Just wondering if anyone building Ice rods and sanding the tips down has experienced tip twist after the build? I have been taking the 22" microlite blanks and only sanding the tip section a little more starting with 180-320-500-polishing cloth, then re-painting and finishing with PG. about a week after the rod has been wrapped on and epoxied the tip will twist about 90 degrees(I wrap a 001 fly guide on the tip rather then use a tip top) and its not loose because when I cut one off it was a bugger to get off. I sand it on a homemade drill press lathe. Am I getting the blank too hot during sanding? sanding at too many rpms? or maybe wrapping the tip under too much tension? for some reason I have not experienced this with the longer 31" blanks that I cut down to 28" and sand the tip in the same manner.

Zachary,
Likely - all of the above.
i.e. too hot, maybe a bit too much tension. I have sanded down many rods with 0 issues.

When I do my sanding, I am spinning the blank at about 6000 rpms - really really fast. I tend to like to spin the rod very fast, use finer paper and use a very light touch when sanding.

I keep track of the blank temperature with my fingers and never let the temp rise much above room temperature.

You might just glue on the appropriate tips, rather than wrapping a guide on the tip.

There are several different vendors that now have tips of a nice large size with a 2/64th tube size that work very well for tips on these fine tipped rods.

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The other option is to let the blanks age for a couple of weeks before doing any wrapping to let any heat induced, or sanding induced stress be relieved from the blanks before wrapping.

Roger

Zachary,
I was just thinking about your tip twist issue.

Since these blanks are rather inexpensive, it might be interesting to take one of the blanks that you have sanded, and put the blank in an oven on a cookie sheet for a couple of hours at about 150 degrees to relieve any stress that might be left in the resin.

I suppose that one would have to experiment a bit with the temperature to insure that all stress was relieved - without hurting the glass resin itself. I would think that if the temp were kept under 200 that you would likely be all right, but a bit of research on the thermal properties of the resin would be a good idea before trying such an experiment.

I have to think that the sanding has created heat, and that the resin re flowed a bit to put the twist into the tip. Then, over time, the resin slowly relaxed to put the twist in the tip. But I would think that a bit of reheating with no pressure on the tip would allow the tip to relax before you wrapped the rod and would then be good to go.

Roger