I would welcome anyone thoughts as to an intro wrapper for heavier stand up and saltwater rods. I am new to rod building and want to build my own salt water rods as I am sick of the ones I have.

Also I would like to have a wrapper for fly rods from trout to salt water and was wondering if the same one can be used.

Any information would be appreciated and love the Forum discussions and search features.

Ernie

I wrapped my Allstar 1508 12' 6" rated 4-10 OZ by hand over felt lined wood "V" blocks on my desk (6FT) using a pile of Milk crates for the third support. works for all rods

I've used my FlexCoat hand rod wrapper for everything from 3-wt flyrods to 13-ft surf rods.

The American Tackle power wrapper is about $300 and I've used it on a ton of boat and trolling rods. Works for me! I'd get a Renzetti if I had the money to play with but the AM unit has done fine for me the past two years.

I've wrapped ALL my heavy saltwater rods holding the spool of thread with my hands,
and a big cardboard box with v grooves cut out at each end holding the blank!!!
FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE ! Ican also make adjustments any way I want...If I mess up,
more free boxes can be found out on the street every nite! ;^)

For many years I wrapped all my rods on 3 individual roller stands and the thread passing through a book for tension that I constructed in my garage. The rods varied from fly rods to heavy stand-up and long jig sticks. Today I am using a PB power wrapper and am very happy with it. A little of an up front investment but I feel that the quality of the finished product is much better in the long run of things especially for the heavier salt water rods that I tend to build more of.

If this is a hobby that you feel thatyou will continue with for some time go ahead and invest in either the PB or Amtak rod wrappers. A used wrapper when you can find one is just fine. Monitor the buy/sell page, they sometimes comeup. Or may be someone reading this post has one and will contact you.

Using the commerically made wrappers made my life easier and the drying motor provided me with a much higher quality finish that I was unable to obtain turning the rod by hand over an extended period of time.

Welcome to the addictive world of custom rods.

If you wish to see some nice plans for a well-designed manual ROD-WRAPPING jig: go to the RODBUILDING.ORG LIBRARY - "The Easy To Build Rod Wrapping Jig By Greg Pennell" [www.rodbuilding.org]

MANUAL ROD WRAPPING JIG (Cliff Hall): It keeps the "hand-made" aspect alive. To make a manual rod wrapping jig, you can use clean & straight "2x4" lumber. Use 1/4" wood dowels as pegs to connect the uprights to the base. This jig has adjustable distance between supports. Cost ~ $10. It can also do double duty as a manual rod drying-rack.

BASE: about 5 feet long, depending on blank length and table space. About every 6", drill a pair of 1/4" holes 2.00" apart on-center, all the way thru to accept the 2 dowels which you will peg into the bottom of each upright. [Be precise or the pegs won't fit into every position along the base. Remember: "Measure twice, cut once."]

UPRIGHTS: Make at least three, about 10"-12" tall (depending on how tall you are, and how you position your arms), with a 2" vee-notch. Into the bottom of each upright, drill the same holes 2.00" apart and 2" deep. Set your two 1/4" diameter dowels (length of 3.5" = 1.5" + 2.0") into the upright's bottom.

Use a felt fabric or even a heavy index card paper to line the V-notch. Or try felt fabric from hats or mole skin in sheets from foot care in pharmacy. It has adhesive on the back and is easily replaced when it gets worn.

To create thread tension, pass the thread thru the pages of a heavy textbook. Inserting ink-free printer paper will protect the book and thread from each other. Let thread roll off the spool, not cast off the end, which causes twist. If the blank tends to lift up out of the vee-notch under the tension of wrapping, then just loop a 8-16 oz bank sinker on some line, and hang it over the rod blank to hold it down. -Cliff Hall