I'm new to building.......beginning my third rod. I'm building 7' rods for bass fishing. #2 and #3 have / will have split rear grip.

I have a Grizzly lathe with the Grizzly drill. It turns cork fine with Andy Dear mandrel. Takes no time to shape and get down to 400 grit in a hurry.

Reaming is another story. I have purchased Nicholson rat tail files, cut the tangs off of them, and chuck them in the drill. I run them in reverse.
Problem is....there is way too much wobble in the file at high speed. It causes the reaming to be off center.

question: Is this wobble due to bent file...???
Is wobble due to slop in the Grizz drill.....???
Would a quality lathe eliminate this wobble.....???
Should I forget power reaming and use a drill press....???

Has anyone tried to turn cork on mandrel that has not been glued....??? There is a lot of tension with a1/4" cork ring and a 1/4" mandrel.
I was thinking you might be able to pack your pieces of cork and rubberized cork close together.....and .....turn the cork..( not yet glued )..then drill.... then glue up.....and then do a final hand reaming to fit.

Sorry for all the Q's. Any responses appreciated.

I'm finding it hard to please me with my work.

Thanks in advance. pb

When power reaming, you might want to use a slow speed. What I do is predrill the rings to a larger size and use a larger mandrel to turn the grip. 1/4" will be pretty whippy and take a lot of reaming. I usually stick a drill with the reamer in my vise with the reamer sticking upwards and lower the grip down the reamer on a slower speed. This works well for me, but your mileage may vary!!!

Mike

Mike has your best idea - pre-bore the rings to a size more closely matching the final ID you require. Use a larger mandrel to mount and turn them on. Then you're only left with a very small amount of final taper reaming to get a perfect fit. If the area on the blank where you want them to reside is something like 5/8th of an inch, it makes little sense to turn a grip with an ID of 1/4 inch. Go ahead and bore them to 1/2 (or whatever) and mount on 1/2 inch mandrel. When done, the grip only requires a small amount of hand reaming. This is by far the easiest way to go about things.

.........

Thanks guys..........this is the kind of help that makes this site such a great place.

I gotta go find Andy.........and a drill press.......pb

Hi Pete,
Andy won't be available until after the first of June. I haven't tried Mike's method but everything he has done has worked for me too. I bought a small table top Craftsman drill press that weighs 43 pounds. I do all of my drilling and sanding on a picnic table in the back yard. I bolted a vise to that table on one end that I use when I do a stress test on the blanks. Now I can use the same vise to mount a drill and finish boring out the grips. Thanks Mike.

Pete

I don't power ream. I did buy a pair of cheap blanks and made a good set of hand reamers which makes the job much easier. But by far the biggest time saver and quality booster is to measure your blank carefully and glue up your grip on the mandrel that is just under the size of your blank. Reaming is very minimal at that point. You can't remove enough material from inside the grip for it to become off center.

Matt




Better to have and not need than to need and not have.

For power reaming use the self made reamers utilizing the grit belt from Flexcoat. I had made several of them in different sizes an they worked super on cork and EVA . This past week I tried one of them on a hard rubber golf club grip and it twisted the steel shaft that was chucked in the hand drill right out of the end of the reamer. Being an ex-Machinist Mate from my Navy days I remembered that the cure was to get a bigger hammer, in this case my hammer was my wood lathe, an old Sears 36" with a 3 jaw chuck on the head stock[ it really smarts to stick your hand in that thing when it's turning at high speed]. I chucked up the reamer, slipped the golf grip on the reamer, and tightened the tail stock. I changed the pully belt to aprox.900rpm and hit the switch.At this speed the golf grip rotated with the reamer until I grabed hold of it so the reamer then rotated inside the grip[ the reamer is 28" so at the small end there was no friction. I slowly worked up my nerve and pushed the grip up so that the reamer was cutting into the grip and it was amazing, the rubber was coming out the end in long spirals like a drill press will do at times. That belt grip never ceases to amaze me ,it's good stuff. Jesse

I have the same old lathe that Jesse mentioned. I make power reamers out of old pieces of blanks and flex coat grit belt spiraled around. I epoxy the grit belt onto the piece of blank per the instructions, then wrap either end with some D thread to hold the ends on. A little epoxy on the end threads keeps everthing in place. Then, I shove a properly sized drill bit up in the larger end of the piece of blank with some epoxy. I mount my reamers in my lathe via a drill chuck in the headstock. The drill press clamps down on the drill bit, and the live center of the tailstock fits right in the open end of the blank.

This system is the absolute easiest way to ream cork. What used to take me an hour of hand-reaming now takes me about 10 seconds of power reaming (and my hands and arms don't hurt afterward). The only thing you have to watch is over-reaming. That flexcoat abrasive grit belt will chew up the cork fast.

The first reamer I built was on a 5' scrap with the abrasive strip contact cemented to the blank. I used an old drill bit as an arbor.
The wobble in this thing was unbearable.......I probably should have made several out of the 5' blank rather than a one piece. But, I saw it done on the Flex Coat tape and thought.....I can do that. What I didn't see in that video.....until after I built the reamer, was a helper holding that long reamer to keep the wobbling down.
Anyway......I wasn't happy with the results and that is when I went to the Nicholson files.

After posting this, I am convinced that the way to go is predrill the cork to the closest size of your blank, then mount the cork on that size or closest to, mandrel......and turn away.
This would leave very little reaming to be done....would eliminate out of control reamers.....would provide a better fit.....and maybe just maybe satisfy an anal perfectionist that I seem to be becoming....LOL

I'm still having trouble pleasing me with my work.

thanks for all of the responses.....pb

Pete, when everything goes perfectly for you on a rod, call me. I'm not gonna hold my breath waiting, though. I still haven't had one after 24 years...LOL!

Putter
Williston, ND

Have any of you tried the Flex Coat pilot drill bits?

They work great for this. On cork, go slowly with light pressure and back out frequently to clean out the filings. Only go through 1/2 way from each direction to avoid "breaking out" at the end.

They work really well on the burl cork of Andy's, too. I go 1/2 way on them, also, but probably wouldn't have to...

Putter
Williston, ND