Anyone have any recommendations for how to get ahold of the rod alan in a lathe to turn the grip (for a spey rod)? Looking for ideas on how not to screw up my blank.

Dwight,
If at all possible, I suggest that you turn the grip before you glue the grip to the blank.

If the grip has been glued to the rod and a mistake is made when turning, you end up hacking the grip off of the rod to do it again.

But, if you have the grip on a mandrel and turn it, and have an issue, you either throw the grip away, or cut out the bad section, glue in a new section and finish the turning of the grip.

Folks use plain tool steel for mandrels as well as threaded rod for mandrels. The issue with using threaded rod, is that it is softer and more prone to flexing than a hardened piece of tool steel to hold the grip. But, if the grip is pre bored to the approximate diameter of the blank, often you can use some fairly large diameter threaded rod to hold the blank and find it very stable.

-------------------------
Now, if you want to turn a grip that has already been glued to a blank, the simple thing to do, is to have a hole in the butt of the grip, the same size as the blank. Then, insert a piece of tapered solid stock up the butt of the rod to hold it.
Now, if you are going to do full length rod grip turning, you need to be sure that you have enough rod rests to properly support the blank to avoid issues with oscillation and destruction that can happen if one is not careful.

-----------------------

Some videos:

[www.youtube.com]

[www.youtube.com]

[www.youtube.com]

[www.youtube.com]

[www.youtube.com]

[www.youtube.com]

Thanks for your reply and links, I understand the risk of building on the blank, I have used mandrels in previous builds so familiar with that method. Determined to bond and shape on the blank, so trying to figure out the details of getting ahold of the blank with the lathe. I would be interested in getting some scrap blank butt sections to perfect the process if anyone has some they want to get rid of ... sell. Thanks!

Dwight,
Roger helped me with a couple of ideas to keep the blank safe.
But since you are turning a Spey blank they will probably not work because the buyy end is too large in diameter..
The system I developed with FlexCoat will, however.
Please un-hide your email -or email me: hladen@hotmail.com
Herb

Dwight,
Here is a picture of the temporary full length rod lathe that I set up recently to modify an existing built up rod.

[www.rodbuilding.org]

The key with using a full length rod lathe is to be sure that you have solid and enough rod rests to keep the rod from going into destructive oscillation.

This is also the reason that I use a variable speed motor on the lathe. By starting at 0 rpm and then gradually increasing the speed, one can see if there are oscillation issues with the blank and back off on the speed before the oscillations turn fatal and destroy the blank.

Take care

Thanks for the picture how did you clamp the butt end of the rod in your lathe?

Dwight,
In this instance, I did not have to rework the butt of the grip, I only had to rework the forward section of the grip.

As a result, I put 5 wraps of tape around the 1 inch butt section of the grip and I slipped it into the 3 inch taig chuck that I have on my temporary lathe set up and tightened down the chuck. I would check the fit of the grip of the chuck on the end of the grip from time to time and would make readjust it as necessary while working on the grip.

---------------------------
On my regular full sized rod lathe, I use a 3600 rpm single speed pump motor. The shaft on that motor has 1/2 x20 threads per inch threads on the end of the motor shaft. As a result, I just screw on an industrial keyless 1/2 inch chuck that has internal threads of 1/2 inch by 1/2x20 threads per inch.

Then I take solid fiberglass stock and either build it up with masking tape, or use sand paper to put a taper on the 4 inch section of solid fiberglass stock to allow the solid stock to be a sticky fit on the inside of the butt section of the blank. I will take cork rings and drill or ream the center hole as needed for each cork ring to allow it to be a perfect fit on the rod blank. This also includes the very butt cork ring on the grip. I let the very butt or last cork ring overhang the end of the rod blank by about 1/4 of an inch. Then, I go ahead and shape the grip by spinning the grip, reel seat and rod blank all at the same time while holding the butt of the rod in the jacobs chuck that is mounted on the end of the spinning motor.

When the grip is finished, I will make a tapered plug from matching cork that will fit perfectly into the butt cork ring that is on the rod. I will epoxy the plug into the end of the grip and then use a disk sander to sand the plug flush with the grip. By using a ring of matching cork to make the plug the glued in ring is invisible on the finished grip.

============================
Because it is difficult to sand the end of the grip at 90 degrees - free hand, I installed a Cross Vise on a spare disk sander that I had made some years ago, from a pump motor.

[www.rodbuilding.org]

The vise is similar to this one:
[www.harborfreight.com]

I wrap the grip in paper towels to avoid marking the grip and then use the appropriate levers to tighten the vice onto the grip. Then, after turning on the sander, use the adjusting levers to advance the grip into the spinning face of the grip, to cleanly sand the end of the grip at 90 degrees to the axis of the blank.

Good luck

Excellent!! Great description exactly what I was looking for, thank you very much!

Before I owned a lathe and mandrels I did everything on the blank with a drill motor clamped in a bench vise. I made rod supports out of cardboard boxes. I would push a piece of marine fuel hose onto the male ferrule, 1/4", 5'16", 3/8", whatever fit tight. I would stuff a piece of round stock in the other end of the section of hose and chuck it up in the drill. Now mind you, this was a 600 rpm 1/2" drill, which was no speed demon, but it worked fantastic and I never damaged a rod.

It's done all the time on spey rods, R. B. Meiser turns all his grips on the spey blank, done it for a very long time.