Went out this morning to check on a rod I epoxied last night. Mixture seemed a bit thick but went with it anyway. Looked great! Went to grab the same stuff in a small crate if you will on the bench. Well DAMN!. It was Flex coat epoxy glue! I was shocked that it looked fantastic, felt hard. I wished I had taken a pic but didn't before I thought, this is how you learn, and put a proper coat on it. And now I remember why it had the Yorker caps on. So I would never pull this stunt ! The older I get the more I just laugh at myself.

Was building a 4-wt for a friend and had several Pac Bay Arctos blanks, both 4 and 5-wts. Picked out a blank, installed the handle, and then it hit me - I had pulled a 5-wt blank, not the 4-wt, and had installed the handle on the 2nd section from the Butt, not the butt section! Worked out, I continued to build as a 7 1/2 5-wt for myself and built my friend's 4-wt with no issues...

What was that they say, measure twice and cut once? I guess in my case, check the label several times & lay out the sections to dry fit the parts before getting out the glue!

If you build offshore rods with Aftco Uni-Butts, you will eventually remove the ferrule locking nut during ferrule installation and forget to put it back on before mounting the grips. Those of you who build these type rods will know what I'm talking able.

.....................

Hi Tom.

Been there done that, I have also forgot to add all the winding checks on a split grip.

Tight Wraps & Tighter Lines.

Also installed the seat on S2 instead of butt (S1)
Herb

Put epoxy on a rod and put it in a dryer. Forgot to turn it on. You get the picture.

Once I forgot to put the rear grip on before building up tape arbors for the reel seat. Another time I forgot to install the wind checks. Both were minor. The latter forced me to learn how to do epoxy ramps so that was a good thing.

I never forget to install the pull-through loop; yea right. The sign of a true craftsman is one who can transform a mistake into something beneficial.

Mark Talmo
FISHING IS NOT AN ESCAPE FROM LIFE BUT RATHER A DEEPER IMMERSION INTO IT!!! BUILDING YOUR OWN SIMPLY ENHANCES THE EXPERIENCE.

i goofed mixing epoxy rod finish on a dropshot rod. i noticed it had not set up firm and set it aside(standing up) in a closet. later i noticed the finish had morphed into a version of what a finish would look like if Van Gogh/Picasso had collaborated on a rod. funny to see now.

I had two sets of epoxy on the bench and mixed 3cc of resin from one batch and 3cc of resin from the other batch.

I do have another weird rod related story:

I was wading a river once with a friend. He made a cast and the line popped and his lure went flying.
He did'nt think much of it and retied. The next cast...the same thing, lure goes flying.
He commented that it was new line...stripped off part of the spool and retied....lure goes flying again.
At this point he thinks he got some bogus line. I offered to share half the spool off my reel.
We strip off his line and put on my line. He reties and casts...POP....lure goes flying again!!!
On further inspection...I noticed that his tip was loose. When he would cast...the tip would stay on the rod and spin and break the line.
We put a lighter on the tip and reglued it down and all was fine after that.

The fly I didn’t catch, that ended up in the epoxy coating on the rod!

Leaned over the rod drying to grab something. Drawstring on my sweatshirt got caught in the epoxy of the stripper guide. I didn't notice until it was getting tighter and tighter. Rod turned out okay but I have black fuzzys in my lime green wrap haha.

I've put the pull through loop in facing the wrong direction a couple of times. And once I stuck the end of a running guide through the material of the tubing I use to hold the guides on.

Got the wrap started up over the tip of the guide foot, cut the tubing and it's stuck to the rod. I was like, what the heck? Pulled on the cut tubing with a pair of tweezers, and the guide came with it.

David Baylor Wrote:
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> I've put the pull through loop in facing the wrong
> direction a couple of times.

David...that doesn't even count.

I think El Bolinger pretty much has us all beat with this:
[www.rodbuilding.org]

I took an Immortal 7'6" rod off the dryer and broke 7 inches off when I promptly jammed it into a garage rafter.

Not funny, but I built a St Croix SCV70MF for my son, one of my first builds after getting back into rod building after a long gap. I put the 30mm titanium guide on crooked relative to the seat, and tried to bend the guide to get it aligned. Not a good idea. In bending the guide I cracked the blank under the guide, longitudinal cracks in the blank. I then used a strip of fiberglass cloth with epoxy to try to "heal" the cracks and reinstalled the straightened guide in proper alignment over the cured glass repair.

The rod has been in use about ten years now and when fishing with him, I can't tell which of his two St Croix rods the "fix" was made on.

I continue to put the drop shot weight/hook keeper on backwards. I don't use then but about every 7 to 10 months and I keep putting them backwards, I've put a sticky note up and still. So far I've caught it before epoxy.

Drop shot hook keepers are great on crankbait rods or any rod where you're using treble hooks. Super simple to hook the bait to, and once you take the bait off, the snap slips right over the end.

Of course ......... that's if you have them on facing the right way. LOL


Sorry Scott ............ at least you caught it before epoxy.

I keep building for me with the drop shot keeper. My buddies all want traditional types. Agreed on all the different uses. One day I'll figure it out.

Chucked my 5’ long reamer to my drill press so it extended almost to the floor. Got on my knees and started reaming a rod handle. Leaned over and the reamer grabbed on lock of hair from the top of my headed and just like that I had an instant bald spot.