Hi guys, a novice question here. When I'm shaping the cork handle and foregrip for my panfish and bass rods, is it a good practice to make tenons to fit inside the reel seat? On some of my very old (store brand) spinning rods it seems like the cork shrunk a little and there's a slight gap between the handle and seat. It's small enough that others probably wouldn't notice, but I do. I haven't seen that on my St Croix rods so I wondered if they do something different.
Or is butting the grips and seat good enough if I clamp them good?

John S.

What your describing sounds like shrinkage...I seem to recall mechanics soaking old cork gaskets in warm water to soften and expand them.
Do you think that standing the grips in a bucket of warm water might restore them???

John, tenons work great as well as just using an arbor. Cork will take years to show any shrinkage. The more likely cause of the gap is that the cork insert was poorly fitted to the blank to begin with and perhaps an adhesive that is prone to shrinkage was used.

Garry, I'm not interested in fixing the existing old rods as I'll eventually replace them with new custom rods. ;) I was just wondering for my new builds to avoid a problem later.

John S.

Sure thing. If you have some less desirable cork you want to use as an arbor, just glue those rings on the end and turn them to fit the reel seat. It works great as an arbor. Not sure it will do anything with the shrinkage issue. I have several rods that are 20 years old with no evidence of this problem but I know it does happen on very old rods. You'll likely strip and rebuild it before this happens. :-)

Terry