So I'm working on a grip, sanding it down, ho-hum. The butt grip has an EVA Inlay of a Jockey riding a horse on a brown piece of EVA, with Lamar Reelseats Brown cork surrounding it with a few of there mixed brown & tan rings as inlays. GRip looks GREAT. I'm sading along, sanding along, turn off the motor, everything is PERFECTLy smooth, the cork & EVA have a PERFECT transition, no bumps or valleys between the 2 materials, I'm pleased.

I take my Calipers out, meaure the OD of the EVA - it's 1.3. I sanded the grip so it was thicker in teh middle, and tapered off at each end. Hmmm. 1.3", that's WAY too thick, let me take some off. 220-320, now it's 1.25. Uh, this looks really silly, plus it's quite heavy. LEt me take some more off. Put the motor on, 320, back and forth, nice and smooth, no bumps, shut off the motor - UH-OH!!! Sanded right through teh inlay.

Just now I "fixed" the rod. Sanded the entire inlay off, have an OD of 1.05", adn teh rod is about 1/2 apound lighter now that I sanded everythign down to teh right OD. I kind of knew I messed up once I glued everything up - I put the inlay on a piece of EVA that was WAY TOO thick OD to start. I don't know what I Was thinking. Of course I tried to "fix" my initial mistake by sanding the grip to an oddball shape - it was like the top of a trapezoid at one point, lol. I'm actually pleased with teh rod now, even though the inlay is gone, but @#$@#%@# I should have done it right off the bat. Dumb Me.

Total time wasted - 8 hours on teh inlay, + teh entire "Theme" of his rod is in the toilet. IT tok me a really long time to figure out what I could do on DAd's rod, he oned a horse which won a race up at Saratoga 3 years ago, has a picture framed in his house of the Winner's Circle. The inlay matched the color of the jockey;s silks, + teh horse had a stripe down it's nose which I matched. Was goign to put a decal wit hte h race specifics, some other stuff. All that in the toilet, becasue I started with too thick of a piece of EVA to put the inlay on.

I'm sorry to make you read all that, but I promise to read your worst butchery of a rod that you spent a lot of time on. Even if you dia really sweet rod, cameout perfect, and ahammerhead customer, or even worse...a Brother -In-Law - stuck the tip in a cieling fan. lol.

Guess that handle goes on another rod?? GOT MORE EVA ??

Need more cork?


ANdy Dear
Lamar Manf.

Unfortuantely, handle cannot go on another rod, as it was all glued up on the blank. when I sanded.

I'm alerting the Moderator here to SPAM. Geez, lol. I will need more cork, as weil a few other people around here. A friend came over this AM, LOVED the cork, so I'd expect a few orders from the NY Area in the near future.

Glued up to the blank already?? What a testimonial for Andy Dears Mandrels!!!

Freddwhy (Rapt-Ryte)

Billy, to borrow from B. Clinton's repetoire-I feel your pain...

This is terrible to have happened. I know you were building one for your mom and for your dad and this really s#%@!! It was a lesson well learned; hopefully others will take note and not make the same mistake. Guess that's part of the reason we post these things.

I just wish this hadn't happened on such an important rod. The retirement rod that I just did with it's tight time frame could have easily ended up in disaster, too. Any one of a number of things could have gone just a tad wrong and I wouldn't have made the deadline. Better to be lucky than good any day, I guess.

I'll have a cold one and think of ya, Billy...


Putter
Williston, ND

RAndy - that''s exactly what stinks about this. I can deal with wasting the time, I just really wanted the rod to be special and remind him of something he's really proud of (not that he did anything, the horse won the race, he just bought it, lol)

Fred - I'm not knocking Andy's mandrels, I have a set of my own which I use constantly for shaping grips. I do my final sanding after the grips have been glued up to the rod though. I also had to glue everything up seperately on this particular rod - the cork had to be clamped seperately from the EVA section, becasu ethe EVA would have compressed & the inlay probably would have split. SO I glued teh EVA in teh center of where the grip was supposed to go, then clamped the cork seperately, glued that in place (yes, from teh back end of teh blank - it was extended and I put the thinner sexction of teh extension towards teh butt).

THe only thing that would have prevented this, was me startign with the proper size EVA to start. Dumb Me.