What are your most memorable mistakes?

1. I folded over my tip trying to force the tip top home while gluing.
2. I put an arbor in my reel seat only to find I reamed the whole thing out during fit up.
3. Hosed up wraps during burnishing.
4. Of course I melted some wraps while cooking off thread fuzz.
5. Used tape to get a good straight line in my finish but left it on between coats.

I’m still doing rework on the guides but I was wondering if you remembered your first build.

Tom
Denver, Co



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/25/2010 09:21PM by Tom St.Blanc.

My first build went pretty well. I was impressed. I went very slow and got some good results. Now my third build was something left to be desired. I thought I was a pro now. I did trim wraps which turned out great for my first time. I had to wrap thread on the blank because I over reamed the grip. Nice save from Tom's book. Came down to finishing and got some college sized footballs because I was not watching close enough durring the dry. Also got some finish on the blank and wrapped up some felt from the uprights all over it. Got that cleaned up ok. I am not experienced at removing finished guides thus far. I have the rod in plain sight in my work room to remind me pay more attention. I have never fished the rod to date.

Tom S,

I still have my first build sitting in the corner. It's hard to look at, not the most professional job. However, when I compare that one to what I'm building now, it's hard to believe the same person built it. If you started with a perfect build, you wouldn' have anything to improve on and you'd get bored!

jeremy

My first build went great.But,I had a guide that had move during the wrap up.
I could not git it to move in line so I cut the thread and statrted over.
Got the guide on right,put my finish on.Everything going great.
Had some good looking trim bands using red and blue thread.
Everything looking good,handles and reel seat straight,guides now straight.
But the one guide I had moved,the blank had a little,I am talking pencil lead small dent.
Well I though its all good.
Finished up the rod took it in the house to show my wife.
"Hey Honey,Check out this first rod I finished".She said "You finaly finished it"."Yep,Look"I said.
I grab this tip and the reel seat(the rod was a 5'6" crappie rod).
Bent it over,When it got to about a 20 degree angle,POP.
It broke where the guide i had to move at the little dent.You coulda brought me for a penny!
Wife said,"Thats real nice honey"!Then busted out laughing.
I had to laugh also.That rod ended up being my practice rod.
Used it for all kinds of practice wraps and marbling.
mikeb

Home Town,Gretna VA

I went long, strong and wrong right "out of the gate." No sir, no cheap blank to actually practice on-I settled on a Loomis GL3 7-weight blank. I got on the phone with some clerk with Cabelas and I had a list of components with which to build, ("assemble") my first rod. My hands were shaking because I wanted so badly to act like I knew what I was doing. I knew that if I forgot something minor like the guides or the reel seat, I would be exposed as the "fraud" that I was-I could just imagine the entire staff at Cabelas horse-laughing at me all the way from Nebraska. I concocted a back-up plan to nip that certain humiliation in the bud. I would save face by sending the stuff back with a stern letter castigating their entire operation for "mistakenly" shipping me some piece of bare graphite and some cork instead of sending me the Zebco spin-cast combo, the men's insulated booties and the 100 mossy-oak koozies I had actually ordered. I would threaten to take my future business "elsewhere," possibly to Wal-Mart, pawnshops and/or yard sales. I actually ordered and received everything I needed so I put my paranoid back-up plan on the "back-burner." I figured that I could reserve that trumped-up, fraudulent outrage to settle future grievances against some other unlucky vendor who was unable to read my mind over the phone.
.
I had a quality wrapper from the "get-go"-a cardboard box notched at both ends. My thread-tensioner was a large college textbook that I had never cracked open. It took me the better part of an hour to learn how to start the first thread wrap and I finally got it done. The rod looked horrific-the ferrule wrap was about 3 inches long and the finished guide-wraps had that much-desired football shape to them. The guide finish outweighed the blank by easily two to one. The first day I fished it was with JP Timberlake on the Roanoke River during the striper season and in two days we both had caught, landed and released no less than 200 hundred fish apiece.

