Birch Bark Handle on a spinning rod

[Dan_Severson]

This is a rod i did as a favor for my brother. He had collected all of the birch bark from his father-in-laws, and wanted a rod to give him as thanks. The Wisconsin Birch bark is much thinner than the stuff i get in SE Minnesota, so it was a lot more work and gluing. The rod is an MHX 6' 2 piece UL with micro guides. Nice little stick

[pikestabber]

Wow! That's a beauty there! Great job.

[upnorth]

I have done a few with Birch Bark. Looks nice and really durable, but miserable to work with.

[BartmanMN]

Beautiful. Looks great.

[Dan_Severson]

The prep work for birch is the worst, especially sanding it to get the white papery layer off. I've started using my down time to make rings, sand them and glue them together in 2" sections just to get a head start on future handles

[unfrozen]

I like the birch bark look. It's one thing I've been meaning to try but haven't gotten to yet.

Nice job.

[A.W.Wolfram]

Looks nice

[sam10basefish]

Nice work! Is it cork under the bark?

[upnorth]

The birch bark is disk glued together to make the sections. There is normally nothing under the birch bark just glued to the blank.

[mrklean]

very cool love the handle

[Coryy]

How do you ream the bark to get the proper ID to fit the blank?

Do you just drill it out and make up the difference with epoxy?

I have some bark that I was thinking of trying this out with.

[upnorth]

When I have done them I used a 1 1/8 inch hole saw with 1/4 inch drill in the center. Glued them together on a mandrel, clamped them and took them off the mandrel to dry. Let them dry on the mandrel and you have problems getting them off. I would work with 1 inch section at a time. I would suggest drilling them out the 1 inch sections as close to the size you need for the blank before gluing them into a handle. After turning the handle I would ream to fit.

Be careful when reaming them, without something in the center they do come apart very easily.

Or you could drill them over size and make tape bushings. Just be sure if you do bushings to completely seal the tape in epoxy to be sure they don't get wet start to come apart.