Well, after playing some butt halves of rods to make Kite rods for Shark fishing, I got my St. Croix blanks in and started on them!

I had made a basic V block wooden stand with felt lined V's and practice wrapping on the kite rods, wrapping them, Forhan lock, CP and epoxy. When It cured, I would strip down and do it over again for practice. The V stand was ok, but had its limitations due to how I built it. I made a few trips to Ace Hardware and Home Depot, and this is what came out of those trips:

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The thread carriage is on a little roller platform, so it rolls with the wraps and it had much less crossover problems. I am using one of the clamp tensioners, and I had it only a couple inches away from the blank on the other wrapper.

I am using the Mudhole Custom Painted seats, foam arbors, Kamo EVA so far. I learned how to ream the stuff out and fit it to the blanks. When I got all of that done, I masked the blank above the handle area and scuffed up the blank with fine sandpaper and scotchbrite pads. Once everything was test fitted a few times, out came the epoxy! U-40 Rodbond was used and the gluing went much smoother than I though! I had made custom knives for a few years, so I was used to epoxy, cleaning up, mixing, application, etc. Cleaned them up and let sit. Here are some pics of the results so far!

When I put the reels on, I had them supported the whole time so the reel seats wouldn't shift at all while the epoxy was finishing hardening.

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So far, so good! Now I gotta get the tip top installed, guides laid out, static tested, wrapped and finished! I have been doing lots of practice wraps, guide foot preps, trims, CP and epoxy applying, so I shouldn't have any issues with the rods!

I want to thank you guys. Without this website and the generosity of other rod builders in CT, I probably would never had though about doing this or known where to start! I have had a blast so far and already have other blanks and components either here or on the way!

Sorry, photos removed!



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/08/2008 12:48PM by Timothy Johnson.

Nice job, Tim

Tim,

Don't take this as disrespect (it's not) This forum is not like other forums. You need to read the rules. Photo's need to be posted on the photo page and a link pasted in your post here. They'll be gone in a bit. So you probably need to move them. Again, no disrespect intended, just letting you know. BTW, you're off to an awesome start!! Be ready for an addicting journey!!

Bill in WV



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/08/2008 12:56PM by William Bartlett.

Tim;
I would like to commend you on your dedication to practice and preparation before starting on a rod that was a major investment. I thin if a lot more builders starting out would take this approach. Many would not have become discouraged on their first rod and quit.

Wish I would have had the same fore site when I started. My first rods would have looked much better

Ditto to what Steve said. Sounds like you did all the right things just starting out. That's the way to do it, practice , practice. Now when you get ready to go for a nice serious build, take your time and give it much planning. Make sure your design,colors and materials are exactly what you want. Good job for your first build Tim !

J.B.Hunt
Bowling Green, KY

Thanks for posting, you have a great imagination and are doing the needed preparation. Keep us updated with new ideas.

Bill

Ohio Rod Builders

Canton, Ohio

Well, I got the guides temp placed out! The tip tops didn't match the manufacturer's tip sizes for the rods, so they will be here in a day or two. I had some other tip tops, so I took one and ground the bottom of the tube off. Wrapped the blank in tape after smoothing out the bottom, and then taped it to the blank in place of the tip top. Seemed to work well. I did some measuring, and followed Fuji's concept guide system for casting rods for the measurements. Came out pretty well, too I think!

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[www.rodbuilding.org]

I was looking at the pictures and saw there were some straight angles on them, especially at the top of the curve, between the 4, 5 and 6th guides (first 3 guides from the left on the first pic). Are these ok as they are or should I play with them a little more to tweak? I would probably space the first few guides a little farther apart and try to get less of a space between the guides where the majority of the bend is. Maybe move the first 5 guides from the tip top back a cm or so? I am using a 16 double foot stripper, an 8 CLAG8J at 90 degrees, then a 10, 8, 7, and 5 #6's, all Fuji CLAG#J's. I just wanted to get some feedback for how the line is running along the blank. This is with a pretty good bend in it, too. With less bend, it is nice and straight!

Thanks for the feedback!

You'll be okay. You could play with it some more if you want, but read the article in the online library here. It's sometimes easier to do the spacing in 3 stages of load.

