Al,
I have built many of these over the years to support work on the lathe or the full length rod lathe.
Note the aluminum stand with the ball bearing rollers.
Essentially, aluminum bar stock 1/4 inch rod for the verticals and thumb screws to tighten and loosen the sliding support bars.
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www.rodbuilding.org]
Another example of the same design.
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www.rodbuilding.org]
I just go down to the metal yard and buy aluminum bar stock.
I buy the ball bearings on line. They are very high quality inexpensive skate board bearings.
I suppose that I have my time and effort into the builds. But today the total cost of each support would be in the range of $10 or so.
When I use these, I put three layers of masking tape on the rod blank to avoid scuffing the blank.
This is the same design that the rod building school where I learned rod building; used to support the thousands of rods that they have built for clients, as well as the many many rods built by students.
IN these cases, the cork is drilled/reamed out to fit the rod blank at its designated location, glued and clamped together.
Then, the rod is inserted into the full length rod lathe, and the length of the rod is supported by multiple rod rests of this design. For very soft tipped rods, I would use up to 5 of these supports to secure the rod.
I used a 3600 rpm, single speed motor to spin the rod. One had to be very very careful about the placement of these rod rests to avoid harmonic destructive oscillation which would result in the rod blank blowing up.
I built many many rods using this setup, but never had any rod blow up on a new build.
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But, after purchasing a good lathe, with tail stock, I eventually stopped using the full length rod lathe and sold off the parts and pieces of the lathe.
It is just much simpler and easier to use the commercial lathe to do the work.
Note:
To avoid a huge amount of reaming cork after a grip is glued together, I do the following.
I take the individual cork rings and ream them to the size of the rod blank at the location where it is going to be installed on the rod blank.
Then, I take a mandrel that is essentially the same size as the smallest hole in the reamed cork rings.
Then, starting from that front cork ring, I will essentially create arbors made of masking tape to increase the diameter of the mandrel to essentially replicate the diameter of the rod blank.
I use threaded rod for a mandrel in sizes up to 5/8ths of an inch. I almost never use a mandrel as small as 1/4 inch because the rod blanks that I use are nearly all larger than 1/4 inch.
As a result of using only the larger sizes of threaded rod, the rod is plenty stiff to use as mandrels on the lathe.
Then, after gluing up the cork with titebond III wood glue, I let it dry overnight. The glue will cure on the outside, but due to its nature needing air to cure, it will not have setup on the inside. At that point, I pull the glued up grip off of the mandrel, and use the mandrel itself to wipe out the uncured glue on the inside of the grip. I also wipe off the uncured glue from the mandrel using water, since - in this state the glue is water soluble.
I st the grip aside and let it cure overnight, at which time the glue has setup and the grip is ready to turn.
I slip the grip back onto the mandrel, tighten the washers and nuts at the end of the grip and shape it as desired on the lathe.
Then, I remove the grip from the lathe and take about 5 minutes of clean up with a reamer to do the final sizing on the grip to fit the blank and carry on to the next step in rod building.
Summary:
Even though you can use a full length rod lathe as you are proposing by the use of the indicated rod rests, for myself - it is no longer my favorite cup of tea.
The wood lathe is a much easier, simpler method of making and shaping of grips.
If I had the money to spend for expensive rod rests, I would redirect the money into purchasing some dedicated "dream reamers" or equivalent to make your reaming job a 3 minute job, rather than an hour job doing it by hand.
Good luck
Best wishes.
