Many thanks for the ideas. Mine is definitely a grip thing. I thought about the jar lid grippers but had never considered using the knees for leverage. I do use a freezer for chilling wheel bearing races prior to seating them to make them shrink, and it works even better when a propane torch is used on the hub to make the hub expand. Sorry to get off topic, but do you all use the wax on graphite? The rod is a TFO TiCr-X and I assumed that you do. I'd really like to keep it a loooooong time