Dennis Shew, "Cal", is the lead reviewer for all things rod and reel at the website TackleTour.com. This site is tops in the world for tackle reviews and if you don't visit here often you are missing a huge compendium of good information. With over 3 million hits a month, they maintain a level of professionalism and editorial integrity that seems to be sorely missed on many "pay-to-play" sites. Cal has never built a rod before but was so intrigued by what he had heard about POINT Blank he asked us to help with design and components and we walked him through his first project. I think this will be great exposure for the rodbuilding craft and as an added extra, Cal was very impressed with the blank.

[tackletour.com]

It was a good read. They are a very good and popular site. I was glad to see them cover rod building. One point made was how daunting it was to order appropriate components and get everything sized right. It looks like he still missed on the grip matching the real seat’s diameter. This is from one of the foremost experts in the world on production fishing rods.

This is where I believe there is still some good space for gains with many component suppliers. It isn’t that easy for a novice to swim through the codes and undefined terms in many catalogs and websites to put together a coherent guide train, or match other components to each other. Often basic information such as “outside diameter” is never listed. Not every size 16 part is a good match with every other size 16 part. Most companies give guide measurements by alphabetical codes, one doesn’t even provide a chart of what part of the guide each code refers to. I can find three very different sets of specs on-line for one blank I recently purchased. I really believe that a good portion of people who are curious about building rods likely bail after casually checking into the endeavor. This site is awesome, but what portion of people follow through with joining a web group to figure out a hobby?

there are some pretty descent kits out there for beginners to wet their feet..you don,t have to learn everything at once..that,s what makes crafting difficult for lots of people..they want to be instant experts..that,s a good way to kill the fun of any hobby..

Saw the review already Mr. Ising. It was a good read.

I don't go to TT as much as I used to, but I try to check in there every couple of weeks.

Good read but the build was awful! For someone who scrutinizes every aspect of every rod he tests, he may want to peruse his notes and he will quickly see where he fell short, but we all must start somewhere!

They are impressive blanks! He should have been impressed.

Definitely good blanks!

I agree the build was not as good as I would have liked. It was his first effort and he insisted on mixing in some non-Fuji parts. It wasn't pretty but considering the target market it probably went (mostly) unnoticed. Hopefully, he had a good experience and we will see custom rods more often in the future on TackleTour.

Upon further review, it weighed in at more than I would have liked also. 1st time build though, as stated.

It's good to see some blanks on the custom market drawing some attention from those guys. I suspect if he had a little better build experience the rod would have gotten a higher rating overall. I've long enjoyed reading material from the TT guys, but haven't checked in on them enough lately.

Jim, you get some major kudos for encouraging Cal to build the rod himself to promote the craft. Even if he found that building rods may not be his cup of tea, I bet he learned more than a few things that will make him even better at his day job.

For a first buid Cal did petty darn good..my first builds were from kits and still looked like somebody was struggling..just making a jamb knot was a battle..lol.

I've been reading Tackle Tour since its' inception lord knows how many years ago. It used to be about a 12 - 15 page publication that you had to subscribe to. There were no color photos and absolutely no advertising in the publication. They used to say that advertising would lead people to believe that their reviews of an advertiser's product, would not be an honest review. I loved Tackle Tour then, and I still like it a lot now. They're not quite as hard in their reviews now as they were then, but it's still a great place to go to get the info on the latest new products.

As far as the review of the built rod goes. While Cal and the guys at Tackle Tour are very knowledgeable about factory rods, I don't think they understand what they have in their hands as far as a blank goes. I say that because of the 7.5 it got in their "features" category. "Certainly built for good quality graphite" ? lol Ok ..... And the Design category was a bit telling as well. "Unique taper to this blank is very intriguing" tells me he doesn't fully understand the reasoning behind the "unique taper"

The blank got the marks (9's) it should have gotten in construction and performance. I get the idea of bringing the marks down because of the price of the blank, but .........

Anyhow ... I have yet to build on a Point Blank. I trust the opinions of the members of this site regarding how good the Point Blank, blanks, are. And based on my experience with Tackle Tour over the years, had this rod been a rod introduced as a new line of rods from a factory company. I'm pretty certain that it would have been in running for their Editors' pick award.

The Point Blank blanks get high marks from me. I like them a lot.
Norm

I realized it was a bit of a crapshoot but sometimes you just gotta take the chance.

Why not send them a finished rod so they know the potential of what can be done when its built by someone who knows what they're doing? Or did they insist on building it themselves

Anglers Resource doesn't sell finished rods. I have a few here and I'm not sending them anywhere! I like it, the guy was interested enough to build it and fish it. Win, win!

i like the rod he built..it,s not perfect but whoever built a perfect rod? OK, Tom Kirkman maybe..lol.

I've built two Point Blank rods now and love them. Next build will probably be their PB691MXF to keep my PB691MLXF company.
They are built using all Fugi gear from tip tops to thread...

Wish they built surf rods...

I've built two Point Blank rods now and love them. Next build will probably be their PB691MXF to keep my PB691MLXF company.
They are built using all Fugi gear from tip tops to thread...

Wish they built surf rods...

Ron Beloff

I've built two Point Blank rods now and love them. Next build will probably be their PB691MXF to keep my PB691MLXF company.
They are built using all Fugi gear from tip tops to thread...

Wish they built surf rods...

Ron Beloff