Thanks guys , Mike , that was myorriginal thought , but I'm not real crazy about cutting the tape...........if I had to , I was goung to. Ken , you hit the nail on the head as far as what I was concerned about, I'm sure glad I asked before I went in head first and had to re-do the tape......thanks guys. John