Anyone have any experience with this? Saw it advertised at a custom rod web site, it was offered in black. Is it different than EVA?

I have to say, with cork costs, it would be nice to see more alternatives.

Thanks,
Marc

It is a hard black material. I know of some that have worked with it. I know at one time it was kind of hard to come by for someone to use it. Not sure now what it is like to buy it.

THere's a bunch of posts in teh archives here, search for it and you'll see a lot of info.

Marc, it's been used for a few years by muskie guys. It's said to be much more durable than cork or EVA. From what I understand, it's pretty hard and rough stuff and more difficult to turn that regular cork. Several fishermen that I talked to said that they had to sand their grips down with fine grade sandpaper because the stuff was pretty hard on their hands. The only place I know of that sells it is Thorne Brothers. I think it's about $1 per ring and rings are 5/8'.

jeremy

Thanks Jeremy - that's where I saw it listed too. I don't know how much "better" it would be than a good EVA, and being all black it sure looks the same.

It's made from expanded polyolefin foam. It's made in sheets and the cork, or in this case the "plastic" rings are cut from a sheet. One or both sides of the sheet are pressed, so this should show up in the rings... one or both ends of the rings will be denser and harder than the rest of the ring. This "plastic" is puffed up during manufacturing to make it porous like cork, so it has many of the desirable properties of cork... soft yet tough, and it has a porous or honeycomb-like quality which makes it light in weight, again, similar to cork.

I had a long talk with the chemist who holds the patent on Syncork. All of the comments listed above are right on.
The material has been made in many different colors, but right now it is mainly commercially available in only black. The folks found that any other color was very difficult to keep clean. So, they settled on black as being the best color for long term use.
This material works best if the syncork rings are glued directly onto the blank and then the entire blank turned to create the handle.
The glue bond tends to fail if the syncork rings are glued up on a manderal, turned, and then removed to be reamed to be used as a handle. No issues at all, as long as the rings are glued up directly on the blank.

Here in the upper midwest, this material is becoming more and more popular for tough rod use. It is about the same weight as good cork, is completely uniform, so has no voids that need filling, and is very tough and durable.
Most folks after gluing up the rings on a blank, tend to use a stanly surform plane - type rasp to do the bulk of the shaping for the handle. In general, the material is quite a bit tougher to turn and sand than comparable cork.

A great, tough, long lasting product that gives a nice handle - as long as you like black.

Good luck,
Roger