I is it necessary to make a tenon when mating a burl cork grip to an ECS reel seat? It seem like it would be so much easier to just butt the pieces together instead of turning a tenon in the grip like I have been doing.

You can just butt them together.

...........

Andy,
When making grips of individual pieces, I simply take one ring - turn it to the size of the id of the reel seat and then sand it to width so that I fill the space left by the undercut of the reel seat.

You really don't have to, but it just makes me feel better to have the void filled.

Otherwise, if using a prebuilt handle, I will either cut a Tenon, as you have done, or cut a piece of cork or arbor to fill the void.

Take care
Roger

The only other nice thing about a tenon is that it will insure your grips are lined up correctly...just in case you over ream....not that I've ever done that or anything.........

Scott Sheets
www.smsrods.com

What Scott said, and not that I ever over ream either. Okay, that's a lie.

_________________________________________
"Angling is extremely time consuming.
That's sort of the whole point." - Thomas McGuane

Using a tendon is just a good practice in my opinion. Like said it helps line up your reel seat and when the rod blank is flexed heavily you wont see a gap in between the seat and grip. Building a tendon is just "proper" for me. I even build a 2-stage tendon for the castaway casting reel seats, they need a tendon cut with two different inside diameters to completely fill the inner seat. Overkill? maybe...but thats what custom is about to me: trying to get as perfect as possible.

DR