When you fit a wood grip on a blank, can you ream it with reamers that you'd use for cork grips? Or do you need an electric drill with bits? I'm thinking of using cherry wood.

When reaming wood I have my best success with a rat tail file turning in reverse or a reamer made with a strip of sandpaper spiraled around a length of scrap blank. Reamers made with grit are a little to aggressive for me.

Stan Grace
Helena, MT
"Our best is none too good"

Eijiro
I happen to be working on a fly rod with a (nearly) full cherry grip as we speak. I placed rubberized cork flex points along it's length, so I guess it's not straight wood but the grains line up. I'm a litle leary of any all wood grip that is bored exactly to fit the blank. Any blank will flex into its butt if you put the wood to it, so I'm always afraid of a customer splitting the grip on a big fish (or a big snag). Also afraid of a long flat spot in the blank's natural curvature under load, undue stress just above the grip, etc.

So I center bore all my grip wood a lot larger that the blank's diameter. This keeps weight down and lets the blank flex a little inside the wooden grip. I use arbors made of wine corks, cheap cork, graphite, drywall tape, masking tape. Whetever suits the job or my mood. Done right, all these arbors work great. Just remember, use nothing but RODBOND to mount your wood grips. Use it heavily to full the cavities between and around arbors. In fact, go to lengths to totally encase your arbors in the stuff.

I never bother reaming my wood grips. Too much actual work. I just bore them big and use arbors. Works great for me. Hope this helps.

Josh Markvan
www.markvanheirloom.com

I buy my wood grips from Les Freiborg (Inserts by Les link on the left) and they come bored slightly smaller than the blank. For the final fitting I lock a large rat tail file horizontally in a bench vise and move the grip against the file, rotating the grip constantly. By applying a bit of additional pressure toward the butt end of the grip it quickly opens up to match the taper of the blank.

I chuck a rat tail file in my hand drill and bore it in reverse. Bore it larger than the blank then build it up with some mesh tape

I always have a hard time getting the rat tail to fit into the chuck right so I took a hack saw to it and cut it off. It now works perfectly.

For hardwoods, even unstabilized stuff, reamers with grit epoxied on won't really cut much. The hard wood rubs the grit right off the blank, in my experience. You'll have to go the rattail route or do it my way (above).

Josh Markvan
www.markvanheirloom.com

Josh - if teh wood is mounted on arbors, then epoxied in place - how would the blank flex under the grip? Wouldn't it be teh same thing as mountng the wood direct? I would think you want to overbor it to reduce weight as much as possible anyway, but the blank not flexing doesn't sound right to me?