I recently purchased a Flex Coat cork lathe. I am wondering what the best way to connect the rod to the drill is. I have tried a drill bit with tape bushing built up, jammed in to the blank I.D.. It is o.k., but I seem to get a little slippage.

Any info would be great.

Thanks,
Marc

Marc,
About thirty years ago I made a cork turning lathe such as the Flex Coat cork lathe. The only way I found to make mine work was to take an old drill bit and wrap tape in the opposite way that the drill turned. I then placed it in the blank as you are doing. I made two rod stands with roller bearings in them. I would wrap masking tape around the blank and put it through the bearings to keep the rod from flopping around. To prevent slippage I would wrap masking tape around the blank and the drill bit overlapping the juncture. It worked very well. The only draw back was that I could never get a perfectly round grip using that lathe. It was passable but not to my satisfaction. I have since started making my grips on a hobby lathe using Andy Dear's mandrels before gluing them on the rod blank. Sometime in the future I will upgrade to a Jet Mini lathe but only because I want to turn some reel seat inserts in wood and other materials. For now my hobby lathe is fine for the work that I do.