Hello All,

I am new here to your forums and brand new to wrapping rods. All of my rods are custom, but I paid for them. I am looking to get into this to start wrapping my own, and maybe wrapping some for profit down the road a bit. Working on a shoestring budget here and was wondering what materials I could use to practice wrapping and finishing on without ruining an expensive blank. I was thinking about buying some cheap dowel rods from wally world and using those to practice with. Any thoughts or cheaper practice solutions?

You can buy old fishing rods at yard sales and strip them down. Cut them into short pieces and have lots of test blanks to play with.

A good thing to make is a color wrap test strip with a band of each color thread with Color Preserver and one without CP... and also NCP thread.

That will help you choose thread colors on all your future rod builds.

Good luck in all your rod building adventures.

David

Unless you have some very smooth wood dowells you wont get the feel for proper packing. You can get a 7' solid fiberglass blank from Janns Netcraft for around $11 or so, I think, and you could also use portion of it to make cork reamers or razor wands later on. See their link just to the left. Ice rod blanks are cheap also.

Good Luck

Cabela's has some very cheap Pac Bay rod kits right now.
They include everything, blank, cork, guides, thread, epoxy and finish.
IMHO you might as well make something useful while you practice.

Go to good will or the salvation army and you can often pick up old rods for $1 each.

Or go to your favorite fishing store. Many times, there is a barrel that is used to deposit old rods.
Many times these old rods are free for the asking.

Or you can go to pawn shops and often pick up an old rod for $3 or $4.

Take care
Roger

Thanks for the suggestions. I will go visit my local pawn shops to see what they have available. I will also look at online shops for cheap blanks and kits...

I pick up lots of old broken rods just by taking a trip down to the fishing peir, pluck the broken rods out of the trash can. I use them for any practice/test wrap and also build reamers etc.

Rufus
Port Saint Lucie, FL

I use reflective driveway markers, the type with tape at the top. $2 most anywhere and can still be used when done just more colorfull.

Scott

[rodbuilding.org]

or here - some 6.00 [www.fishandsave.com]

Bill - willierods.com

Small PVC pipe is smooth like a blank.

Freddwhy (Rapt-Ryte)

I use solid fiberglass arrow shafts (used for bowhunting for carp). I picked up a bunch of them cheap at an archery shop going out of business.

Rog

Whatever you get If it is not smooth enough - sand them

Bill - willierods.com