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Cork

Carbon, plastic, composite...

All very nice and Hi-Techy and mess-free - at least until you hook a REALLY BIG, really hard-fighting fish and have the ruddy thing slip on you.
 

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I much prefer cork, but as I can't afford custom made rods, I buy the the type/action/whatever I need in a rod, with whatever handle it comes with.
As I spent most of the last twenty years carping, that usually meant a black composite of some sort.

Back in the real world now, I find to my delight that cork is still the norm for barbel rods...love it :D

Cheers, Dave.
 
Prefer cork, although good stuff is expensive and to do it properly a reasonable custom handle can take a long time to fabricate and shape. It's messy as well.
Certainly the quality grade for grade has gone down over the years.
Something I prepared earlier - and very comfortable too.

flathand600.jpg


And on a Harrison Lorhic #6, 9 footer.

lorhichand2.jpg


Takes time but I find it more satisfying.



Cheers
Bob
 
David Hall said:
what, clint eastwood, nar, really, yeeeehaaa!!
Click to expand...
It was in answer to Pauls post about composites slipping. Many big game rod handles are wrapped in leather. Rawhide applied wet shrinks as it dries and would make an iron hard handle covering. It would have to be suitably oiled to waterproof it before use.
 
Out of interest I've tried to find out when cork was first used on rod handles. J H Keene's Fishing Tackle of 1886 makes no reference whatsoever other than the use of polished wood. The earliest I can trace is in my copy of the Hardy 1894 catalogue where it mentions that customers can choose either cork or pigskin coated handles.

Mike
 
It was common at one time to have softwood, (pine) handles wrapped with a veneer of cork.
I had a floppy old Wallace wizard which was restored by Edward Barder which had this type of handle.
 
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