Recently, returning from business trip, I bought my 11 year old kid a pair of cheap binoculars as a present, they came in a presentation box and in a cute pouch, total paid $7. It never occurred to me that I was buying myself a tool for rod building....

Yesterday, after applying the concept guide location process and doing some static distribution on two 7' spinning rods, I placed one of the rods on the rollers of my PacBay 8' wrapping machine and chucked it. Got the hot melt adhesive and glued the tip top, then I proceeded to wrap all the guides behind the tip sequentially towards the butt . I used size 8 from the intersection point towards the tip. When I looked at the guide alignment from behind the chuck, I could barely see if the tip was aligned with respect to the middle of the real seat, it was blurry, the guides are too small, the are too far, thus, I could not determine with precision (again looking from behind the chuck) if the guide after the tip was properly aligned with respect to the tip, and the guide behind that one an so on...

I was complaining to myself about my poor vision for this application, when I devised the pair of binoculars I had brought from St. Louis.

Standing a couple of steps behind the chuck, I looked down at the rod with binoculars, then everything came into perspective and definition, the tip, the guide rings, the blank. By looking through the binoculars I could easily align the guides with respect to the tip and each other.

Using these low power binoculars, I was able to align the guides much easier, faster and precisely compared with the traditional methods I used before.

The perspective gained with this 'instrument' is similar to the magnifying effect you experience with the Optivisors and other magnifying apparatus, except that with this is on the entire longitudinal plane of the rod.

The binoculars are low power 4 x 30

BTW, I had my eyes checked recently

Might be a heck of an idea. Thanks for sharing it.

...........

Thanks, Ricardo! That will definitely benefit these 68 y.o. eyes. Great idea.

Stan

I also want to thank Ricardo,

One can learn something new every day !


Smooth Wraps!!

P.S. and my wife wonders why I have to monitor this board like
a child waiting for Santa.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/22/2005 05:41PM by Raymond_Adams.

Every day, something new! Great idea, have to give it a try. Thanks!

If this works out, then you have just solved something that has troubled a ton of rod builders for decades!

I gave this a try just now. The binocs stack the guides up against each other in the focal window and it really does make alignment easier. Thanks!

wish you had posted this about two weeks ago might not of had to strip the guides off and realine
them (lol) every thing looked straight until i got down close to the reelseat. boy was it off

I sometimes have to bring out a low powered rifle scope to do the same thing, just rest the scope mounts on the grip and sight guides in.