Building a Fly Rod - Part 4 Preparing the Cork Handle

I am using a pre-made handle. This is a half-well handle and very comfortable for light rods.

Handles are made by forming a blank of glued cork rings. The rings are stacked to the length desired, clamped until the glue has cured and then the cork blank is turned in a lathe. It is not so much cut as sanded into shape. That is messy, fussy work and without a lathe I'm not quite sure how one would manage to make one.



The handle I have has to be fitted to the rod blank and the up-locking part of the reel seat needs to be counter sunk into it. This is for looks as well as a good firm mounting of the reel.

To fit the handle it is slid over the rod blank from the top and down toward the butt until it binds. A few strokes of a rat tail file and repeat the fitting. This is called reaming the handle and continues until the cork handle will slide into place but no farther.

Again the blank is marked so that you can rough up just the parts that won't be seen. Then it is ready for gluing.

A good handle fits so that it won't squeeze all of the glue out when it is slid into place but can't slide farther down the blank than it should. Tricky but all it takes is patience. Doing the fitting by hand is much more likely to end well than using power tools like a Dremel or rigging something up with a drill.

This is what it looks like fitted to the blank with the reel seat mounted.