I'm making my first cork handle rod. I've only made one other rod and it was a EVA handled casting rod. I got the 11" Tennessee handle kit from Mudhole, and as I was trying to ream it, I broke the cork. I was going to order another one, but thought I might should ask some questions first. I do not plan on using the slip grips to hold the reel on, so should I just be able to ream the 11" cork piece and have it fit as 1 piece? I would ream, and ream, and ream and wasn't getting anywhere. Another disclaimer: I only had the reamer that came with a start-up kit that just had some grit glued on a piece of blank.

I was thinking when I order another handle, I will also get one of the Dream Reamer kits. Will those kits get the job done (even if it's a slow go, I'm ok with that)? I've read some threads here on power reamers, but don't think I'm that advanced yet.

Thanks in advance for any advice you could give on making a spinning rod with one of these handles.

Tommy

Tommy

Reaming cork grips is best not rushed. Reaming generates heat and a bunch of cork dust, and that dust together with enough torque and force can certainly break a grip.

Yes. the Dream Reamers and similar reamers will get the job done either by hand or chucked in a drill. But again, go s-l-o-w, not so much pressure, and stop frequently to clear the cork dust.

If you can rig a means to mount a hand drill so you have both hands available to support the grip you'll further decrease the odds of breaking the grip.

I don't understand ". . .ream the 11" piece and have it fit as 1 piece." Can you elaborate? Did the kit come with a finished cork grip with slip rings on it?

The dream reamers work great. If I couldn't get another, you'd have to pay me a LOT of money for mine.

By not intending to not use "slip grips," I assume you won't use slip rings but tape the reel on? If that is the case, you have two pieces of cork, yet to be reamed fully, and two loose slip rings? If you do not intend to use the rings you can glue the two pieces of cork into one, clamping lightly to minimize the appearance of the fracture line, and cleaning off the glue/epoxy that comes out of the fracture line before it hardens. This will not be perfect. You will then have one piece, yet to be reamed. Get the dream reamer and carefully ream to fit the blank. Work from both ends until the last few passes. You can put the reamers into a drill/driver and it goes faster. But be careful to not break it again. If that goes well, then sand the grip to get rid of anything that didn't come out right in the gluing process. The appearance of the fracture line will be that you can see it, but it will not be nagging kind of thing. It will be pretty subtle.

Thanks, Donald!

Thanks for the reply Michael. The handle came as 1 piece and if you wanted to use the rings to hold the reel on, then you are suppose to cut the grip, put the rings on, then glue back. Unfortunately and unintentionally, I ended up with 2 pieces of cork! I will try again with proper reamers and go slow.

How bad is the break? It might be possible to glue the cork back together, ream to fit and then glue into place on the blank. Finish with just a little surface sanding and the initial break might be almost unnoticeable.

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

if you center the handle where the reel is going to go, you probably wont need all 11" of that pre made tennessee handle. fyi the best way ive found to install a reel on a tennessee grip is to back wrap( sticky side up ) electrical tape to hold the reel in place, align the reel, then secure in place ( sticky side down ) with 3/4" shipping tape ( the stuff with the fibers in it- zero stretch, reel will not move under load ) i like to use athletic trainers tape to cover this for the grip. i made a tennessee / split grip for my c rig rod, and put a drop shot keeper in the split section, this allows me to keep the bait rigged , ready to go, even with a long leader. also helps to keep the big weight from banging the smaller guides when bouncing in the boat. just my 2 cents.

Great input, guys, and thanks! I'm just getting into this as a hobby and have really enjoyed learning! There's a lot to it, but everybody is seems so nice and helpful! I think I will try to smooth out the break and glue together. I will research further, but you use wood glue and then clamp together, right?

If the break is relatively clean, no chunks taken out, you should be able to glue it back together again.using an exterior wood glue such as TiteBond or Elmers. Align the broken edges together. After it is dry a light sanding will get it back to looking new. I know you do not have a lot of experience doing this, but it is not that hard to do. In fact you could ream the two pieces individually to fit the blank then align them on the blank when glueing in place. Lightly sand by hand when dry and you should be good to go. If chunks were taken out and the two ends do not align properly, cut out and square up the damaged area very carefully using a fine tooth exacto hobby saw and glue them back together. I would try this first before spending more money on a new grip plus shipping. The dream readers work very well, but are relatively expensive, If you are planning on making more rods they are not a bad investment. You can make your own using pieces of broken rods, if you have them, and glueing on a half inch wide strip of coarse sand paper wrapped spirally on to the rod piece. Use contact cement to do this. Contact cement can take frictional heat better than epoxy. I am not sure how sturdy the reamer is that came with the kit, but you can chuck it into a cordless drill and power ream on the low speed setting. As mentioned above go slow and back the reamer out every inch or two to clear it of dust, also let the cork slip in your hand when reaming. This will help prevent breaking again. If you do get the dream reeamers, some times it is helpful to ream with the drill in reverse, this also helps in prevent breaking the cork. Hope this helps.
Norm

Very helpful, Norm! Thanks!

Tommy
I commonly ream 11 inch handles.
But, I do not use the typical reamer.
Rather, I use circular files. I have prepped the files by cutting the handles off of the files and then grinding down the large end of the file so that I have a perfectly round bit to chuck into a variable speed drill. Then, I run the drill backward so that the drill does not try to screw itself into the grip which will split the grip.

Pictures of the files below.

[www.rodbuilding.org]


In addition, if you broke the grip - just leave it in two pieces and finish reaming the grip, but be careful to not to disturb the broken ends of the grip. Then, when you finish reaming the grip, go ahead and glue the grip onto the rod, in two pieces putting glue between the pieces so that you glue the broken pieces together at the same time as you glue the grips onto the blank. When you glue the grip onto the rod, use a clamp to securely clamp the two pieces together as you glue on the blank and glue the two pieces together. Be sure, that as soon as you get the grip clamped, be sure to clean up 100% of any excess cement or epoxy glue from the cork, so that you do not have a mess with hardened glue on the grip.

Be safe

Regarding the adhesive, I use paste epoxy for gluing cork, have never had one fail. Don't clamp too tightly; you want to minimize the space in the crack, but you don't want to squeeze out all the epoxy, or whatever glue you use. Yup, not an exact science.