Hi guys, I just got a lathe for christmas and am going to start turning my own cork handles. I got a bunch of cheap cork and have been practicing all day today and it actually isnt as hard as I thought it was going to be.

What I was wondering is what do you guys use for the accent rings for between the cork peices? Hoping to be able to find something that can be bought a craft shop or hardware store locally.

James

Happy New Year James,
I use a lot of things but the one that is easiest is sheets of craft foam you can buy at craft stores or Wal Mart.........I am sure you will get lots of ideas on this subject...........Have a good year

Big John
Rio Hondo, Texas
Blessed are those who can give without remembering and take without forgetting

Lately Ive been toying with cork gasket material from auto supply shop which comes in a couple of colours. Veneer in either wood or composite which I bought in small sheets at the local home supply. Get some of Andys burnt rings future projects. Nice if you slice them to 1/8 ". Theres lots more you can use just go have a browse as thats half the fun

Ive been using wood veneer and gasket material alot, combined with andys burl and regular burl. They look nice to me.


good luck



"There is a principle which is a bar against all information,which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance--that principle is contempt prior to investigation."
- Herbert Spencer

andy dear (lamar fishing) now has the burnt rings in 1/8". they turn very nicely and don't ridge. i just used four of them in a fly rod handle combining his burl cork and regular cork. came out great. just another option.

All of the above. After you get some practice, give acrylics a shot! You can buy sheets of it in varying thicknesses and cut rings with a hole saw. When you're ready to try it, give me a holler mbarkley@wowway.com

Mike (Southgate, MI)
If I don't want to, I don't have to and nobody can make me (except my wife) cuz I'm RETIRED!!

Those acrylic rings, if properly placed beyond just accent pieces, can act as sensor rings; a direct tap to the blank through the cork handle. We used to incorporate a couple 1/8" rings, in forward half of the foregrip. Lots of drift fisherman want to put their finger on the blank, whereas cork is more comfortable (especailly if a hook keeper is present if fighting a fish lots chike up past the grip). You can them make the foregrip 2-3" longer and still feel the blank and choke up while fighting a fish and still be on the foregrip.

Actually, those rings aren't going to increase sensitivity or any sort of direct link to whatever the blank is transmitting. And cork doesn't necessarily hurt sensitivity. This will all be covered in a near future article that is really going to open a lot of eyes. Then it will be followed by some very exacting tests to prove each statement. It is going to change the way rod builders look at sensitivity and the things than can maintain or reduce it.

..............

You also might try poker chips, you have to be careful of the glue that you use. They come in various colors and they are not expensive.
I use them on TN handles.

rhr

Tom,

Lets hope that article comes in the NEAR future.

DR

The next two issues will tell the tale. And, they will dispel a lot of myths about rod sensitivity.

...........

The strength of a transmitted vibration is a function of both the mass and damping factor of the material. Materials like cork and rigid foam tend to be a couple of the better choices compared to other heavier materials because they are both lightweight, and have reasonably low damping factors.

mark

We use burl and burnt cork, usually sliced to not more than 1/8" thick. We also picked up some "wooden nickles" - hardwood discs 1/8 to 1/16" thick, plain on both sides but rounded onthe edges, available in craft stores. You can use them "raw" or, stain them for different effects. We also lucked into 500 assorted poker chips in dark blue, bright red, and white.

A word about the poker chips, though. The "inexpensive" ones (ok, cheap) are somewhat flexible and melt at a relatively low temperature. The other problem is that they have a diameter greater than that of the cross-section of most grips. So we found a way to cut a smaller disc out of the chip, using a Dreml tool. We file and finish sand them round. It only takes a few minutes to put a set of three together. Glue them into stacks using the gel form of superglue, then drill the hole for the rod. We glue them into the grip using whatever glue we're using for the rest of the grip.

Russ Pollack
Calico Creek Rods

The damping factor plays almost no role in rod sensitivity, Mark. The lengths we're dealing with just don't allow it to be a factor. Any introduced signal at the tip of the rod is going to make it to your hand. You won't stop it before it has time to move that far. And, the longer the signal remains, the lower the amplitude will be. The quicker it damps, the higher the amplitude will be. And amplitude is the name of the game when we're talking about rod "sensitivity."

...............

Tom,

If this is a hint of what is to come, then I will be waiting anxiously for Rodmaker to land in Singapore soon.

Anthony Lee

Mark,
I think that you are going to be interested in the article that is coming out in RodMaker. The amplitude of vibrations is primarily a function of the mechanical impedance which is determined by the mass density and the elasticity of the material or the mass density and the stiffness of the rod. But the impedance also increases with frequency but drops dramatically at the rods resonant frequency. This means that almost all of the vibrations will be at a very low frequency or at the rods resonant frequency. The damping is at the resonant frequency but that is going to be on the order of a few Hz. But the velocity of vibrations through the materials that rods are constructed from is going to be on the order of one to two thousand feet per second. What this all means is like Tom said that even though the amplitude of the vibrations drop off very rapidly due to damping, in fact exponentially, the vibrations will have reached the fisherman's hand long before even a single cycle of damping. In other words the damping factor and the Q have a relatively minor affect on the amplitude of the vibrations and therefore sensitivity.

I was under the impression that the whole sensitivity thing was little more than a marketing ploy dreamed up as a selling point for the "new" composite blank materials over the straight fiberglass blanks they replaced. I've seen many demonstrations of a rod's "sensitivity", but my favorite is placing the tip against one's throat and whispering. I figure the day I can get fish to place my rod tip against their throat and whisper, I'll be able to fully appreciate the "sensitivity" of my rods. Whenever the subject of sensitivity comes up I always get a mental image of a big red bow on a hammer handle. It makes for some interesting conversation, but has little practical value when it comes to driving a nail. Please keep in mind this is strictly the personal opinion of someone who has spent their entire life trying to outsmart something with a brain the size of a pea.

I'll do the stupid thing first, then you shy people can follow. -FZ-

Emory,

Are you writing the article? I sent you an e-mail but didn't hear back so I thought I'd post up here again. I'm just wondering if you got the lightweight piezo sensors for testing that I mentioned a while back? Your statement about the mass and the elasticity is consistent with what I'm saying. The lower the damping, the more elastic the material is. Cork happens to have a low damping factor (elastic at small strains) and low mass/density, which makes it a very good handle material. It is a mistake though to assume that the input vibrations are all at low frequencies though. If you test the rod in a tapping mode you will find that the input will be composed of a complex set of frequencies, many of which can be quite high. These high frequencies can then damped out very quickly by the matrix resin, coating and some types of handle materials. Consider the example of an uncoated blank vs. a coated blank and how it "feels" when you tap it.... does it sing, or do you get just get a thud? And what frequency range you think the hand can feel?

If you perform an Experimental Modal Analysis on the blank you can quantify this "feel" and the loss of the higher frequencies though the blank. You need an impact hammer with a built in transducer to provide the input force and measure the frequency response of the impact and compared to the vibration response of the rod. The transform of time signals into the frequency spectra compared to the response allows you to get the Frequency Response Function for the input/impact. This allows you to look at different vibration modes and you can also see the effect of sensing position…..effect of nodes ect.


Tom said: "The quicker it damps, the higher the amplitude will be."

Tom, you've got it exactly backwards. Any measurable system damping will cause an attenuation of the signal. If everything is equal, then the system with higher damping will have a lower displacement any time, t after the initial impact. If there were a difference in the initial displacement in two systems given an equal input, then that would very likely have something to do with differences in the inertia of the systems.