WOW! Thanks a million Norm.
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I'm sure this has been covered in the past, but I cannot find any specific information on the subject. I'd like to know if there are any companies making what amounts to a KR Concept 'wanna be' guide series that are considered to be of reasonably good quality to stand up to salt water use. Just shy of two years ago, I purchased two sets of Fuji concept stripping and running guides, and they wer
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John...Anyone with my last name is not related to me! Only a couple left in the world. I had a good friend in Hawthorne, Anthony (Tony) Dellacroce, who lived on Linda Ave or Street...I don't remember. He lived in a beautiful house with a scalloped roof that he essentially built himself. Actually, he also built the house that I lived in in Mt. Pleasant! It's been a while since I visited K
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John...my uncle owned a small hunting and fishing shop in Mt. Tremper, NY in Ulster County when I was a kid. At that time I lived in Bronx, NY. City kid with a country heart. Ultimately, I lived in Westchester County (Mt. Pleasant and Tarrytown) for twenty-five years or so. I know those areas. Good choice on the 9'.
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I built a rod a while back, and decided to put a single turn inlay with metallic thread about five turns in from the start of the wrap at each guide foot. I was using NCP thread. I was happy with the results, so I decided to do it again with the next rod. This time however, I used the metal thread once again for the single inlay, but used regular thread for the wrap without the use of color pr
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"...if she learns on a shorter rod it may limit her overall conceptions about casting and everything else that goes with it. When she needs to cast farther because of different water, she will have to learn all over again with a short blank." I started fly fishing in 1968. I essentially spent most of my fly fishing time back then on the Esopus Creek in the NY Catskill mountains.
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That's a standard length.
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Les...I read your response with interest, and you made some considerably accurate comments related to the cost of materials vs the quality of the final product. Actually, cost is a non issue. I suppose I thought about it more from a weight of the final product perspective. On many occasions here on the site I have seen comments related to the benefits of eliminating excess weight to a build.
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Thank you for your replies. Just wondering...I hear folks recommend the use of various grades of sand paper to scuff up the finish a little before applying a new coat. I would think that great care is likely needed for this as sand paper doesn't exactly lend itself to the shape and contours of a previously epoxied guide, and likely runs the risk of creating new angles where none previously exis
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After almost two years from the time I purchased the components to last night when I thought that I had finally completed the rod, I enthusiastically gave it a good look over this morning only to find that I have a couple of spots adjacent to the guide feet on the first two reduction guides where the epoxy is a little thin. The thread in those spots obviously absorbed the epoxy, but the thread i
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I agree with John. If there is/are indeed a burr/burrs on the underside of the guide, sliding it in either direction will likely create scratches. But I have made the mistake of tapering the edges of guide feet so that they become razors. Sliding guides tightly pressed against the blank by any means with those razor-like edges may be OK (assuming no burrs on the underside) if you're sliding th
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Thank you for your replies. Perhaps I was unclear about my question. I was wondering whether one could get away with applying epoxy to the complete circumference of the blank the total length of the decal. By suggesting the tape, I was wondering if I could essentially tape the blank in such a way that what I have exposed is bare blank just slightly larger than the footprint of the decal. Epox
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This may be a dumb question, but I'll ask it anyway. So far I have built on two NFC X-ray blanks, but I have completely finished only one of them. Because of a little controversy related to the ribs on the X-rays in a discussion here in the past, I opted to run thread the length of the decal, apply epoxy to that and let it cure, and then apply the decal and epoxy over the decal. It turned out
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Thank you all for your responses. I have wrapped one other rod to date with KB/KT guides and locking wraps. Of course, I had similar results. I did fish with the aforementioned rod, but never in the least caught anything that might have challenged the guides in any way. So no....never had one pull out! :-) NORM...you state that you wrap right up to the guide stem and place one or two block
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I just wrapped a rod yesterday with a Fuji reduction train and a combination of KB and KT running guides. As per the recommendations of many, if not most contributors on this site, I decided to try using locking wraps on the runners. I do not know if I am doing anything wrong or missing something in my application of the wraps, but once completed do not look nearly as tight, neat and almost und
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Norm or Tom...not to drag this on, but if you have a straight blank so that applying the guides to the convex aspect of the blank (the straightest axis) in NOT an issue because there is in fact no curve.... would you apply the guides along the spine (weakest aspect of the blank) or perhaps along an aspect 90 degrees or so from the spine that is likely going to be considerably stiffer (stronger
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I have a bunch of NFC X-ray blanks yet to build. I like them. Does anyone have any opinions on or experience with the Delta series of blanks? How do they differ from the X-ray series? I'm looking to use inshore....trout/redfish/snook.