I still have that rod-I have rebuilt it about seven times. It now has a lime-green and black hybrid composite grip, feather inlaid butt-wrap, lime-green Fishhawk variegated thread and Pac-Bay Minima guides and top. I sanded the blank with Scotchbrite and swiped a coat of Lumi-Seal on it and it's darn pretty to look at and to cast. I probably have re-finished it for the last time but I've broken that vow at least 6 times before. I know that sometime in the near future I will open up a new Rodmaker Magazine, go out to the garage and conjure up some reason that the rod, in its new configuration, simply cannot be tolerated any longer. I will get out the razor blades, the Dremel tool and the Scotchbrite and tote my "old friend" out to the shop again. He knows the "drill"by now and understands the compulsion and I think he would feel slighted if I didn't dress him up in the newest and finest "fashions" ever so often.

Mine was a St. Croix kit from Mudhole. The whole reason I got into this was so that while I was laid up after knee surgery, that I'd have something to keep my hands busy. The stuff came in 2 weeks before my surgery and by the time I went in, the rod was done.
I look at that rod now and wonder what was I thinking. My guide wraps have gotten a whole lot better, trim bands have too. I'cve moved on the inlays and grip work and just look at that ole St. Croix, ugly as she can be and think that maybe I should re do her.
But you'll always remeber your first, just kinda fumbling around, not real sure what you're doing or where anything goes but you struggle through and get better for the ones you haven't met yet.

Sure do, finding the spine was the first challenge all done by hand.
Wrapping the guides and kept having the thread from riding up on each other.
Trim bands, well after about (10) tries finally got one to stay.
Finish was easy, used lacquer, applied by my finger.
Signing and writing specs was also a challenge on the rods curved surface.

Things are pretty easy now but still make mistakes like this:
Placed a peice of tape 3/8 from my hooker keeper (on the tip side) to ensure I'd
match the wrap lenght used on the handle side.
So I go ahead and make my diamond wrap (came out nice, took about an hour)
Then I go to wrap the end of the diamond wrap facing the hook keeper only to notice
my tape sticks 1/2" out "under" my nice diamond wrap.
Obviously no way to get the tape out.
Had to take the wrap apart and do it again.

I still have and fish with mine!

6' heavy power, moderate action pistol grip jerkbait rod. Girl scouts were selling them as a fund raiser, St Croix gave them to the scouts and they sold them for $10 each. Dont know how long the rod was to start with, another builder cut it for me from both ends make what I wanted to stick the face of some really big tough mouthed river smallmouth. I have yet to even come close to building one to replace it that's worth 2 cents.

Like said, it's hard to look at, but it sure FEELS GOOD :-)

DR

Mine was an early G Loomis IM6 ST 1141 spinning rod with match guides, came out very nice and fished it many years. Was broken by the son a few years after it was passed down to him in a car door. The GL3 blank that replaced it isn't quite as nice in my opinion.

I still have my first build and fish it when I get the chance. My biggest mistake was doing guide wraps with a minimal trim band. At the time I was working 2 jobs and playing Rugby. The second job was as a bouncer. It seemed like the only time I had to work on the rod I had hangover, or was torn up from Rugby, quite often both......lol There was a serious learning curve.......lol

Great stories! I knew they were out there.

I laugh with you but I laugh at me. I find it so entertaining when I do the Homer Simpson head slap when I discover what hump in the learning curve I just soared over.

Can't wait for the next speed bump! I just love this.

Tom

Denver, CO

I still have and fish with mine. Caught about 35 trout with it last Wednesday and Thursday.

It is a 9' 4wt built on a St Croix blank. Here's how it started...

I had gotten into fly fishing and had the (cheap place to buy sporting goods)-Mart version that was about the size of my thumb at the butt and cast like a spaghetti noodle. Somehow I had decided to tie my own flies, I think because buying them was hard to do? At the time, Tom Kirkman had a shop (TKR) in HIgh Point which was close by for me. So I went in to buy some feathers or such for tying and he was building a rod. We got to talking about it, and next thing you know I was buying a rod blank and all the other goodies I needed, along with LA Garcia's book. Tom gave me some half-full spools of thread and a piece of rod blank to practice with. I tore down 2 rods I already owned and re-wrapped them, then built the fly rod. I had found a book at the library about dec wraps and it had a section on how to write on a rod using 7 threads (weaving, kinda, for noobies), so I put my name on the butt wrap. Did trim bands and even thread inlays on the stripper and next guide up, but as they got smaller (like they do on a 9' 4wt!) I soon gave up on them and went with just blue after the ferrule wrap. I still use that rod every time I go fishing, and the only change I have made to it is that I put my logo on it about 3 weeks ago. I will post a photo of it from last week with the fish :)

Matt Smith
Greensboro, NC