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If you thought your rod had good cork, watch Andy Royer pick out the really good stuff

As we've alluded to in other articles, making your own grips from cork rings is an important part of building a custom rod. "Staying with the cost-effective strategy, I decided to try and build my own cork lathe using common materials and a drill." Read more of Jon Jenkin's article.

There are two basic strategies for building a cork grip for a fly rod. The first involves gluing the rings directly onto the rod blank and then shaping the grip. Another way involves gluing the cork rings together off the blank, and then shaping the grip in a lathe setup before reaming and fitting to the rod blank. That process is described by Bob Petti in this article.

I'm not sure how floating bass flies got the name "bug", but it certainly has stuck. Whether constructed of wood, plastic, foam, or hair, they all seem to be lumped into the generic category of "bass bug".

Rod builder Dave Lewis of Performance Flyrods teaches you how to finish a cork grip. Dave covers the whole process from selecting cork over glueing to the final shaping.

How Ib Olsen builds his beautiful rods ...and some elementary notes.