I notice the St. Croix link is now on this site. I looked at it and see that they offer cork handle kits. Anyone on this board have any experience with the quality of the kits? Would be nice to be able to get everything in one package. Is the cork any good? Thanks.

I used to stock them for my customers. Very good kits for the money. Most come with 3 brick foam arbors, several winding checks and butt plug. The cork is normally capped with a rubberized cork ring for durability on the end of the rod. Good real seats.

The cork quality is not as good as what you could have if you were willing to purchase and buy nice cork rings and make your own, but it is at least as good, and maybe a tad better, than what you find on most commercially made rods. They're good kits in my opinion.

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Mike,
I ve used the UL spin handles with the graphite rings and the musky handle kits. Nice quality for the money, especially if your are as bad as I am with shaping cork. I do not have the coordination to do that!

Mike,
St. Croix handle kits are well thought out and match up nicely with blanks they offer. As Tom stated, the cork is fine, and the deluxe and fly handle corks better than the standard spin or casting cork kits in my opinion. All are quite satisfactory and popular with the burled cork butt end will make any custom rod look good.

I believe most kits now include Fuji quality reel seats. The brick foam arbors, burled or cork end piece, 3 winding checks to choose from.
These are decent and priced very good.
We use these kits often in custom rodbuilding and have offered them to custom rodbuilders. These will be listed in our new catalog.

Glad to hear St. Croix is now helping to sponsor this site. They are a great company, we enjoy being associated with as their Canadian Blank distributor.

Rich
Richard's Rod & Reel
Solyrich Custom Rods

p.s. our new catalog has a comprehensive offering of both St. Croix blanks and the new handle kits. If interested, email and I'll be glad to send out the catalogue. The printers should have it available for mailing in about 2 weeks, with our fingers crossed.

These are great handle kits, the butts are all have the rubber cork type. We have the 2001 St. Croix kits available on-line at:
[www.mudhole.com]

Tom McNamara
Mud Hole Custom Tackle
Phone: 407-277-0099

These kits are very good have been using them for several years the only thing I found is that some customers want a blank thru reel seat that I end up switching out on some,also on the larger butt end glass blanks the cork rubber plugs (usually 2 or 3) are not big enough to fit. Although I called St. Croix and the sent some assorted larger plugs at no charge, can't beat that.Then you get someone who says "Is that a St. Croix handle on a Loomis blank" well yeah it works the same on that blank.I think the rubber cork end makes a nicer looking rear grip verses a black rubber cap but thats just me.Try them I'm sure you will be pleased.

Good Luck,
Mike