I was trying to duplicate this in photoshop, but the black wraps are over and under... I have no idea how to accomplish something like this. Anyone have any tips? I've only built two rods to date... and I'm totally hooked. I want my next one to be a little more intricate and would love to do something like this.


I'm open to any tips.

Here's some pictures of my last rod, it's a Seeker 6' bass casting rod with Fuji Chrome Concept guides. Not quite the quality workmanship that's in the photo section of this site, but I'm learning!






Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/29/2007 09:02AM by Tom Kirkman.

Tim,
Don't know about the others, but I wish my first rod looked as nice as yours. Way to go fella.

Looks to me that your learning curve is way out front. Really nice.

yes, very niiiiiiice. sorry i can't help with the intricate design.

eric
fresno, ca.

If that is your first rod, then the desighn you are wanting to try should be a cake walk. Try Mr. V's new book. should give a good discription.

Mark Syck

SYCKO Custom Rods
There Are No Limits To The Imagination

First rod? White/Orange/Inlays! You started out with some of the toughest tasks - looks good!

Tim, I'm on about rod 20, and you're already way ahead of me. In fact, when I started, my focus was on the very basics that affected a rod's fishability -- quality and choice of components, balance, thoroughness of putting it all together, etc. -- and I intentionally left aesthetics out of the equation entirely. After all, as beautiful as decorative wraps can be, they don't impact a rod's fishability one way or another. On my first eight or ten rods, I did a lot of stuff like using black wraps over black underwraps, because I knew that while it may not look quite as nice as the wrap in your picture, it would perform just as well, and the black-on-black color scheme would hide the imperfections that I knew, because I was learning as I went, would be in the finished product (but that I also knew wouldn't affect performance).

Only now, after building many rods, do I finally feel like I have enough of a grasp of the nuts and bolts of rodbuilding that I'm looking to sprucing up my sticks a little bit. If you're already where it took me more than a dozen rods to get, I have a feeling you'll do fine. Just don't show your rods next to mine.

Tim,

Please put the photos on the photo page instead of the forum. We already run close to our bandwidth limit as it is. Some days we exceed it. Thanks.

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

I got up late this morning. Can you put the photo on the photo page Tim????

Tim,
Check your E-mail

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!!

I cant see the pics but a friend of mine said this was my work and sent me the link. How come I cant see any pics? If this is the optical chevron then it was my 5th rod build. If you want I can send you work in progress pics and tell you how its done. Send me a email and ill help out...

evanenvy@yahoo.com

Thanks guys for the nice comments. This was actually my 2nd rod... I accidentally used fly tying thread on my first one... duh!!! I spent a lot of time waiting for my 2nd rod parts to come in the mail so I did a lot of practice wrapping and reading to get ideas.

I just uploaded some pics into the gallery... hopefully this link works: [www.rodbuilding.org]

Chris G, I think I'm starting backwards. I'm more focused on looks than functionality. Although I've fished this one twice now and it seems to handle pretty good. I think it's a bit on the heavy side with all the wrapping... but, it's a good lesson learned.

Kris D, it was your rod, the SS Ulua... if I can copy that design I'll call it the SS Papio. :D Email on the way.