general handle question

[thunderflash]

When building a fly rod handle it can be done on the rod or off either way something needs to act as the mandrel when shaping the cork either the rod itself or a purpose made mandrel, meaning you will always get a hole it the bottom of your cork handle, I know you can use a cork plug and then hand sand later or make a metal plug which would look nice, however on my sage rods there is no plug or hole visible on the butt so how can you achieve this?

[Klink]

Hi Aaron, I'd say Orca is the man to ask on here otherwise you could check out Mudhole Custom Tackle on you tube, they have loads of rod building videos posted. I understand what you mean about the Sage. From what I know, which is very little, when building the handle you would place the cork rings on a mandrel to sand and shape, some people would build the handle on the blank before sanding, but would leave a piece of the blank exposed at the end. A larger piece of cork would then have a hole drilled to the same dept as the piece of blank that has been exposed, countersinking a hole in the cork basically, the idea being that this would then be epoxyed onto the end of the blank before sanding. I hope this helps but as I said I know very little about rod building, Orca has a great knowledge and has posted pictures of some of his builds on here.

[orca]

When building a fly rod handle it can be done on the rod or off either way something needs to act as the mandrel when shaping the cork either the rod itself or a purpose made mandrel, meaning you will always get a hole it the bottom of your cork handle, I know you can use a cork plug and then hand sand later or make a metal plug which would look nice, however on my sage rods there is no plug or hole visible on the butt so how can you achieve this?

Hi Aaron, if you look at the thread I put up in the rod building section here you will see that I build the handle sections on 6mm stainless steel shafts and then fit them to the blank for sanding, you will see the jig I made up for shapeing the cork, I do not have to leave a hole at the end for pluging after sanding, it all spins on the jig, i have a drill fixed to the other end of the jig for turning, its under a thread called 15ft CTS Blank, if you need any advice let me know, Martin.