cork handle making

[CustomRodFan]

Some ideas on making your own cork handles.

Glue them together with contact cement or tightbond III wood glue and tighten down with some sort of vice

24 hours later or so, they are ready to shape

chuck them up and sand them to your specifications

Close up of a finished product ready to mount to a blank!

[crazyice]

Cool! I like the added touch of the colors.

[Fullmoon]

Color is always a good look. I've used EVA foam, rubberized cork and cork gasket material, Different thicknesses and colors. Try making a jig to cut pie shaped pieces and glue the different colored pies shapes together. Looks great!!

[upnorth]

Nice post. Good to see some things others are doing and gives us all some ideas.

[Fullmoon]

I forgot, the jig can be made out of a pvc coupling. A washer in the bottom to ease removal. Use a fine blade to put the cuts in the pvc and it's similar to a miter box, in theory. I'll try to find a photo and post it. It's simple. I found using a flush cut saw (harbor freight cheapie) worked best. Save the money a good one would cost you unless you do lots of finish carpentry. It works great for making thin slices too. You can make a jig for that, by using a piece of wood and attaching xtra fine hack saw blades, flat to the stock. Uses washers and bolts to adjust for thickness. I'm not a techie so pics are going to have to be posted as I move into the 21st Cent. lol I'll see what I can do.

[CNY Tim]

I love this forum, nice post CustomRodFan., well done...

[DinkADunk]

Looking good. If you want a bit of a challenge try encapsulating your reel seat hardware into the cork. The following are a couple of pictures from a Shaky Head rod I made last year. The dark cork is burnt cork, the other is some marketed by Andy Dear. The dark front cork ring encapsulates the front reelseet hardware. The ligher cork at the front of the rear section encapsulates the rear reelseat hood. The cork from the rear dark cork ring to the end (black foam) encapsulates the tightening mechanism for the reelseat hardware and rotates. If you make one it will be rather specific for a given reel.

[sweept]

What kind of lathe do you use for turning?

[DinkADunk]

Pretty much any lathe will do for making handles. I have a power wrapper that can be used for shaping cork. A lot of folk's use a Jet Mini Lathe with or without a bed extension attached (depends on how large a handle you want to make). The Jet Mini is a fantastic small lathe, great for wood turning as well as cork. Cork is real easy to turn, just need sandpaper. For me I use a Oneway 2436 lathe, which is great for turning large bowls and way overkill for turning cork, but it's a wonderful machine to turn anything on, a little pricy though at $6K

[CustomRodFan]

Dinkadunk, WOW - you have a beut in that one. The split grip is a nice touch.

I use a jet mini lathe with the bed extension for my cork work and have a MicroLux mini metal lathe that I turn all of my reel seats with. Most every rod I build now has a bowling ball type material reel seat. Tomorrow is rod making day and I will post the reel seat going on a green legend elite left over blank...

[CustomRodFan]

here is an example of some lathe work that can be done with reel seat materials

The black one has the hoods already glued. The green is in its raw state and the 2 in the middle have been turned and just need to have the reel seats glued.

The only limits to custom rod building are imaginations!!!

[DinkADunk]

I've been looking at getting a small metal lathe just for reel seats. I would also like to learn how to make metal reel seat hardware (fly rod type). Always something new to learn. Those seats look great.