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"Add a little water to it and it really expands." Yes it does! I have never used Gorilla Glue for anything myself, but for those of you who keep it on hand, just a word of caution. As a practicing veterinarian, anyone in my profession who has been around a while knows what Gorilla Glue can do to someone or something (like your dog) that may have made the unfortunate mistake of swal
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Tom: you state "Generally the spine and the straightest axis will be somewhere from about 90 to 179 degrees opposite each other." Assuming you have a straight blank, the "straightest axis" is essentially eliminated from the equation, at least visually. That is, as you're looking down the barrel, rotating the blank along its long axis fails to highlight any deviation of t
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"I am not making this point specific to the company mentioned in this post. It’s my strong belief, though, that “wonky” tips are far from okay from any manufacturer. I would never build on one. It’s the part of the blank that is most going to influence most parameters of rod performance. Bent, bulging, or twisted fibers and profiles are just not going to perform according to design or at ful
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Bob...thank you for that list. I will have a look tomorrow. Norm...About that translucent look with the use of regular thread and epoxy......I agree 100% that it looks great...at first. I built fly rods many years ago that I fished for tarpon with in the Keys, and after several seasons using some of the thread in question here (regular thread without using CP...just epoxy), the long hours on
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I have about forty spools of various colored Gudebrod size A winding thread from days gone by. They have been stored in a plastic bag all these years, and when I went to take a look at them today, I found that ALL of the labels had sloughed off the ends of the spools, with the numbers identifying the colors by name loose in the bag. So of course I have no clue what label corresponds to the corr
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Since nobody has mentioned it so far, perhaps it is considered taboo now for some reason. But if so, I haven't heard anything! When trimming the thread and you somehow just miss a nice clean through and through cut, you can easily end up with the slightest strand that could wreak havoc upon the application of finish. Sometimes it's obvious, and sometimes you don't even know it's there until
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This question is probably a little embarrassing, but quite honestly, I'm getting too old to care. But in the interest of trying to learn something new every day, I will ask. I see that the "standard" way of assembling a rod is to mount the tip top after your reel seat is in its proper place, and mounting the remainder of the guides from the butt end forward. Why? I have always m
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El...for the sake of clarity... "But @ERNIE - when you say Gary said "..." you mean Loomis? Because he very clearly has stated the he believes all rods should be built on their spine and not on the straightest axis regardless of the bend in the rod (if there is one and it happens to not line up with the spine which he said is often the case anyway). He claims a there is a physic
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Thanks for your replies. Tom...Because I likely misunderstood the concept right from the get go so many years ago, I must admit that I have built many rods "incorrectly" if you will. What I used to do routinely was this. Assuming that the blank was pretty darn straight (and I think I have had many more than not that were pretty darn straight), I worked with the spine of the rod. A
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In the now infamous thread "Has NFC gone downhill?", there was some discussion by some pretty experienced people regarding the preferred placement of guides on a blank. As is often the case, there was also some disagreement among the participants in the discussion related to this. Because it has been bugging me, I decided to address it. First off, I agree with Ed Rose who in the di
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Norm has been very kind and informative since the time I first discovered this site. He has not only entertained my questions and concerns on the board, but has also entertained some questions via e-mail. Thanks Norm. I was enrolled in a Master's degree program in immunology at New York University back in the late 70s. I left the program to attend veterinary school, but immunology is an ex
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"And speaking of out of line ...... Considering we're talking about a stick of hot glue, isn't posting "Right now he's lucky I'm so far away" more than a bit out of line? Not only is it out of line, it's ridiculous. You're threatening someone because you got something wrong in an order?" Absolutely correct. Now...should we all call for the author of that statement to be ba
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Here's a case in point from another thread currently on the board: "Thanks guys, looks like I Got Bit. Lol. Supplier substituted ordinary hot glue for my Flex Coat product! (think snake oil) Right now he's lucky I'm so far away. John Cates has rectified the situation, but it shouldn't be on him! Thanks very much John." I'm betting that what happened here was just innocent human
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