I think I spoke too soon. Completed the FC and is dry ,much to my disappointment I can see the foot of the guide thru the flex coat. Here is what I did, colored the foot of the guide with red permanent marker. Used Gudebrod A 326 scarlet,packed every single thread one against the other.Then did a 50 ,50 mix of h20 and cp. Waited till it dried and used 6 drops of cp to 1 h20. The color is beautiful ,very consistent but I can see the foot. Did a single wrap.Guides Titanium Frames with SIC Rings. I'm passing on this info to see what I did wrong and to save some one else from having the same problem.
Next time I'm trying straight cp right out of the bottle and learn to work faster.

Personally, I would use the CP straight out of the bottle. I have never thinned it )never saw a need to) and have never had a problem. I have used Flex Coat and presently use 811, just because I like the clear.

I don't thin anything. I may be wrong, but I firmly believe that if thinning worked as well, the companies would thin it before selling it. Simple economics. If thinner product worked as good good as full strength the companies would make a lot more money from the same amount of product .

Mike

I normally thin Gudebrod 811 with DNA because the viscosity of the stuff approaches cold honey. If it's that thick, it will dry before it can penetrate the threads.

"If we weren't all crazy, we would go insane." Jimmy Buffet



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/07/2005 03:26PM by Gerry Rhoades.

50/50 mix is cutting it a lot. The amount of solids left in that solution will be quite small. For the most part, youjust put water on your wraps. But, that's not your problem in this case.

If you want a consistent color, you should not have put red marker on your guide foot. You should have colored it to match the rest of the guide frame. All thread, CP or not, will tend to take on a bit of the shade of whatever it is wrapped on top of. If you have a guide foot that is part black and part red, then the color of the thread over the top of the foot will be a shade or two different where it sits on top of the different colored guide foot. By having the thread wrapped on what amounts to two different backgrounds, you've gotten two different shades.

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Tom ,if I'm reading this correctly there is no way to get a perfect homogeneous color unless the guide foot is the same color as the thread? So with a titanium frame if I would have left it the "silver" color it still would shown thru correct? Given my situation how could I have gotten a more perfect match using the same color thread? Thanks

Regular nylon thread is not totally opaque even with CP. Had you left the guide foot alone, at least the shade of the thread along it would have been uniform. For the same shade all over, the guide foot would need to be the same color as the blank, not the thread.

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Technically, isn't it impossible to have the thread the same color all around, unless there's nothing but blank underneath? Every guide I've ever seen, the thread on either side of the foot (the tunnel) is a slightly different shade than the rest because at that point there isn't any base color.

Quite right Gerry. The tunnels are always a bit "off" unless you get really lucky, but usually noticed only by builders, who tend to magnify, over-analyze, get very self critical, and deem every rod they build as "unsuitable for fishing, much less looking at" because of color variations, cork pits, a slight gap in one thread of a butt wrap, a barely visible 1/16" hair of epoxy between a butt cap and grip, etc. Then they come here and look at pics and feel even more pathetic. But maybe that's just me.

I've never used 811. In fact, never heard of it until I found this place. And since I've been here, with all my reading and searching, I'm amazed that anybody would use this stuff. I read where it is very good at what it does, but that it is also very inconsistent bottle to bottle, and usually needs thinning with god knows what is best to thin with. I do enough "wing of bat, eye of newt, leg of spider" work as it is, not only on rods but in life, to have to worry about my CP.

Bill, I predominately use FC CP, and a lot of scarlett, and I've never seen a guide foot through thread. Along the lines of what Tom K said, if you are using CP, you will have better luck NOT coloring your ground guide feet unless you are coloring them to match the rod blank, which is the bulk of your background, and terminal color, than trying to match that small area to your thread.

Remember, on forums such as this, you hear mostly the horror stories - not the success stories. And the successes outnumber the failures by 1000 to 1 or more.

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Mick McComesky Wrote:
> I've never used 811. In fact, never heard of it
> until I found this place. And since I've been
> here, with all my reading and searching, I'm
> amazed that anybody would use this stuff. I read
> where it is very good at what it does, but that it
> is also very inconsistent bottle to bottle, and
> usually needs thinning with god knows what is best
> to thin with.

Mick - tha tis not true - just pay attention to teh posters who come up solutions to how to work with it, adn it will work just fine. I cannot fathom why people are having as much problems as they are, with this or any other Color PReserver. There is so much specific info on how to use it properly & how thin it can be to work, it's amazing people have the same problems over and over and over.

People ned to spend more time testing on scrap wraps & blanks than posting questions on the interent.

Right on Billy
I just got a bottle, now I don't know if I will like it ? When I coat threads I like CP to stay wet a little in order to soak in, when I do feathers I like it to stay wet so I have time to adjust the feathers.

Got to play with the bottle I just got ??? I'll see for myself. It is the only way to find out if one likes things or not. Experiment with them.

I don't use CP very often,but when I have,I have used 811(it's the 1st bottle I purchased and I never got around to trying anything else,LOL) and I don't thin it.I had alot of problems at first due to the drying time and thick consistancy,but now that I know what it is like,I don't have any real issues.

It is very thick and I find it is a bit runnier and easier to work with if I place the bottle in a cup of hot water for a couple of minutes and keep it in there between covering each wrap.Once out of the heat,it doesn't take long to thicken up.

I found if I put it on fairly heavily and quickly,covering all areas,and then wiped the excess off quickly so that only small bumps and lumps were visible,it would soak in fine(it soaks in quickly despite the thickness of it) and provide excellent coverage and color retention.Also,by working fast,any of the small visible lumps would dissappear as it soaked in.I only do one guide at a time,making sure I get the excess off as quickly as possible,placing the bottle back in the hot water after each guide.Done this way I found no need for a thinning agent.

It often appears somewhat "lumpy" as it goes on and dries(I think it dries a bit on the fast side),which can give one the impression that it is not going to soak in properly and is going to dry unevenly,leaving little bits in the thread.In reality,as long as you get the excess off and wipe the wrap so that there are no large lumps,everything else seems to soak in and any lumps or bumps will dissappear(at least they do for me).Messing around with the stuff,even the littlest bit,as it dries only seems to create problems and leave little bits of dried CP in the wraps(as I found out several times in the beginning).

It dries very quickly and is very thick so it doesn't seem like it would give one alot of time to move things around when doing inlays or something.I don't think it would be my choice for that,but then I have never tried it.