I have a spinning rod I am building with a cedar handle and fore grip from Archies custom Handles.
Would several thin layers of perma gloss work for a finish on the cedar?
Thanks.

Mark Warnke

Black Swamp Custom Rods

Mark,
Possibly.

I have made a lot of Cedar handles and I simply use two coats of high build flex coat - sanding lightly after the first coat.


[www.rodbuilding.org]

The handles shown above were for Ice fishing rods.

Best wishes

Yes, PermaGloss is an excellent as a wood finish. It's water white clear, will never yellow, harder and more flexible than epoxy and is very light in weight.

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Yes, PermaGloss is an excellent as a wood finish. It's water white clear, will never yellow, harder and more flexible than epoxy and is very light in weight.

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Tru-Oil would be my choice, and is much easier to work with.

Tru-Oil would be my choice, and is much easier to work with.

If you use PG while turning as Tom shows with CF grips it will work great. A few coats would even add some strength (toughness?) to the wood.

Also,
When done correctly CA glue works very very well as well.

One can use plastic wrap for doing the initial application. Also, for most of these types of finishes, use latex or rubber gloves. A lot easier to throw away the used gloves than trying to remove finish from one's hands. The CA does not stick to the plastic wrap but penetrates and makes the grip even stronger.



Take care

Seems like a smooth, hi-gloss finish over cedar would be quite slippery?

Thanks Guys for all the help. I decided to go with a couple of coats of flex coat like Roger suggested. It worked good but my flex coat resin had clumped. You know how it does because my shop is in the basement where its cooler than the rest of the house. So I put it in some warm water to dissolve it and there were still some tiny undissolved clumps. Well 2 coats of that were enough so I scotch brighted the wood and just put a layer of perma gloss on it. we shall see what happens.

Phil; I thought about that too but figured it was a light rod for bluegill, crappie, rock bass ect. Didn't figure it would matter too much. Besides your hand is grabbing the reel seat and the reel foot.

Thanks Again everybody.

Mark Warnke

Black Swamp Custom Rods

No it won't be slippery. Smooth and slippery are not the same thing.

But epoxy is a poor product for this. PermaGloss is far superior in this particular application.

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I agree with Tom, Permagloss is the best for what. you want to do. More durable, won’t yellow, peel or craze and doesn’t get an amine blush when wet.
Norm

Hear this quite regularly, why would a fishing rod grip be slippery and unusable, but not your hickory handled hammer, ax, sledge, splitting maul, etc. When I first started building, many years ago, G Loomis hadn't been around long and people were mentioning how those rods just "felt right" in the hand while fishing, it was ergonomics, Gary was using the Wiebe reel seats that have an OD about the size of the 20 mm pipe seat and they transitioned smoothly into the rear grip, much like the Fuji IPS seats do, he was big on that, refusing to use less than a 17 mm pipe seat on any rod. I've been doing the same, though I rarely use less than an 18 mm, and I have hands with short fingers.