Hi Group,

I'm building an ice fishing rod for a friend, bought a MudHole kit and all set, but running into a new issue while wrapping the rod guides. (I've built 5 rods so far, so still in the "novice" range and this is my first ice fishing rod).
The blank is so flexible that the tension from the thread is pulling the rod out of line on the wrapping mount (basic Pacific Bay unit). That's shifting the guide, messing up the wrap, etc. When I loosed the tension to lessen that bend, I have trouble getting a tight wrap. And so it goes...
Does anyone have any helpful tips or do I just have to trial and error until I find the perfect tension?
Thanks, and happy holiday season to all,
Drew



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/21/2015 04:19PM by Drew Klein.

Rig something to hold the blank straight, or use a finger like a hook to hold the blank straight as you turn it.

Drew,
When you build flexible ice rods, be willing to move the rod rests close to the guide being wrapped.

Normally, if I am building a very limber ice rod, I will have a rod rest within two inches of each side of the guide. Just enough room, to be able to nicely wrap the guides.

For very very flexible blanks I will go to my special rod rest as shown in the following picture:

[www.rodbuilding.org]

[www.rodbuilding.org]

Ice rods drying:
[www.rodbuilding.org]

The special rod rests that I made for flexible blanks were made from sections of solid glass blanks. I used a dremel to notch the end of the blank to a size that would fit the blank being wrapped. The base is a piece of plastic cutting board. There are holes drilled in the base about 1 inch apart and the vertical rests will slip into any of the holes to space the rests where ever needed.

One note when using open topped rests as these are. If the thread source is positioned above the blank, there will be a tendency to pull the blank up and out of the slot in the rest.

So, when I use this rest for very flexible rods, I use an additional thread guide that is virtually next to the base of the wrapper. That way, the low thread position, will tend to pull the blank into the rod rest, rather than a high thread position that will tend to pull the thread up and out of the slot.

But, if you just move the conventional rod rests close to each side of the guide, that will cure the problem for most blanks. As you move up and or down the blank, just move the rod rests with you as you go up and down the blank.

If the rod rests are quite close to the guide, even a flexible blank will not bend too much.

If anything with fine flexible blanks I may even tighten the tension on the thread. Since the blank is so small, the tension normally needs to be quite high for good guide holding ability on the fine blank. I assume that you are wrapping only on solid ice rod blanks. With solid ice rod blanks there is no issue about crushing the blank with too much thread tension.

After you have wrapped a bunch, it normally will take no more than about 15 minutes to wrap the guides on a blank, if you are only talking about 3 or 4 guides, plus hook keeper and butt wrap.

Good luck

A lot of times I will leave the butt end in the rollers but roll the tip area between my fingers using my hands to support it. Think of it like grabbing both ends of a pencil and spinning it between your fingers. Hope that makes sense. It works for me anyway and I build a lot of ice rods.

Use a little bit of guide adhesive (low melt glue stick) to hold the guide in place, that helps.

These are great tips, thank you everyone

Drew