By reputation, the ferrules on a spey rod are particularly highly stressed--it's actually recommended that you tape them when rigging the rod for use. What I am wondering is how much ferrule wrap to put on the spey rod I am building. At a recent expo, I looked at spey rods by a number of different manufacturers and found that there wasn't any consensus among them. Redington had a rather short and simple wrap may half an inch long while Scott went for belt and suspenders with something like at least a couple on inches of single wrap and a half an inch of a double wrap at the base. Others fell somewhere in between. My current inclination is to do a single wrap the length of the insertion, but I am wondering what informed opinion and experience there is on the subject out there.

Mike

The most important part of the wrap is the first few thread wraps - that nearest the edge of the female ferrule opening. You can make the wrap 10 inches long and still have the ferrule fail if you don't get it close, and snug, at the edge of the opening.

You are trying to prevent a split-out and the only place that can occur/start is at the very edge. I have made ferrule wraps on some pretty beefy rods and never make it more than twice as long as the diameter of the female ferrule opening at that point. Any more is overkill and really adds nothing to ferrule strength.

The main thing is get your wrap close to the edge (1mm is good) and make it very snug - much more so than your guide wraps. (But not so tight that you constrict the ferrule opening.)

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