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

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[www.rodbuilding.org]
[www.rodbuilding.org]

Been a busy day! I got out of work at 0730 am, came home, reworked the guide placement (moved guides 2-5, much better in the load testing), went outside, did some test casting, but couldn't do a ton because I didn't want to launch the lure into the neighbors yard. Came back in, marked out the blank. I had the guides taped on, used 1/8" masking tape just past the guide foot ending, marked where the end of the foot is to line them up, then a 1/4" wide strip of masking tape past the 1/8" to pack up against. Removed the guides, prepped them, retaped onto the blank. Then I got to wrapping! Went sooooooooooooooooooo much faster with the new stand I finished a few days ago. Lots less cross overs, much tighter, neater, etc. Night and day difference! Got the wraps done, left the tag ends of the pull thru thread until I lined up the guides (great tip whoever posted that here!), then worked all of the trims. My real tip tops came in, so I installed that, too. Then I got a coat of Chromaseal drying on them now! Just gotta go one more coat, let dry overnight, and then hopefully tomorrow I will be doing the epoxy on the threads!

Thanks to you guys here, this is coming out even better than I had hoped!

One little booboo...when I was using a thread pick to pull off some of the tape strips, I slipped and it scratched the blank. Is there any way to fix this?? It's not noticeable unless you know its there and look for it.

Timothy
Your thread work looks really good!
nice ,neat, packed well with good looking narrow trim bands.

Unless it is scratched bad I would just polish the rod after your done.

Its a fairly light scratch in the finish, I may hit lightly with worn 2000 grit sandpaper and then polish over when I wax..hopefully that will take care of it! Not too worried bout it since it is my rod and will probably get a few more scratches as it gets used! 2 coats of Chromaseal are dried, I may epoxy some of the guides tomorrow or wait till the stands get here Thurs.

Very nice work Tim. The first fish will make all of the effort worth it!

Very Nice Job, Tim!!

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!!

Thanks for the compliments! I got the guides all epoxied, but no new pics yet. Came out much better than I thought it would!

UPS delivered some more goodies today, so I got started on my Tuna rod.

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[www.rodbuilding.org]
[www.rodbuilding.org]

Calstar 5'6" 655XH blank, Pac Bay Channel Lock reel seat, black, Pac Bay Tuff Butt, Pac Bay Blue Aluminum Gimbal, 14" EVA round foregrip. I was going to use the triangular foregrip, but it was much softer than the round ones were. I used the drywall mesh tape to fill in the gaps between components and blank as there wasn't much space between. Around 3 layers took care of it. I used Threadmaster Ultimate Gel for the epoxy. Mixed up almost half the container of it (1.5 Tablespoon of each!!!) and globbed up the blank, wrapped with drywall mesh tape, another glob of epoxy, another layer, more epoxy, another layer of mesh tape, more epoxy. Used about 2/3 the epoxy I mixed. Got the gimbal, tuff butt, reel seat and the foregrip on. I have to measure for the Hosel/winding check, and then get a reel on it to static test the roller guide placement. Didn't go as smoothly as the other rod, but not too bad. Just a complete mess of the epoxy. Arbors would be easier, but I need to make up some reamers to fit these larger blanks. I started reaming with one of my files, but it was getting lopsided.

Next time I am using arbors and reamers!!! I wanted to try the drywall tape. Doable, but VERY messy. I did prewraps of everything first so I knew how many layers to use, then stripped everything down, and then did the epoxy/mesh layers. That made it easier, but still very messy with all that epoxy!

Well, I got out to the Long Island Sound/Niantic Bay today and tested out the spiral wrapped rod. DId ok, 2 keeper fluke, 20 and just under 22", 1 shorty at 17 and around 8 or 9 skates and 2 spider crab! Rod performed very well, spiral wrap got me some razzing comments at the beginning, but then they were asking more about the spiral style and what it does. They were shocked to see the fly guides and we compared the wrap sizes of their double foot boat guides needed to keep the line off of the blank to the spiral wrap #6 fly guides :) They were pretty surprised! Now my uncle wants me to make him one, he tried it and was amazed at the jigging action! Nice, lightweight rod, even with the reel, great fighting arc too, that static testing worked very well!

Great!! Glad it worked out and you could spread the word on spirals!

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!!