I recently took the Mud Hole rod building class January 2016 in New Jersey. I really enjoyed the class and the instructors were all great.

During the 2nd day of the Mud Hole class Buzz Butters, one of the Mud Hole instructors, handed out a variety of cork handles that were covered with the high gloss epoxy. They all looked fantastic and I would like to incorporate them into my next build.

I'm currently in the process of building a rod for my wife and I want to cover the cork handles with the Pro Kote High Build epoxy and also I'm adding various powder marbling pigments to get the desired color effect. However, I thought it would be best to first experiment by covering wine corks to get in some practice before starting on the cork grips I plan to cover.

One of the problems I found was the epoxy on the finished wine cork was not smooth there were small areas where there were indents and the general finish was high on both ends with a slight valley toward the center of the wine cork.

Do I need to prepare the cork before applying the finish?

I also plan to finish the cork grips before assembling them on the Rod Blank. I have the grips all lined up on a wooden dowel spinning on the rod drier the same method I use to apply the epoxy thread finish.

All suggestion are greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Bob

Many wine corks are composite cork. They are already somewhat saturated with adhesive so they don't absorb much epoxy. You may find your cork will soak up a lot more and thus will require a couple or more epoxy applications.

Some people will use color preserver to seal the cork before applying epoxy. Nothing wrong with doing that and it might save you some epoxy.

..............

Many wine corks are pretty rough and may take multiple coats with sanding in between. I would sand before application of first coat to smooth them and provide a clean surface. I would use epoxy from Riley Rods, very clear and harder than wrapping epoxy. I believe that the valley/high ends are caused by applying too much epoxy on the first coat. A final coat of Lumaseal or equiv will make the surface harder.

Robert,
I will give you some "rejects" from my supply of cherry-picked cork rings.
How many do you need for your test?
Herb



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/15/2016 11:18AM by Herb Ladenheim.

Here's a link to a previous thread:
[rodbuilding.org]

Also, Trondak U-40 is a sponsor and may be able to shed some some light on the subject.

Don Becker

No expert but the cork handles I have coated I used Riley Rods finish. It's a harder finish and more durable.
Ricky

The putty used to fill the holes in cork grips soon turns to dust, revealing all the holes common in cork grips today. I don't know if covering a cork grip with epoxy will delay the breakdown of cork putty. I have had some success using a needle to clean the putty out of holes in the cork and re-filling the holes. I collect cork dust created by sanding a cork stopper with #120 grit sandpaper and stir it into mixed RodBond epoxy, use a small spatula to fill the holes in the grip with this mixture, then wipe off the excess epoxy with a cloth wetted with alcohol. The result isn't as "pretty" as the putty wipe but it isn't bad. The RodBond/cork dust mix will outlast the putty wipe and will not make the grip slippery.

Phil,
Another thing that works well to fill cork is to use cork dust and duco cement.

Duco cement has about the same sanding rate as cork and has about the same density, so you can easily get a perfect finish.

The down side of using duco cement is that the cure is pretty quick. So, you can not keep any on hand and you need to mix small batches and work fast, but the result is good and long lasting.

Be safe

The nice thing about RodBond is that it cures so slowly that you have plenty of time to clean up over-applications by simply wiping them off with denatured alcohol, and the elasticity of RodBond is close to that of cork, which protects bonds between the two.