I've got a flex-coat style hand drill cork lathe set up. I have been forming my grips by hand with files and sand paper to this point with the rings glued to the blank. Do you reccomended turning cork on the blank or on a mandrel? What set do you use? With turning on a blank, do you just use some tape bushungs around a drill bit and insert it into the butt? I'm a little nervouse about using power tools to turn cork on a blank......

Personally, I always use a mandrel. The worst that can happen is you screw up a handle. If you turn it on the blank and screw it up, you've got to get it off the blank to replace it. You also run the risk of wrecking a blank!! I play it safe abd turn on a mandrel.

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!!

William,
I used to turn my grips on the rod with a jig like yours. Right now I have an inexpensive hobby lathe and turn the jigs on a manfrel. One nice thing is that you can glue up some cork and turn several grips at one time and have them ready for when you build rods. I usually turn all of my grips outside during the spring, fall, and winter. With the temp being in the high 90's and it even reached 101 degrees today I don't much like to do anything outside.

William,
I'd use the mandrels. You get a lot straighter handel than making them on the rod.

One thing that's always puzzled me RE: mandrel-turning, and that's getting the bore concentric with the rod, once installed, along with a tight front ring, to avoid the use of a 'hosel', or a winding check, to mask the over-bore up front.....as one reams to the bore and taper of the rod.
I suppose with the use of dedicated gritty reamers, this goes away.
But them how many gritty reamers does one need, and are they effective in keeping the first ring snug, along with the concentric thing.
A lot of corks sold these days, do not have the hub bore exactly in the center of the ring. So when placing on a 1/4" mandrel, the corks are immediately machined to an OD less than the undersize metric 31mm's...to get all the corks cylinderical.
The rings we see here are no longer 1.25: they have not been there for years. Several builders out of my area turn on the blank. Several do not.
It's pretty difficult to turn a 24" grip, with a sliding reel seat, and ream same, using a mandrel. Flyrods, probably OK.
I turn on the blank, and have yet to destroy either a grip or the blank. (Of course there's always a first time !!!!! :-> )

Ken, I blew up a 10/10 blank a couple weeks ago, but as you said there aren't any mandrels out there that will take a 24" grip. So i do my fly grips on a mandrel, mooching, float and spey on the blank (I just try to be more careful).

Colin

Colin
I do any really long grips in sections. Then glue onto the blank.

What is the cheapest lathe you can buy

I will be using a drill as the powersource for tuning the butt grip I plan on putting on the rod I currently am building. I will be using a 3/8" with fender washers for clamping the rings together while glueing then removing the washers and shaping the grip on the same bolt . Turning, using a mandrel (bolt) will give me a finished grip that is equal distance from the center so I don't forsee any problems with my grip being off center doing it this way. The only way I could make it off center is if I don't take my time and ream it properly.

As a former machinist I've come to the realisation that nothing is perfect. It is just the tolerences that you are willing to accept. Close is 2 things. A matter of perception and your ability to measure the finished product.

I hope this isn't too far off subject and helps

darby

For those of you using mandrels, how do you attach the cork to the mandrel?

Thanks in advance........

It is what is know as an interference fit. That means the size of the hole is slightly smaller than the size of the mandrel. If we were using a mandrel on metal products the mandrel would have a slight taper to provide the interference

William Zafirau Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> For those of you using mandrels, how do you attach
> the cork to the mandrel?
>
> Thanks in advance........


William, I glue up my cork on a 1/4" threaded rod and when it's set I transfer to one of Andy's 1/4" inch cork mandrels by inserting the mandrel into a cordless drill and spin the amndrel while feeding the cork blank onto it. The little bit of glue that remains when you remove the threaded rod holds the cork from spinning. After shaping the handle remove from the mandrel the same way.




Regards
Dave

Fishing is Life the rest is just Details

We use both pre-formed grips and rings, depending on the requirement. We also use combinations of cork and inserts, which can be exotic woods, different kinds of cork rings (such as darker colors, burnt, etc.), or various rinds of plastic materials. These insert rings are rarely the same diameter as the grip itself, so we have to cut them down to fit.

We do almost all the general shaping work on a mandrel. Andy Dear's mandrel set covers most of our needs. We use the smallest diameter we can, either filling the pre-drilled hole (if the rings or pre-formed grip have one) or making our own centered holes (if they don't). We use a drill-press to get the hole started, but rarely do we try to cut the hole to final size at this point. When we get lucky the hole will be a little smaller than the diameter of the mandrel and the friction-fit will keep the workpiece nice and tight on the shaft. If not, we wrap the mandrel with tape to get the friction-fit we need. If the insert rings are larger than the grips we first file or sand them to the rough diameter of the rest of the assembly, then fit up the whole thing on the mandrel and pretty well finish it off.

As has been said above, this way, if we mess it up, we're not dealing with having to get it off the rod.

We do all of the final fit-and-finish work on the rod itself, but this is very minimal shaping - mostly just a little touch with a high-grit paper. This includes where the grip meets the butt cap, or the reel-seat, or where the foregrip meets the reel-seat. Sometimes we'll just take super-fine jeweler's files to make those last adjustments under a magnifier.

We do the final fitting of the hole in the grip assembly using a series of reamers. We use the Dream Reamer set, always starting with the smallest we can get away with. Since these are tapered, we ream the grip from rear to front, so the taper matches the shape of the rod. We "try" the fit until it's just snug, without having to use tape. We've also made a set of our own shapes and sizes using pieces of broken rods, two-part rod epoxy, and reaming grits including super fine, medium,and rough. A little reaming and a lot of fitting seems to work fairly well. Like my buddy says, there's nothing quite like 2,300rpm and a light touch.

- hope that helps.

Uncle Russ
Calico Creek Rods