Hello all. Have any of you ever made your own handles out of wine or champagne corks. If so what was your process? I tried to use wine cork by grinding it up in my wifes blender to what I thought was a good sized crum. Then mixed it up with epoxy an put the mixture into a homemade pipe press. It worked but it was too dense/heavy. Then switched to champagne corks. I cut the stem off the the “mushroom” top. Drilled a hole and put it on a mandrel on my lathe to true each piece up. Then glued and shaped on the rod.

Never found any of them large enough to make a standard size grip.

Put your champagne cork in a micro wave for 1 minute and it will return to its original shape. Then you can do whatever you want with it.

Dennis J. Danku
(Sayreville,NJ)

Jimmy,
Although tough to take sometimes, the natural cork that comes off the bark of the cork trees is pretty tough to beat.
As the saying goes, "Step up to the bar, pay the price, and get the cork of your dreams from your favorite supplier."

If not, then - get a less expensive material in the form of EVA, hypalon.

If you do want to go a natural way, then, take a soft wood, turn up a nice grip, and then center bore the grip so that the actual wood part of the handle is fairly thin to reduce the weight and then, turn an arbor from arbor foam, and glue it up and you will have a great grip with reasonable weight.

In today's world of shortages, the price of cork continues to rise. Hence the move to materials other than cork and or to go to split grips which require a much smaller quantity of grip material.

Good luck