OK, so after about 5 years of building rods now when I'm not underway, I still find myself making the stupidist mistakes sometimes, last couple days have been kicking my butt. I flocked a few preshaped cork grips to try to get back into flocking. I hadn't touched the stuff since I messed up my last project. Everything turned out great, except I should have re-read the articles I had been sent that said to let the stuff set for about 5 days. A day and a half later I put the grips on rods, to find the flock hadn't cured fully and I rubbed some of it off the grips.

The one rod that did come out ok, was a Telescoping All Star. Only issue- forgot to put the blank back inside the handle before I glued the butt cap on. (Was easier to flock the handle without the top half). So scratch that.

Was gluing a wooden reelseat on a light Kencor blank two nights ago. Had to ream the wood reelseat to make it fit. Had it very close, figured the rod bond would lube it into place. NOPE. Only had about a half inch to go, tried to push it into place and heard a CRACK!.... scared I checked the blank out, no issues. Cool. Go to put the reelseat back on, it's cracked the whole length of the wood and was to be disposed of. $15 and a trip to Tokyo for it down the drain.

Put finish on the handle of my solid graphite Japanese madai blank, just to find it was contaminated by something and I got a bunch of small fisheyes. Tried to work with them just to get a wavy finish because I played with the finish too long.

Just now I was wrapping a light CTS, to look over and notice something on a semi-assembled Matrix, halfway up the blank. Lo and behold, leftover rodbond that I got on the middle of the blank somehow and didn't know was there. Tried to heat and use my plastic burnishing tool to scrap off, no joy. Razor blade very carefully take the rodbond off... slice into the green finish. Argh! So I take a different approach and use the back of the razor to try to rub it off, and rub some of the finish off the blank a half inch down further. I swear... I'm kicking my own butt due to stupidity, and it's all stuff you'd think you'd know better by now.

Phil

I've come to the sad realization that age and mistakes are on a linear taper. The older I get, the more dumb mistakes I make. I wonder if they'll ever find a cure?

After twenty plus years of building rods I have stopped making stupid mistakes. Now all the mistakes I make are smart mistakes. To the casual observer it's hard to tell the difference between smart and stupid mistakes but it makes me feel better to think that I made the mistake because I was smart enough to make the mistake.

AS YOU GET OLDER YOU DON'T STOP MAKING MISTAKES, YOU JUST GET BETTER AT FIXING THEM. When I did my apprentiseship, my boss told me I would be a tradesman the day I no longer had to come to him to fix my stuff ups, he was right. Cheers Paul.
PS: I work a lot of wood, It does not stretch!

If it makes you feel any better, Phil, it seems that I don't build a single rod without doing at least one thing that I look back at and ask what in the sam hill I was thinking. I recently realized that I had built many multi-piece rods -- at least six or eight -- and hadn't put a ferrule wrap on any of them. And a couple of them were big surf heavers, the kind that are most likely to split at the ferrule, and therefore rods on which a ferrule wrap is most important. When they were giving out instructions on rodbuilding, I must have been out back taking a leak when they talked about ferrule wraps. It really made me feel pretty stupid.

We all do this stuff, and Paul is right -- learning how to fix these mistakes is the key.

i usually don't make the same mistake twice but i keep making new mistakes.

If I ever build a perfect rod, I'll quit rodbuilding. I don't see that every happening :-)

My BIGGEST goof up.........one I keep doing over and over.....I forgetting about the twice damned winding checks. It must be some sort of strange mental block or something. Time for me to learn how to do epoxy ramps I guess.



Derek L. McMaster
Rohnert Park, CA

Born to Fish, FORCED to Work

Phil; You will eventually stop making stupid mistakes, unfortunately you will be worm food by the time this happens. LOL

Regards
Dave

Fishing is Life the rest is just Details

After 30 plus years I still find myself putting the tie off loop in backwards every once in a while. Jesse

As my boss says several times a week, if you ain't makin mistakes, you ain't workin. We get along well<g>.
john

I cut my thread long, because I'm another one who almost routinely puts in a tie-off loop backwards, although all my rods are wrapped in the same direction. Somehow I find it easier to anticipate my stupidity than try to fix the actual problem.. As Ron White says, you can't fix stupid.

Outside of that, my small mistakes don't usually happen twice. My mistakes now are rather spectacular. I work best under pressure. With no pressure, I have time to think, which means I turn into a moron. I routinely dry fit parts at least twice, and often, many more if I have more than one thing going on. Fairly recently I dry fitted everything so many times, that I went into autopilot and (using 5 minute devcon...this is why rod bond is so cool...) glued a rear grip then double checked my arbors, reel seat and foregrip. Happy with what I had, I glued the arbors, then the foregrip... meticulously cleaned the excess... and left it. An hour later I noticed that I forgot about the reel seat.

This is why customers, my family and my friends have really nice rigs while I fish with "Experimental Mark I Mod IV" models.. i.e. crap.

A wise man once said, ( No, I don't know who it was!!! ) "The only stupid mistake, is the one you don't learn from"!! After all we're only human.

Bill in WV

Guys,,,, some of you mentioned getting old and making mistakes. There are three ways to tell when you are getting old. One is, you can't remember anything. And ????????? I forgot what the other two were,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,?

Lol... well, guess I'm not the only one. Just frustrating when you know you should have never made half these mistakes cause you know better.

Phil

Always stopping,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, until the next one. (S)