Has anyone used fiberglass sleeves from Soller for grips? Not the Carbon/fiberglass but light fiberglass. I am so into composite grips now and was wondering. Some of the colors could make interesting grips.

Try a bunch and give us all a product report.

No reason that they shouldn't work out very well.

If you have RodMaker Volume 10 #6, you can see a variety of the fiberglass sleeves on the cover. Because it is the core and not the "skin" that is important, the glass sleeves work just as well as the carbon ones. The only difference is that sanding the glass skins is not recommended. Where carbon typically sands smooth, sand the glass tends to raise "fuzz" that is not easy to finish over.

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Here's a photo from 2006: [www.rodbuilding.org]

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I have that issue and I use it as my go to. I have used those particular sleeves as well. I just noticed they have plain fiberglass in colors and off them in some custom camo pattern

Would be the same process with the same difficulty if you sanded them. But you may not need to sand them.

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Yes, I have built a number of grips for customers using the Soller fiberglass sleeving. It handles very much like the carbon fiber material, although not as smooth. It is more tactile, thus it takes more surface coats to get the same smoothness as the carbon fiber. Also a note, it has some transparency (even the colors) so it should be built on a light colored core.

So Phil, you don,t think an EVA core is a good idea...you just threw a bucket of water on that one..lol.

,EVA comes in more than one color, the technique was originally developed to get use out of lesser quality cork, etc. as a nice finished cover, like shrink tubing is used at times.

This is true Spencer but i,m so used to thinking of preshaped grips which are all i use anymore but i flock them..the black doesn,t show through the flock at all and holds up well..originally Tom.Kirkman introduced flocking for cheap cork which works very well of course..

Don't know about EVA, never used it as I only build fly rods and use the light colored foam cores.

When flocking, you use an adhesive that is colored to match the flocking material.

When skinning a grip with carbon or glass, the core won't show through unless your skin is too small and you've had to stretch it open slightly to get it over the core. Always better to have a skin that is slightly oversize and then slide it on and pull the ends to pull it down tight on the core.

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hi Tom..on eva i don,t use the flocking adhesive but use flex coat glue..then suspend the grip in a one gallon plastic jar with the flock inside..then just shake the flock onto the grip..epoxy will hold a lot more fiber making the grip feel flocky and more cushy than blowing the fiber onto a thin adhesive..to speed up curing i wrap the jar with a heating pad set on warm..in two hours it is ready to mount on the rod..the epoxy also gives the grip a little more firmness even though it,s a little cushy on the surface..

Good technique.

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Thanks, Tom..the problem is that it,s so easy to do that you end up flocking everything..lol.