After reading a few articles and looking at various Ultralight spinning blanks that are in my (low) price range, I am thinking of doing the following, taking a 6'6" blank, cutting it into four pieces and adding ferrules (something I have always wanted to try, still nervous but I'm going for it), and building the reelseat right to the butt, with a 12" rear grip on a scrap section of blank, with a metal ferrule in the butt (behind/inside the reel seat) to hold the sections securely while casting. This will (hopefully) give me a longer, travel friendly, and more responsive ultralight that I can take with me on my many travels. After having tried a few multi-section fly rods for the same thing and being unhappy with the results, I think this will be better.

Any and all comments welcome


Tim

We've had articles on doing just that and it works quite nicely. In fact, you can install a female ferrule at either end of the handle assembly and configure it so that it will also function as a fly rod just by flipping the handle around, if you want that sort of thing.


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RodMaker magazine back issue 4.4 covers that and more.
Great article by Ralph O'Quinn!

See also "Advance Custom Rod Building" by Dale Clemens

Raymond Adams
Eventually, all things merge, and a river runs through it..

Rays suggestion is spot on. Keep in mind though you may have to buy (depending on what u have in shop) two of the same blank or one fiberglass one graphite of similar taper. It is unnerving cutting a perfectly good blank but be confident.good luck!

ohh wait just saw u are using metal furls! Why metal?

You'd only want a metal ferrule perhaps on the handle to the blank connection, not on the other sections. They'd make the rod very heavy and sloppy.

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Fibreglass oversleeve ferrules on the rod blank, and a metal ferrule for the handle section only. Lighter weight, better action. Just some careful measurement, enough fibreglass to allow for errors, and Robert's your mother's brother.

i built a handle for a spin fl;y rod that exact same way. i used a lighweight aluminum ferrule the female inside the reel seat. for the handle section i used glass instad of graphite and it does not matter as long as the diameters match your ferrules. you could also make fiberglass spigot ferrules for the main rod but for the tip section oversleave is proably better. i have a multi piece three wt glass rod that has spigots for all but the tip which is oversleave. it is from japan made by axisco.

The Batson F764-4s I've used in the past made dandy little ulralites and were pretty fast tipped for a fly blank in this price range. I now see they make one in a 5 piece also. The Tiger Eye blanks at Neal's and Black Dog and others also come in that length and a listed in a little higher weight rating.

F662-4 DB 6’6” 4 2 0.295 3.5 Mod-Fast 0.83 oz. $ 27.27 try this one from Batson, great ul travel rod, handle can be made for spin or fly.
There are a couple of photo's on the photo pages that show a spinning/fly handle an all in one.