I recently got into rod building so I'm still learning a lot, though my understanding is the learning never stops. I just picked up a revo winch, so now it's time to wrap a cranking rod. Any recommendations? i know nothing about the cranking blanks. It will be spiral wrapped and I want to use micro guides.

I just finished up a spinning rod; it's a baston xsb 822.5 and paired with a daiwa sol. I haven't had a chance to get it on the water yet, but I hear this blank is pretty good.

Why not try the Batson CB76 or 80H blanks. They work very well.

I would suggest one of the Castaway blanks from Swampland. They have 3 to choose from depending on what weight lure you will be using. The only thing I would say though, don't spiral wrap a crankbait rod. If you can give them a call at Swampland and talk with Bill Stevens, he can tell you alot about setting up that rod with micros. When finished, these rods will cast a country mile with a crankbait and when you are fighting the fish, they take up the shock very well and will not pull hooks out of the fishes mouth.

I just bought a new blank from Swampland while at ICRBE. It is one that Bill Stevens helped me pick out and had Al Jackson who designed the rod talk with me about the rod. Now they kept calling it a 7'10" rod but in reality the rod is 7'11.25" This rod is light for being more or less an 8' S Glass rod, and I can't wait to build it. Now I won't be building this one spiral wrapped but I will be using micros as I have found I crank with the tip much further down a lot more than I realized with the big rods. Wait till Swampland gets back after ICRBE and call Bill. Bill rattled off a rod number of 801G for the Rod but it didn't have a sticker on the rod. Both guys said it wouldn't hurt to trim the rod if I felt I needed to, so I may trim 3-6" from the butt section of the rod just so I don't have to carry it on the deck of my boat versus rod locker.

I have a spiral wrapped Batson CB80MH sitting on the deck of my boat right now, and what I will say is that it is a bit stiffer than I wanted, so unless you are throwing baits on the middle to upper end and slightly beyond the end of the range the rod is rated for then I'm not sure I would recommend the rod because my rod doesn't load up and achieve the distance I was wanting from the longer rod. So I find myself using my 7' S Glass rod for all but the biggest of crank baits.

You should love the XSB822.5, I built mine for spinning and just bought another one at ICRBE from Bingham to build up for spinning gear.

Personally I'd give a lot of thought towards the MHX CB965 or the MHX CB967,
Depending on your rods position, tip up or down, you might be better off going with an all on top layout.

Which model did you end up getting? What are you going to be throwing on it?