Cork handles pick up a lot of grime over the years, and very few anglers clean or maintain their rods these days, so when you get hold of one of these ‘neglected’ rods for restoration, the handle can look a bit of a mess. It can be a blessing, though, as the grime has been quietly protecting the cork underneath for all those years.
Despite the appearance, its often the case that cleaning up the handle is the easiest part of the restoration as long as the cork hasn’t been damaged by being knocked, or rotted away because it was left wet for prolonged periods.
The handle is shown below exactly as it was when the rod came into my possession. Dirty and grimy, but it appears to be in sound condition for its full length.
The handle before restoration
There are several ways to clean up the cork. You can scrape carefully with a sharp knife, sand with various grades of fairly fine sandpaper or scrub it with a cleaning agent, but after a process of trial and error, the method that works best for me is to rub it with fine grade wire wool.
Hold the rod in one hand and rub the wire wool up and down the handle as you turn the handle slowly. You dont need to use much pressure as you’re only trying to remove the surface layer of dirt and grime. If you encounter a more dirty area, just rub a few more times, or a little harder.
This will remove most of the accumulated dirt, and the areas around the fittings, such as the collar at the top of the handle, can be cleaned by wrapping the wire wool around the handle, and applying gentle pressure as you again turn the rod.
The picture below shows the results of just a few seconds work.
The handle partly cleaned
When you’ve removed most of the grime with the wire wool, gently go over it again with fine grade glass or sand paper to get it nice and smooth, and finally wipe it with a fine cloth to remove dust.
If the handle is in good condition you should, with just a few minutes work, have a handle that looks pretty close to the condition it was in when originally sold.
The cleaned cork
The next job is to clean and polish the brass fittings. We’ll get on to that in the next post.
If you’re looking for an online source of the materials you’ll need for restoring a split cane rod, Tacklebargains.co.uk stock a wide range of rod building supplies including whipping thread, chrome guidesand cork handles.
