Tom has often stated that it's getting harder to find a "bad" blank anymore, but I was just curious if anyone has purchased a blank recently after giving it the analytical wiggle, gone home and built on it, and then found it didn't perform as expected or upon later better examination, exclaimed "What was I thinking?!"

One person's "dawg" is another's "Thoroughbred" Tom was right. Just because a particular blank doesn't meet my needs doesn't make it a dawg, it just means that I made a mistake when I chose it. I'd be willing to bet that any blank that someone labels as a dawg will be someone else's favorite blank. I would agree that it would be fairly hard to find a bad blank but easy to find lot's of bad choices.

Mike (Southgate, MI)
If I don't want to, I don't have to and nobody can make me (except my wife) cuz I'm RETIRED!!

X 2, some of my old favorites are cast offs from builder's who didn't like them. Some were built up, a lot were blanks ordered mailorder and weren't up to snuff.

I purchased three St Croix Graphite blanks from Mudhole recently. They were out of stock and so they were just drop shipped to me from the factory. The packing was good and all seemed well with the world. After tying/finishing/epoxying the rod, I found to my dismay that the rod has a tip deflection of about 1 1/2 inches and its to the left side of the rod which makes the guides look not quite centered. I didn't notice this when I first put the guides on but of course now that I have put hours of my life into it, it stands out like a sore thumb to me.

Highly dissapointed that I didn't catch it before the wrap. Just as an FYI, the other 2 blanks are perfect.

I built a really nice UL spinning rod for my wife on a blank Todd Vivian me gave out of a trash barrel at Lamiglas. It was an experimental paint job as they were looking for just the right color of red. My wife spotted it and pulled it out of the barrel and she loves the color. A real trash to treasure story.

Thanks, again, Todd.

Joe Douglas