Being motivated by some beautiful birch bark grips that I saw on another board, I started a grip that I thought I might use on a graphite rod I am building. I did get it to the point that I turned a round grip blank. At that point I decided that is was too firm a grip for a 9' 9wt all day rod.
Some thoughts on birch bark
You want WHITE BIRCH ( paper birch) not yellow birch which while it looks sorta white, is much smaller, thinner bark, and bark with a LOT of black areas.
You want "fresh " bark. Not necessarily fresh cut but bark which has not spent a long time dead and exposed to the elements. Rain will leach out the oils. When fresh, the bark is like good tooling leather. As the dead tree is exposed to the elements the bark becomes more like dry cardboard.
I got mine from my firewood man, who gave me some 2 foot sections that were 10 --> 12 inches in diameter. This gave me bark which was about 0.10 inch thick.
I cut this into squares on a band saw. The squares I then stripped of any loose "paper like" layers.
I glued them up w/ Titebond II, alternating which side was up to counteract the natural curve. I also rotated each layer 45* so that the grain would be like plywood.
Mistake -- I glued up sections of about 1 inch and clamped them up in some C clamps, using large washers to spread the force. Well if you think about it , 10 sections of bark all gooey with glue tend to all go every which way when you try to clamp them. Next time I think I will center bore each piece and then glue them all up on a threaded rod mandrel which has been wrapped w/ plumbers Teflon tape.
Anyway I bored each 1 inch section and then glued them up on the threaded mandrel.
Delamination of the bark layers is a problem on the ends so I figured I would finish off each end w/ a ring of cork.
I can see some possibilities for this material. I have seen some photos of birch grips and they are beautiful. Right now the bark grip is just a round blank sitting on the bench, but it might find its way onto a SB 119 Doublebuilt that is next in the line.
AgMD