Greasing a Cork Drag Disk in an old reel.

[funhog]

I've had a good Tuna season in SoCal  with an old Fin Nor 30 Light.  Recently the drag had started sticking at its initial release point. I decided to take the real apart and check it out this afternoon and and did a nice clean-up and service on it . The cork drag system is a first for me. It looked to be in good condition; just dirty and what may have been a film of an old grease of some kind . Then again, it may have been just a burnt layer of cork from the drag itself. Anyway, I cleaned up its surface and applied Cal's Universal Reel& Star Drag grease to it. Cal's has worked great on all my other drag systems (Felt and Carbontex").
The reel is back together and the drag is smooth as silk in all ranges with NO sticky initial start... and that is for the 80' length of the test I did in my driveway. Does anyone have an opinion or any info on the compatibility of cork & grease? will this combination turn into an oozing mess by Thursday( my next fishing trip).I'm not sure how cork was put together 30 yrs. ago. It might be one solid piece. I think most cork today is small  ground up pieces and glued together. Its getting late in the evening and now I'm second guessing myself. Any thoughts? Thanks for any feedback . The cork is about 3/16 " thick - flat and not crumbling or looking tired.. just really dirty. No corrosion anywhere inside. Its old and heavy, but it's a keeper.   

[wallacewt]

hi funhog
cork drags are meant to run dry,
i sanded mine down and stuck some .05 CF on,then cals
that was 3 or 4 years ago,still working fine.
im sure your drag will go sticky in time,so its a good option
cheers

[funhog]

Wallace:
What adhesive did you use to bond the CF drag disk?

[wallacewt]

hi funhog
2 part epoxy is recommended
cheers

[jurelometer]

hi funhog
cork drags are meant to run dry,
i sanded mine down and stuck some .05 CF on,then cals
that was 3 or 4 years ago,still working fine.
im sure your drag will go sticky in time,so its a good option
cheers

I am surprised that conventional reels would run cork drags dry.  I'm not the expert on this stuff, but:

The drags on all fly reels that I have seen with cork require lubrication per manufacturer specs.  If they dry out they get grabby and squeal like crazy.   Cal's is my favorite grease for cork, but you have to worry about interactions with whatever else was originally applied or migrated from another part of the reel.  Hayden used Cal's, Old Florida and Tibor use some sort of graphite stuff, Abel still uses neatsfoot oil. Never found a cleaner that would take the old grease out of cork.  I have resorted to sanding off a bit of old cork  before applying Cal's. 

-J

[wallacewt]

hi funhog,juro.
i tried cals,graphite powder,innox,dry cork, the lot
cork had to go,cf glued to cork was by far the best other
than glueing some laminated cf washers together
to make up for the thickness of the cork
i also glued the cork to the spool to eliminate the use of the cork
cork + CF still going strong
doesnt seem to matter very much if it gets wet,till you get home.
hope this helps,cheers

[funhog]

Wallace and Jurelo, Thanks for the Help!
First off, this reel is an old leverdrag from the 80"s and not a star drag . A 3" diamiter cork ring about 3/16 thik and 3/4"wide is bonded to the spool with some sort of adhesive that was available back in the 80"s. I've been told that epoxy adhesives start to break down at temps. around 165f so Im a little apprehensive on using them. Maybe the thick cork on the spool defuses heat really well and its not a problem? I also found out thru another old timer/fishing friend that there is an article written on this subject somewhere deep in the archive of this site, or possibly another one, by none other than the man himself... Alan Tani. .I will spend the rest of the evening doing some deep diving on this site and a couple others to see what I can dig up. Google listed  some articles on some other site. Thanks again . If some cool idea comes up I'll post it. In the meantime I hope to hook-up with something that will strip line of the reel at a blinding speed on Thursday. The Wahoo and Marlin fishing has been pretty darn consistent the last few weeks just about 2 miles from my back yard -DanaPoint, CA.
Cheers!

[jurelometer]

Hi Funhog,

The fly reel cork drags are very similar to a conventional lever drag design.  The cork is glued to a ratchet plate and the side of the spool functions as a drag disk.

I think the post from Mr Tani is about replacing a cork drag with carbon fiber.

Re epoxy - the high temp stuff gets up to around 500F, but even with the normal low-temp stuff, you will probably fry the cork before the epoxy turns to powder.

I was thinking about switching some of my cork fly reels to CF, but then changed my mind.

Some things to consider when switching from cork to CF:  first is what is the other friction surface made out of and is it compatible with CF? 

Second- cork has some unique properties:

1.  It  has a high coefficient of friction (it takes less force on the disk to make the same amount of drag).

2.  It is elastic, which means that it can deal with some unevenness  or flexing and still not grab too bad.

3.  It has good vibration dampening characteristics

4.  It is fairly impervious to water.

  You should be able to get smooth operation with the cork-  my fly reel drags  are very smooth.  The ones with the largest disks  (~3 " diameter) top out about 10-12 lbs of drag.  They need occasional re-lubing but not much, and have caught lots of fish without wear - several hundred days of work for my bluewater Abel.

If the cork is truly the weak link on your reel, then going to CF might be the answer,  but otherwise, why not stick to the cork?  I wouldn't design a conventional reel today to use cork, but there might be some risk that the current drag system on your utilizes some of cork's unique properties...

Walace's technique preserved some of the cork properties, so that is something to consider.

Good luck and let us know how it turns out

[funhog]

Jurlometer,

Your comments in the above post are outstanding. For this particular reel the cork drag system is very forgiving with everything it interfaces with. Cork is not that difficult to find when and if it needs replaced.  I didn't realize how readily available high temp adhesive were today. And, probably the single most important consideration is: The reel is very easy to break down and work on( very few pieces or small parts), and I am very pleased with its performance using the cork drag system. 17 pounds of very smooth drag has landed a lot of large fish over the years, with no problem. I'll let you know how the "Grease Job" went when I get land a few fish!

Thanks for the insights and perspective! 

[funhog]

For those interested:
I did not catch any sizable fish on Thursday to test the greased drag (cork) on this old leverdrag reel. On the way in from fishing off -shore, I rigged a five gallon bucket up as a drogue in the water to produce some drag. I got the speed up on the boat enough to strip line out for a good run at different drag settings and it performed very well. I now have no concerns with how it will perform on a real fish.
Also, Just as an FYI: Anglers Center in Newport Beach, CA. has a reel repair center inside the store. They've been around forever.  A young man named Collin runs the repair shop. I was telling him about my reel and  and he lit-up as I mentioned old cork drags. He has a shoe-box with quite a bit of "Old FinNor" parts including: new drags- handles - side plates plates - and the like. Most of it looked like items for the 12-20 and some for a 30 sized reel. I would think he could text a photo the contents if you were looking for something,  as little of it was labeled. Like I said earlier, "they've been around forever "and their storage room
for parts seamed to be well stocked with  old and new