I was curious, what is the going rate for people who out wrap rods for the larger companies? I was also interested in how the procedure goes when you wrap rods for the companies? I tried to search the site but couldn’t find anything. Thanks in advance for the info. Mike

Mike,
At Lamiglas we pay $0.17 per tie off. A tie off consists of each start and stop.
In our plant the average out wrapper comes in once a week, picks up a box of rods and drops off a box of rods that they picked up the week before. We are very rigid on schedules as we rely on these rods to keep production flowing.
We supply tape, razor blades & thread along with the guides & hook keepers.

I hope this helps you a bit,

Todd

Regards,
Todd Vivian
Mud Hole Custom Tackle

todd@mudhole.com

Todd so we can estimate just how Valuable our guide wrapping ACTUALLY is would you please tell us what the payoff would be for the following Lotto Jackpot?

Guides on a 7 ft popping rod -

No butt wrap

Who grinds the feet?

Who is responsible for alignment?

1 dbl ft 12 with a three loop metallic thread trim band each end.

7 single foot with same trim and A thread one end only no security wraps past end.

1 inch tip wrap with trim band.

How many rods will a good outwrapper take off with in a good week!

This would interest a lot of builders.

Bill Stevens

A good outwrapper has to do one heck of a lot of wraps to make any money. Todd will have to get back to you but I'm guessing that most commercial operations would pay about $3 to $4 total to wrap the guides on a 7' popping rod. I'm assuming about 7 guides plus a tip top.

I have never done any outwrapping for anyone so can't be certain, but I seem to recall another fellow who had done this sort of work mentioning the rate to me.

As an aside, many, many years ago I visited the Daiwa rod plant in Normandie, CA. The wrapping arrangement is still fixed in my mind some 20 or more years later. Each of the women wrappers was responsible for wrapping one guide per rod, always in the same location. There was a line of tables for each rod model, and each woman was situation a little to left of the woman preceding her. One woman wrapped the tip top trim and then put the rod in a plastic trash bin on the other side of her table. The next woman would reach behind her, take that rod out of the trash can and wrap the next guide. Then she would put it in a trash can on the other side of her table and the next woman would take it and wrap the next guide. By the time it had gotten past 6 or 7 tables, all the guides were wrapped. Because this was continuous, rods were being finished every few seconds.

It was all extremely efficient. Took a lot of room but the rods were done in a very short time. The women never had to move and their wrapping stands were positioned so that they were prefectly set up to wrap that one particular guide in that one particular location. Oh, and the women just held the thread spools in their hands.

After the rods were wrapped, they were carried to a room where the handles, built on seperate pieces of rod blank, were affixed to the blanks.

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

lol over here they got a cnc machine now at dawias place in scotland no women there now wrapping rods still finished every few seconds but all guides go on at once

the power of computers eh personally i prefer the old skool approach do it by hand then you got some ONE to blame too much of "oh sorry computer error "nowerdays puters are stupid objects that mankind has to tell what to do (after deciphering just what bill gates is doing ) trouble is we dont know who tells the puters what to do

Ill get off my linux horse now lol

Mike


I outwrap for a living. I work with four different companies. Like Todd says they pay $0.17 per tie off. Other companies pay about the same. I do from 100 to 150 rods per week. Some companies pick up and deliver the rod to me and some I pick up and deliver. They all have their standards, so the best way is wrap to the highest and get fast at it. The best paying rods are ones with trim wraps and or inlays. It's faster to do the trim wraps and inlays you make more money on them. I currently wrap for Lamiglas, OrDella, C.F.Burkheimer and Rolling River Rods. I get the rods with the handle and tip tops installed and the guide positions are marked and the guides are usually ground, with one company I get paid to grind them. The companies supply me with thread tape and razor blades. I built a power wrapper and it's set up to do rods up to 15'. If you are thinking of doing some outwrapping you have to live close to the factory.


Thomas F. Thornhill

Jesse: Your are getting ripped off - maybe you need to move your operation to the west coast! Thomas you might want to consider making a weekly pick up in Virginia Beach! Send Jesse B and email and ask him what he pays.

Gon Fishn

Mike
Thomas is correct in his statement. If you think you can make a little money at home and just do it as when the mood swings you. Forget that! You are still employed by a rod company and you have to meet their standards, schedule and time frame. As for guide alignment, it is up to you to align the guides correctly, that is part of wrapping. The spacing is already marked on the blank. So if you want to out wrap, be fast, accurate and finish the job on time. You can make good money
Good Wraps Bob

I do not think that I am slow at wrapping but I have watched people at Lamiglas, D&E Rods and at Loomis doing the wrapping and have also watched Thomas and they are FAST, probably 10 times as fast as I am.
I think that Thomas is going to be at our get together at Lamiglas in April showing how he does it. He did a demonstration at last years event showing how he does it and it is fun to watch a pro but it did make me feel like I was very slow and clumsy at it.
Another good reason to come and join us.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/16/2006 09:46PM by Emory Harry.

