I was thinking of trying my hand at applying the adhesve backed abalone and was wondering if there is a general rule of thumb regarding the minimum size diameter of rod blank this material becomes difficult to work with.

Thanks all,
Jeff Leonard

Muskyfsh

My rule of thumb is the diameter of a pencil.

Thanks Kevin, I did need a starting point to work with. I work primarily with walley and musky blanks. I did not want to start out with a situation that would turn sour right off the bat.

Jeff leonard

Muskyfsh

No problem Jeff. I have done about 50 rods or so with the veneer but have not been able to experiment with a lighter weight graphite blank yet. I have done probably 2 dozen live bait rods that they use here for stripers. They are graphite but all were built for new customers so I didn't put the abalone above the butt wrap. My concern is that the veneer will be a bit too stiff for the thin walled graphite and cause an irregular bend in the blank causing failure. I don't want to do that for a customer and lose them because of that. So, no guarantees if you go up the rod.

Kevin



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/26/2009 11:24PM by kevin knox.

There was a post on here where the builder copied the look of it, printed it out and then put it on a blank ?? A search may come up with it ?

Bill - willierods.com

I have done 10 or so very small diameter graphite rods - both spinning and baitcasting using abalone as the butt wrap.

The oldest is about a year old now and still appears to be holding up well with no visible stress cracks.

I do not believe I would attempt to do the guide wraps with abalone - both for the weight and smaller diameter.

For the smaller diameter blanks, I find that some extra soak time in vineagar really helps - for smaller stuff
I like the abalone to be "floppy" - typically 48 hours or so with the Aqua Blue Thin Lam