Roger, I picked up 100 rings about a year plus ago for under under $1 a ring and there are flor no doubt. Really really nice stuff. Just have to look around a bit and maybe negotiate with sellers. Have hundreds of other rings that are equally high grade, meaning no one would ask for fillers. They have just enough tiny pits to give it a bit of that cork character but nothing deep. Since my grips have shape to them, I look at the pits and stack the rings accordingly where the pits are either hidden or removed after shaping. I also find that rings vary in weight and with my lighter rings, they are lighter than carbon fiber grips. I use minimal Titebond 3 to reduce weight. You really only need a smidge of glue to hold forever. Someone from this forum was kind enough to send me weights of various types of carbon fiber grips from the lightest to heaviest so I had a baseline to compare. This is NOT at all criticizing carbon fiber grips but I am simply a fan of cork's organic look and feel.

By the way, I also do have some flor level straight ring grips from the 1960s...just have not used them as the ID is too large for ultralight blanks. But I have wondered how long cork lasts if kept in normal room temperature indoors. Perhaps I'll still have them in 30 years but they don't seem to be decaying...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/03/2021 10:54AM by Mo Yang.

Tom Kirkman Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> > "Flor" is just an example of a word for high
> > quality cork. There is no standard definition
> for
> > it. Large voids in cork are detrimental to
> > shaping it and of course, do make it lighter.
> > Cheap cork has a lot of small holes that will
> > eventually become bigger holes, as it ages. The
> > volumetric equivalent of grips that I have
> weighed
> > of cork and foam core carbon skinned grips has
> > always had natural high grade cork being
> lighter.
> > Maybe those carbon grips were made differently
> > than the ones you have weighed. Does a light
> grip
> > benefit the build? Sometimes, but not always. I
> > also prefer cork over carbon, for now.
>
>
> What constitutes "high quality" cork? What percent
> clear is "high quality?" Is it 90 percent? 80
> percent? 65 percent?
>
>
> .............
A cork ring without very many small hollow holes in it. If you take a 100 cork rings that are supposed to be high quality and cherry pick the best ones out of that, the ones without cracks or the least amount of small voids. That is the best I can do and it can get very expensive. I would call that 90%, sounds like a better term than flor. I really only use natural cork grips on medium light and medium baitcaster rods and fly rods. Spinning and larger rods I usually use EVA or foam core & CF grips. A custom made grip is what belongs on a custom made rod, but there are a lot of great pre made grips that are excellent choices that give the custom look.

Again, what is the percent clear required? If a dealer takes rings that are 70 percent clear and calls them flor, is he wrong? And if so, on what basis is he wrong? If you don't have anything more than personal subjective idea of what makes a ring "high quality" then you don't have much. Not everyone is going to agree on what is high quality. So in effect, "flor" is whatever the dealer decides it is. Many builders have felt that they got less than they paid for because their idea of flor and the dealer's idea of flor were two very different things.

My point here is that none of these supposed grades are really grades - they're just labels. There is one cork grading standard, of course, and it has both written and photographic requirements for the grades specified. [www.rodbuilding.org]

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

Good quality affordable cork rings are available, just a simple web search will find it.

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