Hi all,
I am VERY new to rod building and I was wondering if anyone could tell me where I could find a Purple colored Fly rod blank. I am hoping for around 8'6 in a 2 or 3 wt. I appreciate your insight/advice.

Kneale

GUSA will paint any blank for you. You can order direct through Custom Tackle Supply, give Bob a call . I have pictures of a Purple GUSA that I wrapped, send me an e-mail if you are interested in seeing the actual color. I am also recieveing a 35 blank order of colored GUSA's tomorrow evening, hopefully will be home in time to sign for it. WIll be taking pics of all teh colors & posting.

Kneale

Billy's right - you can get a purple rod blank from Graphite USA. I bought one about a year ago. It's a very nice blank and I don't regret the purchase at all but I want to pass something along that you may not have considered since you mentioned that you are new to rodbuiilding. As with a lot of colors there can be large variance of shades within the color. What someone else calls purple may not be the color that you had in mind. Also, due to variances in color printing, colors used in printing catalogs and other sales materials frequently are not a good depiction of the actual product. To my eye, the GUSA purple blanks are more of a dark burgundy or deep garnet color than they are purple. I mention this only because many builders try to closely match colors of their favorite sports team, college or schols colors, etc. If you need a shade of color that is fairly precise, you may need to paint a blank. There have been a lot of discussions on this board about how to do that and you could perform a search and find lots of helpful advice. I don't mean to talk you out of a purple GUSA blank. In fact, it may be just what you're looking for. I just wanted you to be aware that the blanks are not a particuarly bright shade of purple.

I haven't seen Billy's photos and don't know how well they show the color of the blank but I would encourage you to look at them. Also, go to the Graphite USA website (link on the left).

Good luck.

Sam Stoner

Actually, I posted a couple of the pics of the Purple GUSA on the VisualWrap site. [www.visualwrap.com]

It's an Opaque color, with micro glitter/sparkles. For whatever reason, the GUSA website doesn't have a picture of all the colors.

Kneale,
Jann"s NetCfraft sells their own IM 6 blanks in a "plum" color and is available as a fly blank. I built my wife a spinning rod on one years ago with purple & goldenrod wraps. Nice looking blank and the rod is very pretty. Good Luck!
Chris

Try a search!! Some one else makes a Plum blank The mind goes so can not remember who Think Pac Bay??

CTS offers about 30 different colors and purple and colbalt blue are on their color list. They're out of New Zealand but I suspect they'd do whatever they could to get you a blank. Check the sponsor list for their website.

............

The Pac Bay Tradition is a plum color.

Stupid question time! Does painting the rod affect how it handles? Eventually I'd like to be skillful enough to build a rod using a Sage or Winston blank, but I would hate to shell out a few hundred bucks and find that I change how the rod handles.

Thanks for all your posts, you guys are great!

GUSA ahcnged teh color Purple. THere is no more Pearlescent metallic flake in teh paintjob, and it's not the pastel-ish purple it used to be. Now it's more along hte lines of a GRape colored Purple lik ewe all think of when we think Purple.

...and we think of purple, don't we Billy?? It is one of my favorites, it and blue.

Putter

"Eventually I want to be skillful enough. . . ."

A blank is a blank is a blank. The first rod I ever built was on a Winston(Fisher) blank, the next two were on J. Kennedy Fisher blanks and the next was on a Sage. Don't sell yourself short. Building a rod is not like painting the Mona Lisa, although quite a few people who frequent this site turn out works of art that I would definitely rather have. Get a good book, Tom Kirkman's and a good DVD, Ken Preston's and go through both of them so you understand what's needed. Then go to the CCS site and find a blank that comes close to the Sage and Winston models listed. Build that one into a rod. That blank will probably cost 1/4 to 1/3 as much as the Sage or Winston and will fish just as well.

Painting a blank shouldn't change the action, unless you put on 10 coats.