While I was wrapping a rod last night, my 125lb. Rottweiler decided to come in and lay on the foot pedal, before I could reach the switch, he wound about 200yds on the tip of the rod, almost as bad as the time my cat decided to rub against the entire length of a rod I had on the dryer overnight, woke up in the A.M to 7 very furry guide wraps.

Yes but look at it from the cat's point of view - he ended up with epoxy all over his body. Most likely he was upset that you coated his "rubbing stick" with epoxy. There's always two sides to every story.

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

OR TWO WAYS TO SKIN A CAT !!!!
Tight Lines
Bill

I can't say my dog ate my homework, but on my last rod I leaned over the drying rod to check on something and touched the rod with my sweatshirt. The rod finish was still quite tacky and the pattern left by the shirt was like an alligator back. I used a very wet finger to rub down the pattern, getting rid of most of it without the finish doing anything funny, then let it harden. A quick sanding with 400 paper, a wash with alcohol, then another coat and it looked fine. The wet finger is something you might want to remember as it saved me lots of time by smoothing out the damaged finish about 95%.

A wet finger will work ... but so will a nice warm lightbulb. Place the lightbulb right above the rod and it will almost always fix the problem.

After applying finish, I put my rod on the dryer and jumped in the pool with my kids. My three year old son got out to use the toilet (which I could NOT believe, I always pee'd in the pool). When I told him how good of a boy he was, I spoke too soon. He returned with a BIG smile on his face and told me that he had just 'HELPED' me with my new fishin' pole while at the same time showing me his 'STIKKIE' little fingers!!!! I jumped out of the pool and ran to my rod to find THREE spools of thread slowly being pulled up and around my butt wrap!!!! I pulled the thread off but left the finish as it was. The rod was for myself, so now it has a little more 'character'. He was soooo proud of himself that I coulden't do anything but give him a hug, tell him good job, and tell him not to touch the 'moving' rods ever again.

Steve-o

Shirtsleeve in finish. Kitties in finish. Doggie in finish. Curious visiting out-of-control kid sneaking into closed-door drying room in finish. Blowback from startup of AC in finish. Sanding dust from another part of shop in finish. Finish forxen overnight (forgot to leave heaters on).

Uncle Russ
Calico Creek Rods

Came home from work one day and my cat had a piece of thread sticking out of its mouth. Tried pulling it out unsuccesfully so off to the vet it was. The cat had eaten about a 10 ft length of thread I left lieing around. Needless to say the vets bill for the required surgery cost me dearly. The vet said it could have been fatal and would have been if I tried pulling to hard as it would have royally messed up its intestines.
Tony Fialkowski

A word of caution on the light bulb method, I had a rod on the dryer with light bulbs on over the finish. I checked on the rod after a couple of hours to find my wife had gone in and opened the window. Well the previously mentioned Rottweiler had done in the screen some time ago, and I had a "fly/moth" rod for cod fishing.

So I do the second coat on this rod and go to bed. My wife and daughter go into my office to use the computer. My wife leans over the spinning, drying rod to close the blinds on the window and her pajama waist string starts wrapping around the rod. She freaks out, and her and my daughter cannot figure out how to stop the rod from spinning in my lathe so she grabs a scissors and cuts her pants string off!!!!! Of course she drops her drawers at that point. She won't wake me up because she figures I'm going to be really, really mad (she is an upholsterer and g-d help me if I mess with anything in her shop). So I get up at my usual 4:30 am (hey, I fish, I can't help it) and go into my office to check on the rod which looks really, really wierd. For 3 hours I just can't figure out why my epoxy has cotton fur all over it. I know it wasn't the cats or the dogs, not hair. She wakes around 8 and asks me if I'm still mad about the rod knowing what time I get up and I've had 3 - 4 hours to mull it over. She starts to tell me what happened and about dropping her drawers, we were laughing sooooo hard there was no way I could get mad at her.

Jon Gold

No one mentioned this yet so here is mine to go with cat fuzzy wraps. When I rirst set up my rod building work room I used the wrong wall plug, the 'lamp plug'. When I finished wrapping the rod I turned off the light, closed the door, remembering the fuzzy wraps, and went to bed. The next morning my rod had these pretty icicles from one end to the other. When I cut off the light I cut off the dryer motor.

If at first you don't succeed, go fishing, then try, try again.