you use granulated cork instead of flock? using the contained flock technique you can easiily cover your core with cork grains then just sand down to the smoothness you desire..no pits or glue lines in the handle, kind of a burl look but alot less costly to make..i want to try sawdust next..so many different kinds of wood dust..give it a try and report back.

Interesting idea.

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actually, Tom, you planted the idea when once many years ago you mentioned trying granulated cork to make grips but you didn,t go into it other than saying you tried but when contained flocking came along i just had to try it, and it worked, no problems..i don,t know how durable it is, though the grips so far seem tough..also, just down the road from me is a company called Maryland Cork who is the only maker of granulated cork in America..so getting free cork samples was no problem..lol.

I have used medium grit sandpaper to sand, um, beverage corks and collected and saved the cork dust. I blended this cork dust with flexible 2-part epoxy into a very thick paste and used a dental trowel to fill pits in cork rod grips, using the trowel to pack the pits tightly with paste and level the surface of the patch. I used a soft cloth saturated with acetone to wipe the area around the patch clean of excess paste. These patches look better than any commercial filler I have found and outlasted them too - for years.

Phil, that,s the main benefit of making cork grips in this manner..no pits in the cork and no glue lines just a smooth as you make it handle.

an interesting affect is to dye the epoxy a color before brushing it onto the urethane core..i,ve been using red mostly to get a red cedar look in the cork..it depends on how far you sand to get more red to leak through..also a dyed epoxy makes it easier to see any thin spots as you brush it on the urethane..

i think i may have settled on a cork grain size..i used 40/80 cork on the last two grips..it looks pretty good but it,s a thin covering because the granules are so small..just a little bigger than dust..not much sanding is needed, gotta be careful..i need to try it on a rod now..these grips are very easy to make but there is a learning curve..

a good case can be made for the 20/40 cork which is a little larger grain than the 40/80 cork..you can sand it more and get a little smoother texture and still have good coverage or less red color leaking through..my nephew thinks there may be too much red in the 40/80 cork and with the 20/40 you can get more red just bysanding more if you want it..

just got some CP in and coated a urethane core with it..makes for a better epoxxy application..no pigment in the glue to get a corkier look..it came out good..this was with 40/80 granules..i also did another grip with 20/40 granules and i like it also because it,s a little thicker covering and maybe more durable..my nephew likes it better too..lol. i,m going to stay with the CP step for a while(thanks for the tip Tom)..the epoxy likes it and levels much better..

i took the 20/40 cork grip and taped a spin reel onto it using gorilla reenforced tape (lots of glue on this tape) to see if any cork would lift up when i remove the tape..i took the tape off this morning and everything looked good, no lifting just some loose cork not some cork chunks down to the core like before..and i think this is because of the CP coat under the epoxy making for better adhesion of the epoxy.. so the durability looks better..i,m really into tennessee handles for light spinning..we,ll see.