Forum: rodboard

Norman Miller Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Use Devcon 2 Ton epoxy. It is thinner than rod > bond, is very strong and flexible, and can be > bought in most hardware stores. It also cleans up > easily with DNA. Set up in about 1/2 hour probably > a little quicker after using the heat gun to > shrink your tubing. A Very good all purpose &
Forum: rodboard

Mark Talmo Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Chris, > You mentioned, twice, that you use “shrink > wrap”, not shrink tubing. Simply employing > SHRINK TUBING will probably solve all your > problems of “sliding around” without the > hassle, mess, clean-up, cost and weight of using > an additional, unneeded bonding agent! I use > shri
Forum: rodboard

Kent Griffith Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Shrink wrap or heat shrink tubing? Shrink wrap. The stuff that every component house sells.
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Over the past couple of years, I've come to think that when it comes to surf rods, shrink wrap over a cord grip is the best grip material there is. It gives all the benefits of cord (durability, ease of replacement, etc.) but the shrink wrap eliminates the one thing that a lot of surfcasters don't like, which is that cord by itself can feel rough in the hand. I've used it on a bunch of rods, and
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I underwrap surf rods. It's not necessary, but it adds a bit of extra protection from abuse. Surf rods, if they're used properly, get banged around pretty good. And the weight penalty from underwraps is pretty negligible on rods htat long and heavy.
Forum: rodboard

I want to try this too: is there a way I can experiment with these without spending a ton of money? I want to be able to do it from scratch, pouring my own foam cores and all, but I don't want to have to shell out $100 or $150 for a kit, if I end up not liking them.
Forum: rodboard

I want to try this too: is there a way I can experiment with these without spending a ton of money? I want to be able to do it from scratch, pouring my own foam cores and all, but I don't want to have to shell out $100 or $150 for a kit, if I end up not liking them.
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Sorry for asking a stupid question, but NOS means new old stock, right? As in manufactured years ago, but still new?
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I use a 22 for just about all conventional surf casting reels -- it's easy, it fits my hand well, etc. And I don't have to think about it -- just use 22, even if the diameter of the blank is small enough to accommodate something a bit smaller. The only exception is when the diameter of the blank is too large to accommodate a 22. Then I use the smallest seat I can get away with, which is usual
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I hate -- HATE -- adding weight to the butt of a rod. I've read of some surf guys who add as much as 5 or 6 ounces of lead to the butt -- that, to me, is utter insanity. Tom is right: everything in this game is a tradeoff, and achieving neutral balance usually comes at the expense of configuring the handle correctly. This is especially true with long surf rods: it's just about impossible to g
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Send me your address, Brittan-- I got a few extras, and I'd be happy to send you one. You can also get them from Gene Brandner, who's the US Distributor of Alvey reels.
Forum: rodboard

Doesn't North Fork Composites have a program wherein a builder can submit a finished rod (built on a North Fork blank, of course), and North Fork will make a determination as to whether the rod meets their standards of what a well-built custom rod should be? The rod, if I'm remembering this correctly, does not necessarily need to be a work of art, but does need to meet standards in terms of compo
Forum: rodboard