Thomas: I am curious about one thing. If speed is out of the equation and you are sitting at your power wrapper wrapping guides - how many rods can you do without a break in your attention span - or how long can you sit without a break just wrapping guides. I can appreciate wrapping speed and skills but I can not imagine sitting there long enough to get a ton of work done without getting up or just going bananas.

Gon Fishn

I am astounded by this. As I am cursed with a natural lack of tact, I will not ask the questions or make some general comments that might upset Thomas or any other outwrappers, but I gotta say that I resemble the remarks made by Emory and Bill.

I like to think that I get my stuff to folks in a fairly timely manner, but even pushing myself when crunch time hits, it takes me a at least a week to turn out what I think is a good rod.... understand this means a ground up build; guides, grips from rings, buttwrap, finish, the whole schmeal. 150 a week??!? I can't fathom that. It is beyond my comprehension.

And I have to echo Bill's post. A long time ago, I burned out big time and I wasn't at even a fraction of this amount. I love building rods, but sometimes I just have to say NO. How do you not go nuts wrapping guides nonstop? That is what I call true love of the game.

I worked in-house for Versitex, one of this board's sponsors while I was in school, between jobs. I wrapped fly rods for about 7-8 months. It fit my school schedule & allowed me to keep up with the career-change studies. I really like wrapping rods, but in a production facility, it REALLY got tedious! After a couple of months,I looked forward to preping & finishing rods for shipment, glueing up reel seats, reaming a pile of corkgrips to size...ANYTHING but wrapping guides! I was doing 15-16 rods a day if I did nothing but wrap guides. This would include marking up the blank's spacing, doing a bunch of same size rods at a time, spine finding each one. Feet were sometimes done for me, sometimes not, depending on everyone else's work load. At 15-16 per day, I was very slow for them, but I was neat & didn't make many mistakes & knew fishing better than almost everyone in the facility (which really helped), so that kept them happy while I was there. They also had several at-home moms who came in once-twice a week to drop off/pick up loads of work. Each had their "specialty" and concentrated on that rod, heavy salt, in-shore, "kiddie" rods...you name it. I don't think too many of these women were running house-holds on that income, however...hard work & little return for that work.

Tim

Through my brief scan of this post I don't think I noticed an mention of the coating of the threads that is sometimes sent out by the outwrappers. I have seen one of the fastest and outwarppers are amazing! I honestly almost got sick to my stomach after hand wrapping with no braces for years.



Tight wraps and lines,
Wylie

One point this really drives home to me is just how many rods are out there. All these rods get sold to someone. The custom maker has a phenomenal number of potential customers out there if they can just reach them with an offer.

I make 1 or 2 rods a week, and even at that rate I get tired of wrapping. I am positive I would despise outwrapping.

That's the good thing about making complete rods, not just wrapping. I get sick of wrapping after just a couple of rods, but I can go to handle making, guide feet grinding,etc. to break the monotony. I would go completely crazy if all I did was set there and wrap guides all day long.
I have got to the point where it is not much of a problem to make two rods a week. That is just the weekends and a night or two during the week, when I am in town. It is amazing how much faster you get with practice. When I started, it took much longer, for everything.
Steve Broadwell

Hi Mick,

That's what seperates use from production rods. As a custom rodbuilders we may custom fit a handle, do a fancy butt wrap, swelled butt, weave or maybe marble a rod. We can do a static test then a casting test for the best performance of the rod. And so on.

I have never been able to justify the high cost of some factory rods. I'm not saying that they are bad because there are not but dollar for dollar I'll take a custom rod any day.

But this thread did open my eyes to some elements to production rod building.

Hank
On The Rocks Fishing
Wells, ME.

A good friend in Miami has been in the rod business all his life and he is now in his 70's. He told me a couple of years ago he paid .03 to .05 cents per wrap and 5.00 for a diamond wrap. His best wrapper had her family involved and could turn a hundred with diamond wrap back to him in 5 days. When I can find someone up here I pay 10.00 per rod for wrapping, at present I've got one that wraps and finishes, only problem is I can't hurry him or he will tell me to go pack sand. Jesse

To Bill Stevens
Bill I can not set and wrap. T have my table set up so the wraper is about elbo hight. This hight keeps me from hunching over. That way I never get a tired back. I have seen the factory wrappers at work. They never use a bobbin or a thread tension devise. They hold the thread spool in their hand and power wrap.
Good wraps Bob

An outwrapper can also be a child or old person sitting on a hard concreter floor with their legs wrapped around a five gallon plastic pail with V notches cut in the side. They can do fifteen or twenty rods in an evening and make enough money for food for the evening! These are the rods that sell for $ 29.95 buy one and get one free at your local discount center. They even have decals that appear to be brand names like caSstaway and all sTar.

Gon Fishn

Gee, I need to change my spectacles because I thought for sure this thread was going to be "bout rapping" and kept looking for the likes of Baby Gangsta or P. Diddy : )