Hi guys

I have a question about the St Croix SCIV rod blank. Over the past few months I have built rods for a few friends on these rod blanks. I really like their performance and I think that matte dark green is a perfect compliment to the birch bark handles that I made.

Well – the problem is that I screwed up pretty bad on this last one. Since I’m actually building the rod for myself – it doesn’t matter so much. However, I kind of wanted this rod to be my “showoff” rod, so I’m pretty miffed at myself for messing it up.

I was finishing up the rod last night and decided that I had a slight bit too much wave in the epoxy over the decal with my name on it. It wasn’t perfectly level all the way across, so I decided to sand it level. I have made a dozen sanding sticks in different sanding grits so that I can accomplish this easier and cleaner with a nice uniform level epoxy bead.

However…….. I must have been sleep walking last night or/and my mind was elsewhere. I put the baby to sleep and hurried out to the garage to start sanding before he woke up (that little guy only sleeps for about 20-30 minutes at a time). I placed masking tape on the blank at each end of that particular epoxy bead and more tape on the blank where it would meet the rollers on the lathe, and went to work. Like a bonehead I didn’t pay very good attention and I didn’t lift my head from my chore and step back for a few minutes. When I did finally stop to look over my work, I realized that I had run my sanding stick quite a bit further up the blank on each end of the epoxy bead and masking tape than I should have. I scratched circles around the blank, both above and below the bead that I was working on. Yes, I leaned forward and beat my head on my workbench a couple times. And yes – just as the redness on my forehead began to appear along with a slight headache – the baby work up and started squalling.

Anyway – to get on to my question – the scratches are really too far apart to simply cover up by expanding the threadbase over my decal/name area. Is there any way at all to restore the areas that I scratched on a matte blank such as this? Any ideas out there? I’d appreciate your input.

Thanks
Mike

Best bet is to add some sort of decorative trim bands over those areas. Much as the accomplished baitcaster considers a backlash a "professional overwind" you can consider those scratches to be "professional alignment markings."

As far as touching them in with some sort of coloring agent, a green Sharpie marker could be tried but I doubt it'll look good enough to suit you.

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

Twice I have had to remove or redo an inscription on an SCIV blank. After considering all my options, I ended up, in both cases, overwrapping the entire inscription area with thread, which involved extending the area by a small amount - about 1/4". Then I coated the thread with epoxy, let cure, re-inscribed, then overcoated. Once I used black thread with some metallic inlays, which created an attractive contrast, the other time I used dark green which was very subtle and also attractive. Don't stress yourself out, as you mentioned that's what your offspring is for. The final result will look great and can be as plain or fancy as you want depeding on what thread color(s) look good to your eye.

Mike,

Consider the beauty and ease of feather inlays....

A nice section of feathers on either side of your inscription would look classy, not be an obvious coverup, and is quick and easy to do...you can 'cover' several inches of 'oops' on either side with this...

Just a thought...

Buddy

I "frame" my inscription section with bands in most cases. This sounds like a good time to do the same. No big deal.

Ha! That’s kinda funny Tom. I suppose that I could invent some sort of tale about a huge fish and teeth marks or something along those lines.

Well, as I feared it appears that I either need to leave well enough alone or create some sort of coverup. I even measured the distance from the bottom of the reel seat to the scratches, hoping that I could fashion some trim wraps to measure against any fish I may be lucky enough to land, but of course the scratches do not fall at nice even measurements/spacings.

Thanks for the input guys. I appreciate the help.

Mike

if you didnt remove the paint and only need to fix the scratches you can fix it. i covered up where several guides had been on a sciv and you cant tell. try polyurethane gel (Petri) and wipe very thin coats until it matches. i was able to fix mine in 2 coats. it has a satin finish and matches the matte finish well. i showed this rod to several people at the show and they couldnt tell where i did it