I went fishing with my favorite fly rod yesterday. When I was putting it together I noticed it was fitting tighter than usual - so I took it apart and there was a small (maybe 1/2 inch) scratch on the male ferrule. I assume there was a piece of grit or something on the female section. I shook the female section and blew into it and then if fit fine. I fished with it and it was fine. My question is - Is this likely to cause a failure in the future? Anything I should do to fix it? Also is there another way to clean grit out of the hollow portion of a ferrule other than blowing into it? I'm not sure if I blew it out or just further up the rod. This is not an expensive rod at all - it was built with a forecast blank and midlevel components - about $50 total. But I really like the rod and have caught a lot of fish on it over the last year. I had intended to use this rod for a long long time. The whole thing made me a little sick considering the hours I spent building this rod.
thanks for any help.
Greg

Greg, how deep is the scratch? A small surface scratch should not cause a failure in the rod. Its kind of like scratching the paint on your car, as long as the scratch is just in the finish and not into the blank you should be fine. As for cleaning the inside of the ferrule maybe a Q-Tip will help.

-Anthony

It's hard to tell how deep the scratch is. It does not appear very deep. That's a good idea about the q-tip.
Greg

Two things you can do next time. One, do you remember the article in Rodmaker about making ferrule plugs??? These are not only nice cosmetic touches but they keep the grit and dirt out of the female ferrule when the sections are not joined. Most expensive bamboo rods come with these. You can also make them to fit graphite rods. The other thing would be to keep a cotton swab handy and just dust out the female ferrule before joinging sections. I do this as a matter of routine now.