Spine the rod whichever way you like: with a spine finder, with your bare hands, with some kind of fancy apparatus, or, if you're so inclined, with black magic or voodoo. How you do find the spine, or even whether you do it right, won't matter, because spine is irrelevant, especially on this kind of rod. Just align the reel seat, guides, etc., whichever way you fancy, and go fishing.
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I've never tried it, but I've always heard that Stroft, which is made in Germany, is the best, thinnest monofilament line in the world. It can be hard to get in this country, which is one of the reasons that I've never tried it. A big online sale outlet had a bunch of it about two years ago, but I snoozed, and didn't get any. It's worth a try if you can get your hands on some.
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I am considering trying these, but I have a question: are they like EVA, which has a lot of stretchiness? Or are they like cork, which needs to be reamed to fit the blank? I want to give them a shot, but I don't want something I have to ream -- reaming cork is probably my least-favorite rod-building task (you can probably tell that I do it by hand). I can't tell how much these things will str
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Thanks for the offer, Roger -- I may take you up on it. But first, I have a decision to make: I am either going to bid on Mudhole's fleabay item, and amass a lifetime supply of these things, or I'm going to see if nobody buys them, and see if I can call them and get them to sell me a handful of them. I don't need 104 of them, of course, but at fifty cents apiece, I could amass a lifetime supp
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Thanks, Roger - that looks terrific!
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I should add one thing: the deckhand-style trigger won't work here. They attach to the rod via clamps, and the reel here does not have either a clamp or the screws that come with a clamp.
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I'm building a conventional surf plugging rod, and I have a conundrum: I have a blank that with a large enough diameter that none of the readily available trigger reel seats will fit: I need a size 24, and the largest trigger reel seat I can find is a 22. Pacific Bay evidently made a 24 for a while, but it was evidently discontinued a few years ago. I had one, but like a genius, I gave it away a
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I use it when I need to do a fast, down-and-dirty tip-top repair. For that, it's great. For any situation where time is not of the essence, I use my favorite 2-part epoxy, which happens to be Threadmaster high build.
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Don @ American Tackle Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > We have found that the provided spacing works very > well for size 1000-4000 reels. Please by all means > do not be afraid to play with stripper spacing by > an inch or so. We would love to hear your feedback > as well. Thanks. This is what I did with the first Microwave rod I built: s
Forum: rodboard

The length of the rod would, for me, be a key consideration in whether to do a spiral on a wire-line trolling rod. Wire line, more than any other kind of line used on fishing rods, hates abrupt transitions, so a method like the simple spiral, which works great with both braid and mono, would be a lousy idea on a spiral rod. You want any and all transitions in guide placement to be gradual, to try
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Barry Thomas Sr Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Primary fishing is For Stripedbass from the Surf > here in Southern New Jersey, mostly spinning rods > from 11'4" to 13'6" casting up to 6 or 8 OZ plus > bait. I'm with Barry. In fact, one of these days I'm going to have to get him to take me fishing, so he can show me his spots! I
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I've never done a Turk's Head, but I've done a million cord grips, and when I asked the cord sharpies this question a few years ago, they all said that they do the Turk's Head separately. Good luck.
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I've toyed around with using small guides on surf rods, but have found that there's an issue with diminishing returns: any potential weight savings from smaller guides gets lost in the shuffle, get "gobbled up" by the greater overall weight of these bigger rod and reel outfits. Say that you're building a very typical surf rod, say a 10-foot, 1-4 ounce plugging rod: the blank weighs 8 oz
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I was putting together a handle the other day. It's for a large-ish surf bait rod, and when I slid my size-24 reel seat down over the blank, I realized that the space between the blank and the inside of the reel seat was small, too small, in my mind, to use a urethane reel seat arbor. Epoxying the arbor into the reel seat, waiting a day for it to cure, and then reaming away 98% of the arbor mater
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I do spirals differently depending on whether the rod will be used with a reel that has a levelwind. On levelwind-reel spirals, I put the guides on the same side of the rod as the reel handle, for the reasons that Roger and Fred mentioned. On non-levelwind rods, though, I do the opposite: I put the guides on the OPPOSITE side of the reel handle. For a guy who cranks the reel with his right ha
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For me, the big issue is getting banged around. For fishing, SF guides are plenty strong enough to handle even very heavy fishing applications. The issue is that they are unarguably are more prone to being bent or damaged if you bang one against a pier piling, a gunwale, or your girlfriend's forehead - double-foots hold up much better to this kind of thing. For rods where this type of abuse i
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Just curious: why are you set on 6'6"? I ask because all the research I did showed that the wire line sharpies preferred much longer rods, with 8 and 9 feet being the preference. If you're gonna be trolling bunker spoons -- and I can't imagine why you'd use wire line for anything else -- then I would respectfully suggest an 8- or 9-foot all-glass blank. I know very little about this kind
Forum: rodboard