I hae built a dryer and am finishing up a chuck, and it dawned on me - how do you use this thing!? What I mean is, do you coat and dry the entire assembled rod? I thought I would do it in sections (4 section 9' fly rod) but the chuck designs I've seen seem to only work on the larger diameter handle only and not on the smaller rod sections. Am I missing something?

cheers,
Michael

You can easily make an insert for the larger diameter chuck, such as with a cork ring, with the ring reamed to the appropriate smaller diameter. Blank sections that are a bit (or even a lot) too small for a given chuck or insert can easily be built up by wrapping with strips of any thick, pliable material held together with masking tape. This is especially handy when building long, 2-section surf rods.

Thanks Tom. So the practice of coating and drying a section at a time is reasonable?

Michael

Perfectly reasonable. I've even done long one-piece rods in two stages.

Michael,
Because I didn't want to set up a dryer with one motor and turn 9' fly rods fully assembled, I build my dryer with two motors side by side so I could dry in two sections. One motor has a chuck which holds the reel seat.

The other motor has a drive that has a glue stick tapered to a narrow diameter (I simply used a sharp knife to shave the glue stick into the taper). The female ferrule of the upper half of the rod slides over the tapered glue stick. The glue stick is soft, and wedges firmly into the female ferrule. Initially I tapered a dowel, but the dowel didn't flex and the rod wobbled as it turned. The tapered glue stick flexes as the rod turns so the other end of the rod rests nicely into a separate V shaped holder.

You can see my chuck and tapered glue stick at fishingphotos.net (see equipment). My images are actually of my earlier version dryer, but the chuck and glue stick are the same.

Good luck, and let me know if I can be of further assistance.

Jeff Shafer

Jeff, thanks, that's a great idea. I aslo like the pipe insulation for the other chuck. I'll try both of those ideas.

Michael

Michael,

I ended up taking an old thread spool from the fly tying bench and epoxied a dowel into the hole. Then I shimmed the OD of the spool with masking tape to get a snug fit inside the chuck. My chuck ID was nearly the size of the spool so it only took a couple wraps of masking tape. I then tapered the dowel so it would fit the tip or mid sections of the blank. It was easy enough to do that I plan to fix up a couple more spools with different sized dowels so I can switch between these as I work on different blanks.

I also like the idea mentioned by Jeff and I may just have to try a glue stick.

For your 4 section rod, you may want to work on the butt and first mid section at the same time. The same thing for the 2nd mid and tip. Maybe this would help cut your drying time down.
Also, you would only have to fit the glue stick or dowel for the 2nd mid since you could use the normal ferrules to connect the 2nd mid/tip and the butt/first mid .
(hope this makes since - I am not the best at explaining things in writing)

Best of luck with getting the rod completed.

Dana

Get the black chuck from Cabela's. Costly but takes all and any size blanks and handles

Bill's talking about the Streamside chuck. Really Nice! I wish some of the sponsors would carry it!

Mike