I recently purchased a Grizzly mini-lathe and a set of Andy Dear's mandrels. Not wanting to spend too much money on a drill press, I bought a drill stand from Sears or should I say a mini-drill press. The drill press is the one where you use your drill as the power source and it cost $40. In all I have spent $120 not counting the mandrels which my son gave to me for Xmas. I made my own cork clamp using Tom K's picture. This past weekend I turned my first handle and all of the parts worked very well. I did get some help from Andy on drilling the cork rings as close to the size of the rod blank before gluing the cork stick. This process cuts down the time spent in boring the handle to fit the blank. My next project is a burl cork grip. The foregrip is made and it looks great. I sprayed it with a light coat of Krylon Clear Spray to bring out the color of the burl and to seal the two cork rings in between the burl. Give Andy a call at Lamar Reel Seats if you are interested in making your own grips.

I am considering the same set-up. I just purchased the Sears drill stand and am considering the Grizzley lathe. Which Lath model did you get? Is it capable of doing occasional wood reel seats? If you are boring the rings individually to fit the blank before glueing, how do you fit them on to a mandrel for finishing? I thought that you glued the rings together on the mandrel, then removed it from the mandrel and reamed and installed it on the blank.

First you bore the rings to fit a mandrel almost the size of the blank. Secondly, you glue the rings on a threaded rod and compress them to get a good fit. I use threaded rods with washers and wing nuts. I have several sizes to correspond to the mandrel sizes that I use. And finally, I turn and sand the grip. When gluing the grip, I rub parafin on the threaded to keep the cork from sticking to the rod. I have not tried turning wood on the lathe.

In answer to your question I add masking tape in threee of four locations along the grip length to make up the difference between the mandral and the grip I.D. proir to shaping.

I use a much more primitive lathe set up, but shape my cork after having the rings reamed to a snug fit with the blank and they are glued togeather on a threaded rod type cork ring press. I tough ream the I.D. of each ring to a snug fit and slide them on the blank to where they will eventually rest. I do this to all the rings needed to complete the grip. I rotate each ring until it is flush with the last oriented ring. When all rings are flush I scribe a straight pencil line down the length of the grip and number each ring. I remove the rings and glue them up aligning and reconstructing the straight line as I go and place them all on a threaded rod for compression. After 24 hrs I add masking tape in three or four evenly spaced locations between the cork and the threaded rod/mandrel to center the cork for shaping/turning. A friction fit with masking tape should be enough between mandrel and grip I.D. to complete the shaping process. Ream 1st or last, both can be accomplished

If you have enough mandrels you can just drill your cork rings to the approximate diameter of the rod blank at where the forward edge of the grip will be. Then mount them on the closest fitting mandrel. If you have enough sizes, you should be able to get a snug friction fit. Glue them up and turn them and then pop them off the mandrel. Now you'll only have to do a very small amount of reaming to get the grip perfectly fit to the blank.

Yes, do be sure to rub a paraffin bar up and down the mandrel before gluing your rings up on it.